8 ideas
4483 | If abstract terms are sets of tropes, 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' turn out identical [Loux] |
Full Idea: If trope theorists say abstract singular terms name sets of tropes, what is the referent of 'is a unicorn'? The only candidate is the null set (with no members), but there is just one null set, so 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' will be identical. | |
From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.86) | |
A reaction: Not crucial, I would think, given that a unicorn is just a horse with a horn. Hume explains how we do that, combining ideas which arose from actual tropes. |
4481 | Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability [Loux] |
Full Idea: Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability. | |
From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.60) | |
A reaction: Plato's view seems to be that we don't identify universals independently. We ascend The Line, or think about the shadows in The Cave, and infer the universals from an array of particulars (by dialectic). |
4477 | Universals come in hierarchies of generality [Loux] |
Full Idea: Universals come in hierarchies of generality. | |
From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.24) | |
A reaction: If it is possible to state facts about universals, this obviously encourages a rather Platonic approach to them, as existent things with properties. But maybe the hierarchies are conventional, not natural. |
4482 | Austere nominalism has to take a host of things (like being red, or human) as primitive [Loux] |
Full Idea: In return for a one-category ontology (with particulars but no universals), the austere nominalist is forced to take a whole host of things (like being red, or triangular, or human) as unanalysable or primitive. | |
From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.68) | |
A reaction: I see that 'red' might have to be primitive, but being human can just be a collection of particulars. It is no ontologically worse to call them 'primitive' than to say they exist. |
4478 | Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux] |
Full Idea: Nominalists have been very concerned to provide an account of the role of abstract singular terms (such as 'circularity'). | |
From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.34) | |
A reaction: Whether this is a big problem depends on our view of abstraction. If it only consists of selecting one property of an object and reifying it, then we can give a nominalist account of properties, and the problem is solved. |
4480 | Times and places are identified by objects, so cannot be used in a theory of object-identity [Loux] |
Full Idea: Any account of the identity of material objects which turns on the identity of places and times must face the objection that the identity of places and times depends, in turn, on the identities of the objects located at them. | |
From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.56) | |
A reaction: This may be a benign circle, in which we concede that there are two basic interdependent concepts of objects and space-time. If you want to define identity - in terms of what? |
22269 | We must fight fiercely to hang on to the few pleasures which survive into old age [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: I am training and sharpening my appetite for those pleasures that are left. ...We must cling tooth and claw to the use of the pleasures of this life which the advancing years, one after another, rip from our grasp. | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (I.39 On Solitude [1580], p.276) | |
A reaction: That may be one of the most inspiring ideas I have read about pleasure. |
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'). |