Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Summa totius logicae' and 'Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences'

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16 ideas

2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 3. Non-Contradiction
From an impossibility anything follows [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: From an impossibility anything follows ('quod ex impossibili sequitur quodlibet').
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], III.c.xxxvi)
     A reaction: The hallmark of a true logician, I suspect, is that this opinion is really meaningful and important to them. They yearn to follow the logic wherever it leads. Common sense would seem to say that absolutely nothing follows from an impossibility.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth
A proposition is true if its subject and predicate stand for the same thing [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: If in the proposition 'This is an angel' subject and predicate stand for the same thing, the proposition is true.
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], II.c.ii)
     A reaction: An interesting statement of what looks like a correspondence theory, employing the idea that both the subject and the predicate have a reference. I think Frege would say that 'x is an angel' is unsaturated, and so lacks reference.
3. Truth / G. Axiomatic Truth / 1. Axiomatic Truth
Ockham had an early axiomatic account of truth [William of Ockham, by Halbach]
     Full Idea: Theories structurally very similar to axiomatic compositional theories of truth can be found in Ockham's 'Summa Logicae'.
     From: report of William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 3
5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 1. Quantification
The word 'every' only signifies when added to a term such as 'man', referring to all men [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: The syncategorematic word 'every' does not signify any fixed thing, but when added to 'man' it makes the term 'man' stand for all men actually.
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], I.c.iv)
     A reaction: Although quantifiers may have become a part of formal logic with Frege, their importance is seen from Aristotle onwards, and it is clearly a key part of William's understanding of logic.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 5. Numbers as Adjectival
Just as unity is not a property of a single thing, so numbers are not properties of many things [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: Number is nothing but the actual numbered things themselves. Hence just as unity is not an accident added to the thing which is one, so number is not an accident of the things which are numbered.
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], I.c.xliv)
     A reaction: [William does not necessarily agree with this view] It strikes me as a key point here that any account of the numbers had better work for 'one', though 'zero' might be treated differently. Some people seem to think unity is a property of things.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / g. Particular being
The words 'thing' and 'to be' assert the same idea, as a noun and as a verb [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: The words 'thing' and 'to be' (esse) signify one and the same thing, but the one in the manner of a noun and the other in the manner of a verb.
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], III,II,c,xxvii)
     A reaction: Well said - as you would expect from a thoroughgoing nominalist. I would have thought that this was the last word on the subject of Being, thus rendering any need for me to read Heidegger quite superfluous. Or am I missing something?
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 1. Powers
Powers give explanations, without being necessary for some class membership [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: Powers explain behaviours regardless of whether they are necessary for membership in a particular class of things.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 3)
     A reaction: This seems right, and is important for driving a wedge between powers and essences. If there are essences, they are not simply some bunch of powers.
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / b. Nominalism about universals
Universals are single things, and only universal in what they signify [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: Every universal is one particular thing and it is not a universal except in its signification, in its signifying many thing.
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323]), quoted by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'William'
     A reaction: Sounds as if William might have liked tropes. It seems to leave the problem unanswered (the 'ostrich' problem?). How are they able to signify in this universal way, if each thing is just distinct and particular?
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 5. Essence as Kind
A kind essence is the necessary and sufficient properties for membership of a class [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: The modern concept of a kind essence is a set of intrinsic properties that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for the membership of something in a class of things, or 'kind'.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 2)
     A reaction: I am always struck by the problem that the kind itself is constructed from the individuals, so circularity always seems to loom.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier
If essence and existence were two things, one could exist without the other, which is impossible [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: If essence and existence were two things, then no contradiction would be involved if God preserved the essence of a thing in the world without its existence, or vice versa, its existence without its essence; both of which are impossible.
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], III,II,c,xxvii)
     A reaction: Not that William is using the concept of a supreme mind as a tool in argument. His denial of essence as something separable is presumably his denial of the Aristotelian view of universals, as well as of the Platonic view.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Cluster kinds are explained simply by sharing some properties, not by an 'essence' [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: The fact that members of some cluster kinds are subjects of causal generalizations reflects the degree to which they share causally efficacious properties, not the fact that they may be composed of essence kinds per se.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 2)
     A reaction: I think this is right. I am a fan of individual essences, but not of kind essences. I take kinds, and kind explanations, to be straightforward inductive generalisations from individuals. Extreme stabilities give the illusion of a kind essence.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / g. Causal explanations
Explanation of causal phenomena concerns essential kinds - but also lack of them [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: Scientific practices such as prediction and explanation regarding causal phenomena are concerned not merely with kinds having essences, but also with kinds lacking them.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 1)
     A reaction: Not quite clear what he has in mind, but explanation should certainly involve a coherent picture, and not just the citation of some underlying causal mechanism.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 4. