19406
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I strongly believe in the actual infinite, which indicates the perfections of its author [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
I am so much for the actual infinite that instead of admitting that nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that it affects nature everywhere in order to indicate the perfections of its author.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Reply to Foucher [1693], p.99)
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A reaction:
I would have thought that, for Leibniz, while infinities indicate the perfections of their author, that is not the reason why they exist. God wasn't, presumably, showing off. Leibniz does not think we can actually know these infinities.
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11897
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A principle of individuation may pinpoint identity and distinctness, now and over time [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
One view of a principle of individuation is what is called a 'criterion of identity', determining answers to questions about identity and distinctness at a time and over time - a principle of distinction and persistence.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.2)
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A reaction:
Since the term 'Prime Minister' might do this job, presumably there could be a de dicto as well as a de re version of individuation. The distinctness consists of chairing cabinet meetings, rather than being of a particular sex.
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11883
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A haecceity is the essential, simple, unanalysable property of being-this-thing [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
Socrates can be assigned a haecceity: an essential property of 'being Socrates' which (unlike the property of 'being identical with Socrates') may be regarded as what 'makes' its possessor Socrates in a non-trivial sense, but is simple and unanalysable.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.2)
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A reaction:
I don't accept that there is any such property as 'being Socrates' (or even 'being identical with Socrates'), except as empty locutions or logical devices. A haecceity seems to be the 'ultimate subject of predication', with no predicates of its own.
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15956
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The peripatetics treated forms and real qualities as independent of matter, and non-material [Alexander,P]
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Full Idea:
The peripatetic philosophers, in spite of their disagreements, all treated forms and real qualities as independent of matter and not to be understood in material terms.
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From:
Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 54)
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A reaction:
This is the simple reason why hylomorphism became totally discredited, in the face of the 'mechanical philosophy'. But there must be a physical version of hylomorphism, and I don't think Aristotle himself would reject it.
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11882
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No other object can possibly have the same individual essence as some object [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
Individual essences are essential properties that are unique to them alone. ...If a set of properties is an individual essence of A, then A has the properties essentially, and no other actual or possible object actually or possibly has them.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.1/2)
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A reaction:
I'm unconvinced about this. Tigers have an essence, but individual tigers have individual essences over and above their tigerish qualities, yet the perfect identity of two tigers still seems to be possible.
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11899
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Why are any sortals essential, and why are only some of them essential? [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
Accounts of sortal essentialism do not give a satisfactory explanation of why any sortals should be essential sortals, or a satisfactory account of why some sortals should be essential while others are not.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.6)
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A reaction:
A theory is not wrong, just because it cannot give a 'satisfactory explanation' of every aspect of the subject. We might, though, ask why the theory isn't doing well in this area.
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11893
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Possibilities for Caesar must be based on some phase of the real Caesar [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
I take the 'overlap requirement' for Julius Caesar to be that, when considering how he might have been different, you have to take him as he actually was at some time in his existence, and consider possibilities consistent with that.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 6.5)
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A reaction:
This is quite a large claim (larger than Mackie thinks?), as it seems equally applicable to properties, states of affairs and propositions, as well as to individuals. Possibility that has no contact at all with actuality is beyond our comprehension.
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11884
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The theory of 'haecceitism' does not need commitment to individual haecceities [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
The theory that things have 'haecceities' must be sharply distinguished from the theory referred to as 'haecceitism', which says there may be differences in transworld identities that do not supervene on qualitative differences.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.2 n7)
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A reaction:
She says later [p,43 n] that it is possible to be a haecceitist without believing in individual haecceities, if (say) the transworld identities had no basis at all. Note that if 'thisness' is 'haecceity', then 'whatness' is 'quiddity'.
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15975
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Can the qualities of a body be split into two groups, where the smaller explains the larger? [Alexander,P]
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Full Idea:
Is there any way of separating the qualities that bodies appear to have into two groups, one as small as possible and the other as large as possible, such that the smaller group can plausibly be used to explain the larger?
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From:
Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 5.02)
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A reaction:
Alexander implies that this is a question Locke asked himself. This is pretty close to what I take to be the main question for essentialism, though I am cautious about couching it in terms of groups of qualities. I think this was Aristotle's question.
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11905
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Locke's kind essences are explanatory, without being necessary to the kind [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
One might speak of 'Lockean real essences' of a natural kind, a set of properties that is basic in the explanation of the other properties of the kind, without commitment to the essence belonging to the kind in all possible worlds.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.1)
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A reaction:
I think this may be the most promising account. The essence of a tiger explains what tigers are like, but tigers may evolve into domestic pets. Questions of individuation and of explaining seem to be quite separate.
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15963
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Science has been partly motivated by the belief that the universe is run by God's laws [Alexander,P]
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Full Idea:
The idea of a designed universe has not been utterly irrelevant to the scientific project; it is one of the beliefs that can give a scientist the faith that there are laws, waiting to be discovered, that govern all phenomena.
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From:
Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 03.3)
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A reaction:
Of course if you start out looking for the 'laws of God' that is probably what you will discover. Natural selection strikes me as significant, because it shows no sign of being a procedure appropriate to a benevolent god.
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11907
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Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not [Mackie,P]
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Full Idea:
One could be an essentialist about natural kinds (of tigers, or water) while holding that every actual instance or sample of a natural kind is only accidentally an instance or a sample of that kind.
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From:
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.2)
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A reaction:
You wonder, then, in what the necessity of the kind consists, if it is not rooted in the instances, and presumably it could only result from a stipulative definition, and hence be conventional.
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