82 ideas
| 24047 | An account is either a definition or a demonstration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every account is either a definition or a demonstration. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a24) | |
| A reaction: That is, it is either a summary of the thing's essential nature, or it is a proof of some natural fact, starting from first principles. |
| 24052 | From one thing alone we can infer its contrary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One member of a pair of contraries is sufficient to discern both itself and its opposite. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411a02) | |
| A reaction: This obviously requires prior knowledge of what the opposite is. He says you can infer the crooked from the straight. You can hardly use light in isolation to infer dark [see DA 418b17]. What's the opposite of a pig? |
| 16539 | A definition of a circle will show what it is, and show its generating principle [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If the definition of a circle is based on 'locus of a point', this tells us what a circle is, and it does so by revealing its generating principle, what it takes for a circle to come into being. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: Lowe says that real definitions, as essences, do not always have to spell out a 'generating principle', but they do in this case. Another approach would be to try to map dependence relations between truths about circles, and see what is basic. |
| 16540 | Defining an ellipse by conic sections reveals necessities, but not the essence of an ellipse [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Defining an ellipse in terms of the oblique intersection of a cone and a plane (rather than in terms of the sum of the distance between the foci) gives us a necessary property, but not the essence, because the terms are extrinsic to its nature. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: [compressed wording] Helpful and illuminating. If you say some figure is what results when one thing intersects another, that doesn't tell you what the result actually is. Geometrical essences may be a bit vague, but they are quite meaningful. |
| 16548 | An essence is what an entity is, revealed by a real definition; this is not an entity in its own right [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: An entity's essence is just what that entity is, revealed by its real definition. This isn't a distinct entity, but either the entity itself, or (my view) no entity at all. ..We should not reify essence, as that leads to an infinite regress of essences. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: The regress problem is a real one, if we wish to treat an essence as some proper and distinct part of an entity. If it is a mechanism, for example, the presumably a mechanism has an essence. No, it doesn't! Levels of explanation! |
| 16549 | Simple things like 'red' can be given real ostensive definitions [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Is it true that we cannot say, non-circularly, what red is? We cannot find a complex synonym for it, but I think we can provide red with an ostensive real definition. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite sure how 'real' this definition would be, if it depends on observers (some of whom may be colourblind). In what sense is this act of ostensions a 'definition'? You must distinguish the colour from the texture or shape. |
| 1729 | We perceive number by the denial of continuity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Number we perceive by the denial of continuity. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 425a19) | |
| A reaction: This is a key thought. A being (call it 'Parmenides') which sees all Being as One would make no distinctions of identity, and so could not count anything. Why would they want numbers? |
| 24057 | What is prior is always potentially present in what is next in order [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is prior is always potentially present in what is next in order … - for example, the triangle in the quadrilateral, or the nutritive part of animate things in the perceptual part. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 414a28) | |
| A reaction: 'Prior' seems to be a value for Aristotle, which is never present in modern discussions of ontological relations and structure. Priority tracks back to first principles. |
| 16752 | Sight is the essence of the eye, fitting its definition; the eye itself is just the matter [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the eye were an animal, sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed it is no longer an eye,except in name. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412b18) | |
| A reaction: This is a drastic view of form as merely function, which occasionally appears in Aristotle. To say a blind eye is not an eye is a tricky move in metaphysics. So what is it? In some sense it is still an eye. |
| 14193 | 'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Some deep essentialists resist the need to explain the structure under de re modal properties, taking them as primitive. One version (which we can call 'substance theory') takes them to fall under a sortal concept, with no further explanation. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: A very helpful identification of what Wiggins stands for, and why I disagree with him. The whole point of essences is to provide a notion that fits in with sciences, which means they must have an explanatory role, which needs structures. |
| 14195 | If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: If the substance essentialist holds that the sort an object belongs to determines its de re modal properties (rather than the other way round), then he needs to give an (ontological, not conceptual) explanation of what determines an object's sort. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14193 for 'substance essentialism'. I find it quite incredible that anyone could think that a thing's sort could determine its properties, rather than the other way round. Even if sortals are conventional, they are not arbitrary. |
