9 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. |
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? |
6455 | Maybe 'sense-data' just help us to talk about unusual perceptual situations [Lacey] |
Full Idea: One possibility is that talk of sense-data is a mere linguistic convenience, providing a noun for talking about appearances, as when seeing a red object in sodium light (when it looks grey). | |
From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196) | |
A reaction: The term seems to have been coined to deal with situations where there is a gap between appearance and presumed reality, as in illusions. Maybe illusions prove the existence of sense-data, rather than it being a 'convenient' term. |
6453 | Some claim sense-data are public, and are parts of objects [Lacey] |
Full Idea: Sometimes it is said that sense-data are public, and parts either of objects or of the surfaces of objects. | |
From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196) | |
A reaction: This suggests two drastically different theories, one making sense-data into mental events, the other placing them in the 'external' world. The latter theory can dovetail them with the physics, but then why would we need them? |
6454 | Where do sense-data begin or end? Can they change? What sort of thing are they? [Lacey] |
Full Idea: It is hard to individuate sense-data, saying where one ends and the next begins, and hard to say whether they can change; are they substances, qualities, events, or what? | |
From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196) | |
A reaction: The problem is not that these questions are unanswerable. The answer seems to be either that they are physical and external, or that they are mental and internal, and that there is no ontological space for them between the two. |
7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |