8 ideas
13795 | Properties only have identity in the context of their contraries [Elder] |
Full Idea: The very being, the identity, of any property consists at least in part in its contrasting as it does with its own proper contraries. | |
From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 2.4) | |
A reaction: See Elder for the details of this, but the idea that properties can only be individuated contextually sounds promising. |
13798 | Maybe we should give up the statue [Elder] |
Full Idea: Some contemporary metaphysicians infer that one of the objects must go, namely, the statue. | |
From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 7.2) | |
A reaction: [He cites Zimmerman 1995] This looks like a recipe for creating a vast gulf between philosophers and the rest of the population. If it is right, it makes the true ontology completely useless in understanding our daily lives. |
15990 | Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke] |
Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist. | |
From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism | |
A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species. |
13797 | The loss of an essential property means the end of an existence [Elder] |
Full Idea: The loss of any essential property must amount to the end of an existence. | |
From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 3) | |
A reaction: This is orthodoxy for essentialists, and I presume that Aristotle would agree, but I have a problem with the essence of a great athlete, who then grows old. Must we say that they lose their identity-as-an-athlete? |
13794 | Essential properties by nature occur in clusters or packages [Elder] |
Full Idea: Essential properties by nature occur in clusters or packages. | |
From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Elder proposes this as his test for the essentialness of a property - his Test of Flanking Uniformities. A nice idea. |
13796 | Essential properties are bound together, and would be lost together [Elder] |
Full Idea: The properties of any essential nature are bound together....[122] so any case in which one of our envisioned familiar objects loses one of its essential properties will be a case in which it loses several. | |
From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 3) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly good generalisation rather than a necessary truth. Is there a natural selection for properties, so that only the properties which are able to bind to others to form teams are able to survive and flourish? |
15994 | If it is knowledge, it is certain; if it isn't certain, it isn't knowledge [Locke] |
Full Idea: What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be knowledge. | |
From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 2), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism | |
A reaction: I much prefer that fallibilist approach offered by the pragmatists. Knowledge is well-supported belief which seems (and is agreed) to be true, but there is a small shadow of doubt hanging over all of it. |
20147 | Arguments that my finger does not exist are less certain than your seeing my finger [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: This really is a finger ...and you all know it. ...I can safely challenge anyone to give an argument that it is not true, which does not rest upon some premise which is less certain than is the proposition which it is designed to attack. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Some Judgements of Perception [1922], p.228), quoted by John Kekes - The Human Condition 01.3 | |
A reaction: [In Moore's 'Philosophical Studies'] This is a particularly clear statement from Moore of his famous claim. I'm not sure what to make of an attempt to compare a sceptical argument (dreams, demons) with the sight of a finger. |