| 14196 | Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of material constitution given by substance essentialism is that there are multiple objects. A person is essentially human-shaped (falling under the human sort), while their hunk of tissue is accidentally human-shaped (as tissue). | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: At this point sortal essentialism begins to look crazy. Persons are dubious examples (with sneaky dualism involved). A bronze statue is essentially harder to dent than a clay one, because of its bronze. If you remake it of clay, it isn't the same statue. |
| 24058 | The substance is the cause of a thing's being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The cause of its being for everything is its substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 415b12) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if 'substance' here means essence. We no longer see the cause of something's being as intrinsic to the thing. Only previous causes produce things. The 'form' must be the intrinsic cause of being. |
| 16545 | The essence of lumps and statues shows that two objects coincide but are numerically distinct [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: It is a metaphysically necessary truth, obtaining in virtue of the essences of such objects (of what a bronze statue and a lump of bronze are) that when it exists a bronze statue coincides with a lump of bronze, which is numerically distinct from it. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: I think it is nonsense to treat the lump and statue as two objects. It is essential that a statue be made of a lump, and essential that a lump have a shape, so to treat the lump and the shape as two different objects is a failure to grasp the essence. |
| 16546 | The essence of a bronze statue shows that it could be made of different bronze [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: It is a metaphysical possibility, obtaining in virtue of the essences of such objects, that the same bronze statue should coincide with different lumps of bronze at different times. (..they have different persistence conditions). | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: If the fame of a statue were that it had been made by melting down the shield of Achilles (say), then the bronze it was made of would be its most important feature. Essences are more contextual than Lowe might wish. |
| 24055 | Matter is potential, form is actual [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Matter is potentiality, whereas form is actuality. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412a09) | |
| A reaction: Plato said mud has no Form. What did Aristotle think of that? I only ask because to me mud looks like unformed actuality. |
| 24040 | Scientists explain anger by the matter, dialecticians by the form and the account [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For a dialectician anger is a desire for retaliation or something like that, where for a natural scientist it is a boiling of the blood and hoot stuff around the heart. The scientist gives the matter, where the dialectician give the form and the account. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a30) | |
| A reaction: A nice illumination of hylomorphism. Notice that the dialectician also give the account [logos]. |
| 14198 | Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would imply that objects with incompatible properties and objects such as winged pigs or golden mountains were actual. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §5) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is 'qualitative' composition, and not composition of parts. The objection seems to rule out unrestricted qualitative composition, since you could hardly combine squareness with roundness. |
| 14190 | Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism says that objects have their properties essentially. 'Deep' essentialists take the (nontrivial) essential properties of an object to determine its nature. 'Shallow' essentialists substitute context-dependent truths for the independent ones. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If the deep essence determines a things nature, we should not need to say 'nontrivial'. This is my bete noire, the confusion of essential properties with necessary ones, where necessary properties (or predicates, at least) can indeed be trivial. |
| 16551 | Grasping an essence is just grasping a real definition [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: All that grasping an essence amounts to is understanding a real definition, that is, understanding a special kind of proposition. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 7) | |
| A reaction: He refuses to 'reify' an essence, and says it is not an entity, so he seems to think that the definition is the essence, but Aristotle and I take the essence to be what is picked out by the correct definition - not the definition itself. |
| 14191 | Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The deep essentialist holds that most objects have essential properties such that there are many ways they could not be, or many changes through which they could not persist. Objects' modal profiles characterize their natures. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I like, especially the last bit. If your modal profile doesn't determine your nature, then what does? Think of how you sum up a person at a funeral. Your modal profile is determined by dispositions and powers. |
| 16542 | Explanation can't give an account of essence, because it is too multi-faceted [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Explanation is a multifaceted one, with many species (logical, mathematical, causal, teleological, and psychological), ..so it is not a notion fit to be appealed to in order to frame a perspicuous account of essence. That is one species of explanation. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: This directly attacks the core of my thesis! His parenthetical list does not give types of explanation. If I say this explanation is 'psychological', that says nothing about what explanation is. All of his instances could rest on essences. |
| 16552 | If we must know some entity to know an essence, we lack a faculty to do that [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If knowledge of essence were by acquaintance of a special kind of entity, we would doubt our ability to grasp the essence of things. For what faculty could be involved in this special kind of acquaintance? | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 7) | |
