21982
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I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L]
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Full Idea:
"I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people."
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From:
Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
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A reaction:
[Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork.
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17555
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'One' can mean undivided and not a multitude, or it can add measurement, giving number [Aquinas]
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Full Idea:
There are two sorts of one. There is the one which is convertible with being, which adds nothing to being except being undivided; and this deprives of multitude. Then there is the principle of number, which to the notion of being adds measurement.
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From:
Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones de Potentia Dei [1269], q3 a16 ad 3-um)
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A reaction:
[From a lecture handout] I'm not sure I understand this. We might say, I suppose, that insofar as water is water, it is all one, but you can't count it. Perhaps being 'unified' and being a 'unity' are different?
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12177
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Human artefacts may have essences, in their purposes [Popper]
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Full Idea:
One might adopt the view that certain things of our own making, such as clocks, may well be said to have 'essences', viz. their 'purposes', and what makes them serve these purposes.
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From:
Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3 n17)
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A reaction:
This is from one of the arch-opponents of essentialism. Could we take him on a slippery slope into essences for evolved creatures, or their organs? His argument says admitting an essence for a clock prevents using it for another purpose.
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12175
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Galilean science aimed at true essences, as the ultimate explanations [Popper]
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Full Idea:
The third of the Galilean doctrines of science is that the best, the truly scientific theories, describe the 'essences' or the 'essential natures' of things - the realities which lie behind the appearances. They are ultimate explanations.
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From:
Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3)
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A reaction:
This seems to be the seventeenth century doctrine which was undermined by Humeanism, and hence despised by Popper, but is now making a comeback, with a new account of essence and necessity.
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