|
16620
|
A chair is wood, and its shape is the form; it isn't 'compounded' of the matter and form [Hobbes]
|
|
Full Idea:
Nothing can be compounded of matter and form. The matter of a chair is wood; the form is the figure it has, apt for the intended use. Does his Lordship think the chair compounded of the wood and the figure?
|
|
From:
Thomas Hobbes (Letter to Bramhall [1650], 4:302), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 07.1
|
|
A reaction:
Aristotle does use the word 'shape' [morphe] when he is discussing hylomorphism, and the statue example seems to support it, but elsewhere the form is a much deeper principle of individuation.
|
|
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.
|
|
16622
|
Essence is just an artificial word from logic, giving a way of thinking about substances [Hobbes]
|
|
Full Idea:
Essence and all other abstract names are words artificial belonging to the art of logic, and signify only the manner how we consider the substance itself.
|
|
From:
Thomas Hobbes (Letter to Bramhall [1650], 4:308), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671
|
|
A reaction:
I sympathise quite a lot with this view, but not with its dismissive tone. The key question I take to be: if you reject essences entirely (having read too much physics), how are we going to think about entities in the world in future?
|
|
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.
|
|
20363
|
Leaves are unequal, but we form the concept 'leaf' by discarding their individual differences [Nietzsche]
|
|
Full Idea:
Every concept arises through the setting equal of the unequal. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never wholly equal to another, so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences.
|
|
From:
Friedrich Nietzsche (On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense [1872]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.1.1 n28
|
|
A reaction:
Nietzsche adds an interesting aspect to psychological abstraction, of abstracting away the differences between things, which we might label as the (further) capacity for Equalisation. If two cars differ only in a blemish, we abstract away the blemish.
|