| A reaction: This is Lockean empirical scepticism about essences, but I take the view that sometimes you can be acquainted with an essence, but more often you correctly infer it from you acquaintance - and this is just what scientists do. |
| 14192 | Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Two objections to deep essentialism are that it falters when faced with a skeptical objection concerning arbitrariness, and the need for a reductive account of de re modality. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: An immediate response to the second objection might be to say that modal facts about things are not reducible. The charge of arbitrariness (i.e. total arbitrariness, not just a bit of uncertainty) is the main thing a theory of essences must deal with. |
| 14197 | An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: I reject the view that an object's de re modal properties determine its relations to possibilia. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §3) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Paul to see why, but I flat disagree with her on this. The whole point of accepting such properties is to determine the modal profile of the thing, and hence see how it can fit into and behave in the world. |
| 16533 | Logical necessities, based on laws of logic, are a proper sub-class of metaphysical necessities [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If logically necessary truths are consequences of the laws of logic, then I think they are only a proper sub-class of the class of metaphysically necessary truths. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 1) | |
| A reaction: The problem for this is unusual and bizarre systems of logic, or systems that contradict one another. This idea is only plausible if you talk about the truths derived from some roughly 'classical' core of logic. 'Tonk' won't do it! |
| 16531 | 'Metaphysical' necessity is absolute and objective - the strongest kind of necessity [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: By 'metaphysical' necessity I mean necessity of the strongest possible kind - absolute necessity - and I take it to be an objective kind of necessity, rather than being something mind-dependent. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 1) | |
| A reaction: See Bob Hale for the possibility that 'absolute' and 'metaphysical' necessity might come apart. I think I believe in metaphysical necessity, but I'm uneasy about 'absolute' necessity. That may be discredited by the sceptics. |
| 16532 | 'Epistemic' necessity is better called 'certainty' [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: 'Epistemic' necessity is more properly to be called 'certainty'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds wrong. Surely I can be totally certain of a contingent truth? |
| 16543 | If an essence implies p, then p is an essential truth, and hence metaphysically necessary [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If we can truly affirm that it is part of the essence of some entity that p is the case, then p is an essential truth and so a metaphysically necessary truth. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: This feels too quick. He is trying to expound the idea (which I like) that necessity derives from essences, and not vice versa. Is it a metaphysical necessity that there are no moths in my wardrobe, because mothballs have driven them away? Maybe. |
| 16544 | Metaphysical necessity is either an essential truth, or rests on essential truths [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysically necessary truth is a truth which is either an essential truth or a truth that obtains in virtue of the essences of two or more distinct things. Hence all metaphysical necessity is grounded in essence. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: Lowe is endeavouring to give an exposition of the approach advocated by Kit Fine. I divide necessities 'because of' things (such as essences) from necessities 'for' things, such as situations or events. |
| 16538 | We could give up possible worlds if we based necessity on essences [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If we explicate the notion of metaphysical necessity in terms of the notion of essence, rather than vice versa, this may enable us to dispense with the language of possible worlds as a means of explicating modal statements. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the approach I favour, though I am not convinced that the two approaches are in competition, since essentialism gives the driving force for necessity, whereas possible worlds map the logic and semantics of it. |
| 14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: A 'modal realist' believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the 'actualist' believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The 'ersatzist' is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: My view is something like that modal realism is wrong, and actualism is right, and possible worlds (if they really are that useful) are convenient abstract fictions, constructed (if we have any sense) out of the real possibilities in the actual world. |
| 5051 | The intellect has potential to think, like a tablet on which nothing has yet been written [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The intellect is in a way potentially the object of thought, but nothing in actuality before it thinks, and the potentiality is like that of the tablet on which there is nothing actually written. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 429b31) | |
| A reaction: This passage is referred to by Leibniz, and is the origin of the concept of the 'tabula rasa'. Aristotle need not be denying innate ideas, but merely describing the phenomenology of the moment before a train of thought begins. |
| 16723 | Perception of sensible objects is virtually never wrong [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perception of the special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least possible amount of falsehood. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 428b19) | |
