6 ideas
| 18151 | Could we replace sets by the open sentences that define them? [Chihara, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: Chihara proposes to replace all sets by reference to the open sentences that define them. | |
| From: report of Charles Chihara (Ontology and the Vicious Circle Principle [1973]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 9.B.4 | |
| A reaction: This depends on predicativism, because that stipulates the definitions will be available (cos if it ain't definable it ain't there). Chihara went on to define the open sentences in terms of the possibility of uttering them. Cf. propositional functions. |
| 13174 | A piece of flint contains something resembling perceptions and appetites [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I don't say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, like worms are in cheese. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.12.17) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz is caricatured as thinking that stones are full of little active minds, but he nearly always says that what he is proposing is 'like' or 'analogous to' that. His only real point is that nature is active, as seen in the appetites of animals. |
| 13175 | Entelechies are analogous to souls, as other minds are analogous to our own minds [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Just as we somehow conceive other souls and intelligences on analogy with our own souls, I wanted whatever other primitive entelechies there may be remote from our senses to be conceived on analogy with souls. They are not conceived perfectly. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.12.17) | |
| A reaction: This is the clearest evidence I can find that Leibniz does not think of monads as actually being souls. He is struggling to explain their active character. Garber thinks that Leibniz hasn't arrived at proper monads at this date. |
| 13172 | What we cannot imagine may still exist [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It does not follow that what we can't imagine does not exist. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.11.18) | |
| A reaction: This just establishes the common sense end of the debate - that you cannot just use your imagination as the final authority on what exists, or what is possible. |
| 13173 | Death is just the contraction of an animal [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Death is nothing but the contraction of an animal, just as generation is nothing but its unfolding. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.11.18) | |
| A reaction: This is possibly the most bizarre view that I have found in Leibniz. He seemed to thing that if you burnt an animal on a bonfire, some little atom of life would remain among the ashes. I can't see why he would believe such a thing. |
| 12709 | Motion is not absolute, but consists in relation [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: In reality motion is not something absolute, but consists in relation. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Motion [1677], A6.4.1968), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3 | |
| A reaction: It is often thought that motion being relative was invented by Einstein, but Leibniz wholeheartedly embraced 'Galilean relativity', and refused to even consider any absolute concept of motion. Acceleration is a bit trickier than velocity. |