| A reaction: This is, surprisingly, the view which was raised and largely rejected in 'Theaetetus'. It became a doctrine of Epicureanism, and seems to make Aristotle a thoroughgoing empiricist, though that is not so clear elsewhere. I think Aristotle is right. |
| 1724 | Perception necessitates pleasure and pain, which necessitates appetite [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Where there is perception there is also pleasure and pain, and where there are these, of necessity also appetite. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 413b23) |
| 1730 | Why do we have many senses, and not just one? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A possible line of inquiry would be into the question for what purpose we have many senses and not just one. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 425b04) |
| 17711 | Our minds take on the form of what is being perceived [Aristotle, by Mares] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle famously holds that in perception our minds take on the form of what is being perceived. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE]) by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 08.2 | |
| A reaction: [References in Aristotle needed here...] |
| 1725 | Why can't we sense the senses? And why do senses need stimuli? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is there not also a sense of the senses themselves? And why don't the senses produce sensation without external bodies, since they contain elements? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 417a03) |
| 1732 | Sense organs aren't the end of sensation, or they would know what does the sensing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Flesh is not the ultimate sense-organ. To suppose that it is requires the supposition that on contact with the object the sense-organ itself discerns what is doing the discerning. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 426b16) |
| 1728 | Many objects of sensation are common to all the senses [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Common sense-objects are movement, rest, number, shape and size, which are not special to any one sense, but common to all. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 418a18) |
| 1727 | Some objects of sensation are unique to one sense, where deception is impossible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Now I call that sense-object 'special' that does not admit of being perceived by another sense and about which it is impossible to be deceived. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 418a15) |
| 1734 | In moral thought images are essential, to be pursued or avoided [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In the thinking soul, images play the part of percepts, and the assertion or negation of good or bad is invariably accompanied by avoidance or pursuit, which is the reason for the soul's never thinking without an image. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 431a15) |
| 1726 | We may think when we wish, but not perceive, because universals are within the mind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perception is of particular things, but knowledge is of universals, which are in a way in the soul itself. Thus a man may think whenever he wishes, but not perceive. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 417b22) |
| 16534 | 'Intuitions' are just unreliable 'hunches'; over centuries intuitions change enormously [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: I suspect that 'intuitions' and 'hunches' are pretty much the same thing, and pretty useless as sources of knowledge. …Things that seemed intuitively true to our forebears a century or two ago often by no means seem intuitively true to us now. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 2) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept this. Intuitions change a lot over the centuries because the reliable knowledge which informs intuitions has also changed a lot. Arguments and evidence may nail individual truths, but coherence must rest on intuition. |
| 16647 | Demonstration starts from a definition of essence, so we can derive (or conjecture about) the properties [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In demonstration a definition of the essence is required as starting point, so that definitions which do not enable us to discover the derived properties, or which fail to facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously be dialectical and futile. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 402b25) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to see 'dialectical' used as a term of abuse! Illuminating. For scientific essentialism, then, demonstration is filling out the whole story once the essence has been inferred. It is circular, because essence is inferred from accidents. |
| 24048 | Demonstrations move from starting-points to deduced conclusions [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Demonstrations are both from a starting-point and have a sort of end, namely the deduction or the conclusion. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a25) | |
| A reaction: A starting point has to be a first principle [arché]. It has been observed that Aristotle explains demonstration very carefully, but rarely does it in his writings. |
| 16646 | To understand a triangle summing to two right angles, we need to know the essence of a line [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In mathematics it is useful for the understanding of the property of the equality of the interior angles of a triangle to two right angles to know the essential nature of the straight and the curved or of the line and the plane. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 402b18) | |
| A reaction: Although Aristotle was cautious about this, he clearly endorses here the idea that essences play an explanatory role in geometry. The caution is in the word 'useful', rather than 'vital'. How else can we arrive at this result, though? |
| 1714 | Mind involves movement, perception, incorporeality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The soul seems to be universally defined by three features, so to speak, the production of movement, perception and incorporeality. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 405b12) | |
| A reaction: 'Incorporeality' begs the question, but its appearance is a phenomenon that needs explaining. 'Movement' is an interesting Greek view. Nowadays we would presumably added intentional states, and the contents and meaning of thoughts. No 'reason'? |
| 5507 | Aristotle led to the view that there are several souls, all somewhat physical [Aristotle, by Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: On the later views inspired by Aristotle's 'De Anima' there was no longer just one soul, but several, and each of them had a great deal in common with the body. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.17 | |
| A reaction: Is this based on the faculties of sophia, episteme, nous, techne and phronesis, or is it based on the vegetative, appetitive and rational parts? The latter, I presume. Not so interesting, not so modular. |
| 24051 | Soul is seen as what moves, or what is least physical, or a combination of elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Three ways have been handed down in which people define the soul: what is most capable of moving things, since it moves itself; or a body which is the most fine-grained and least corporeal; or that it is composed of the elements. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 409b19) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of Aristotle beginning an investigation by idenfying the main explanations which have been 'handed down' from previous generations. These three aren't really in competition, and might all be true. |
| 12086 | Psuché is the form and actuality of a body which potentially has life [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Soul is substance as the form of a natural body which potentially has life, and since this substance is actuality, soul will be the actuality of such a body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412a20) | |
| A reaction: To understand what Aristotle means by 'form' you must, I'm afraid, read the 'Metaphysics'. Form isn't shape, but rather the essence which bestows the individual identity on the thing. 'Psuche is the essence of man' might be a better slogan. |
| 16754 | The soul is the cause or source of movement, the essence of body, and its end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The soul is the cause [aitia] of its body alike in three senses which we explicitly recognise. It is (a) the source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, and it is (c) the essence of the whole living body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 415b09) | |
| A reaction: 'Aitia' also means explanation, so these are three ways to explain a human being, by what it does, why what it is for, and by what it intrinsically is. Activity, purpose and nature. |
| 24046 | Understanding is impossible, if it involves the understanding having parts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: How could a spatial understanding understand anything? Wiil it do so with parts, seen as magnitudes or as points? If it is points, the understanding will never get through them all. If magnitudes, it will understand things an unlimited number of times. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a09) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a strong commitment to the idea that the mind is not physical because it is necessarily non-spatial. |
| 1717 | If the soul is composed of many physical parts, it can't be a true unity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the soul is composed of parts of the body, or the harmony of the elements composing the body, there will be many souls, and everywhere in the body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a15) | |
| A reaction: We will ignore "everywhere in the body", but the rest seems to me exactly right. The idea of the unity of the soul is an understandable and convenient assumption, but it leads to all sorts of confusion. A crowd remains unified if half its members leave. |
| 24053 | If a soul have parts, what unites them? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is it that holds the soul together, if it by nature has parts? For surely it cannot be the body. For it seems on the contrary that it is rather the soul that holds the body together? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411b05) | |
| A reaction: This is the hylomorphic view of a human, that the soul is the form that give unity to the matter. To do the job, presumably the form or soul need an intrinsic unity of its own, and hence cannot have parts. Apart from the need for unifying glue. |
| 1721 | What unifies the soul would have to be a super-soul, which seems absurd [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If soul has parts, what holds them together? Not body, because that is united by soul. If a thing unifies the soul, then THAT is the soul (unless it too has parts, which would lead to an infinite regress). Best to say the soul is a unity. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411b10) | |
| A reaction: You don't need a 'thing' to unify something (like a crowd). I say the body holds the soul together, not physically, but because the body's value permeates thought. The body is the focused interest of the soul, like parents kept together by their child. |
| 1735 | In a way the soul is everything which exists, through its perceptions and thoughts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The soul is in a way all the things that exist, for all the things that exist are objects either of perception or of thought. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 431b20) | |
| A reaction: Sounds very like Berkeley's empirical version of idealism. It also seems to imply modern externalist (anti-individualist) understandings of the mind (which strike me as false). |
| 24061 | If we divide the mind up according to its capacities, there are a lot of them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For those who divide the soul into parts, and divide and separate them in accord with their capacities, the parts turn out to be very many. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a32) | |
| A reaction: I accept the warning. The capacities which interest me are those which seem to generate our basic ontology, but if the capacities become fine-grained, they are legion. |
| 24062 | Self-moving animals must have desires, and that entails having imagination [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If an animal has a desiring part, it is capable of moving itself. A desiring part, however, cannot exist without an imagination, and all imagination is either rationally calculative or perceptual. Hence in the latter the other animals also have a share. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433b27) | |
| A reaction: Maybe if you asked people whether other animals are imaginative they would say no, but this argument is strong support for the positive view. |
| 1710 | Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Most affections (like anger) seem to involve the body, but thinking seems distinctive of the soul. But if this requires imagination, it too involves the body. Only pure mental activity would prove the separation of the two. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a08-) | |
| A reaction: What an observant man! Modern neuroscience is bringing out the fact that emotion is central to all mental life. We can't recognise faces without it. I say imagination is essential to pure reason, and that seems emotional too. Reason is physical. |
| 24039 | All the emotions seem to involve the body, simultaneously with the feeling [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The affections of the soul - spiritedness, fear, pity, confidence, joy, loving, hating - would all seem to involve the body, since at the same time as these the body is affected in a certain way. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a16) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle was not a physicalist, but this resembles the pilot-in-the-ship passage in Descartes, accepting the very close links. |
| 24056 | The soul (or parts of it) is not separable from the body [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That the soul is not separable from the body - or that certain parts of it are not, if it naturally has parts - is quite clear. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 413a04) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't make him a physicalist. I've seen him described in modern terms as a functionalist, but that makes the mind abstract and the body concrete. Perhaps he is an 'Integrationist' (as Descartes might be in his 'pilot' passage). |
| 24050 | If soul is separate from body, why does it die when the body dies? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the soul is something distinct from the mixture, why then are the being for flesh and for the other parts of the animal destroyed at the same time? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a25) | |
| A reaction: An obvious response to this reasonable question is to say that we see the body die, but not the soul, so the soul doesn't die. The problem is then to find some evidence for the soul's continued existence. |
| 24049 | Thinkers place the soul within the body, but never explain how they are attached [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is another absurdity which follows, …since they attach the soul to a body, and place it in the body, without further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about. …Yet this seems necessary, because this association produces action. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b14) | |
| A reaction: A clear statement of the interaction objection to full substance dualism. Critics say that dualists have to invoke a 'miracle' at this point. |
| 1514 | Early thinkers concentrate on the soul but ignore the body, as if it didn't matter what body received the soul [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Early thinkers try only to describe the soul, but they fail to go into any kind of detail about the body which is to receive the soul, as if it were possible (as it is in the Pythagorean tales) for just any old soul to be clothed in just any old body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b20) | |
| A reaction: Precisely. Anyone who seriously believes that a human mind can be reincarnated in a flea needs their mind examined. Actually they need their brain examined, but that probably wouldn't impress them. I can, of course, imagine moving into a flea. |
| 2683 | Aristotle has a problem fitting his separate reason into the soul, which is said to be the form of the body [Ackrill on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In 'De Anima' Aristotle cannot fit his account of separable reason - which is not the form of a body - into his general theory that the soul is the form of the body. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE]) by J.L. Ackrill - Aristotle on Eudaimonia p.33 | |
| A reaction: A penetrating observation. Possibly the biggest challenge for a modern physicalist is to give a reductive account of 'pure' reason, in terms of brain events or brain functions. |
| 1718 | Does the mind think or pity, or does the whole man do these things? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps it would be better not to say that the soul pities or learns or thinks, but that the man does in virtue of the soul. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408b12) | |
| A reaction: This can be seen as incipient behaviourism in Aristotle's view. It echoes the functionalist view that what matters is not what the mind is, or is made of, but what it does. |
| 13275 | The soul and the body are inseparable, like the imprint in some wax [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We should not enquire whether the soul and the body are one thing, any more than whether the wax and its imprint are, or in general whether the matter of each thing is one with that of which it is the matter. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412b06) | |
| A reaction: This is his hylomorphist view of objects, so that the soul is the 'form' which bestows identity (and power) on the matter of which it is made. This remark is thoroughly physicalist. |
| 1733 | Thinking is not perceiving, but takes the form of imagination and speculation [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Thinking, then, is something other than perceiving, and its two kinds are held to be imagination and supposition. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 427b28) |
| 23307 | Aristotle makes belief a part of reason, but sees desires as separate [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle insists [against Plato] that desires, even rational desires, are a capacity distinct from reason, as is perception. Belief is included within reason. And he sometimes distinguishes steps of reasoning from insight. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 428-432) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Shifting' | |
| A reaction: So the standard picture of desire as permanently in conflict with reason comes from Aristotle. Maybe Plato is right on that one (though he doesn't say much about it). Since objectivity needs knowledge, reason does need belief. |
| 16535 | A concept is a way of thinking of things or kinds, whether or not they exist [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The nearest I can get to a quick definition is to say that a concept is a way of thinking of some thing or kind of things, whether or not a really existent thing or kind of things. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 2) | |
| A reaction: The focus on 'things' seems rather narrow. Are relations things? He makes concepts sound adverbial, so that there is thinking going on, and then we add 'ways' of doing it. Thinking depends on concepts, not concepts on thinking. |
| 16550 | Direct reference doesn't seem to require that thinkers know what it is they are thinking about [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: It may be objected that currently prevailing causal or 'direct' theories of reference precisely deny that a thinker must know what it is the he or she is thinking about in order to be able to think about it. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 7) | |
| A reaction: Lowe says that at least sometimes we have to know that we are thinking about, so this account of reference can't be universally true. My solution is to pull identity and essence apart. You only need identity, not essence, for reference. |
| 24060 | Self-controlled follow understanding, when it is opposed to desires [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Self-controlled people, even when they desire and have an appetite for things, do not do these things for which they have the desire, but instead follow the understanding. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a06) | |
| A reaction: If modern discussions would stop talking of 'weakness of will', and talk instead of 'control' and its lack, the whole issue would become clearer. Akrasia is then seen, for example, as an action of the whole person, not of some defective part. |
| 4376 | Pleasure and pain are perceptions of things as good or bad [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: To experience pleasure or pain is to be active with the perceptive mean in relation to good or bad as such. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 431a10) | |
| A reaction: A bizarre view which is interesting, but strikes me as wrong. We are drawn towards pleasure, but judgement can pull us away again, and 'good' is in the judgement, not in the feeling. |
| 1740 | Nature does nothing in vain [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nature does nothing in vain. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 434a31) |
| 16547 | H2O isn't necessary, because different laws of nature might affect how O and H combine [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: It is not metaphysically necessary that water is composed of H2O molecules, because the natural laws governing the chemical behaviour of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could have been significantly different, so they might not have composed that substance. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: I fear this may be incoherent, as science. See Bird on why salt must dissolve in water. There can't (I suspect) be a law which keeps O and H the same, and yet makes them combine differently. |
| 24045 | Movement is spatial, alteration, withering or growth [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There a four sorts of movement - spatial movement, alteration, withering and growth. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 406a12) | |
| A reaction: Large parts of Aristotle's writings attempt to explain these four. |
| 1738 | Practical reason is based on desire, so desire must be the ultimate producer of movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There seem to be two producers of movement, either desire or practical intellect, but practical reason begins in desire. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a16) |
| 24044 | Movement can be intrinsic (like a ship) or relative (like its sailors) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not necessary for what moves things to be itself moving. For a thing can be moving in two ways - with reference to something else, or intrinsically. A ship is moving intrinsically, but sailors move because they are in something that is moving. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 406a03) | |
| A reaction: I love the way that Aristotle is desperate to explain the puzzle of movement, yet we just take it for granted. Very illuminating about puzzles. Newton's First Law of Motion. |
| 1739 | If all movement is either pushing or pulling, there must be a still point in between where it all starts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every movement being either a push or a pull, there must be a still point as with the circle, and this will be the point of departure for the movement. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433b26) |
| 24064 | If something is pushed, it pushes back [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What has pushed something else makes the latter push as well. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 435b30) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to have spotted that this is intrinsic to massive bodies, and is not just friction etc. Newton adds a vector to Aristotle's insight. |
| 24063 | What is born has growth, a prime, and a withering away [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What has been born must have growth, a prime of life, and a time of withering away. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 434a23) | |
| A reaction: Modern biologists don't seem much interested in the 'prime of life', but for Aristotle it is crucial, as the fulfilment of a thing's essential nature. Nietzsche would probably agree with Aristotle on this. We dread seeing one period of life as 'superior'. |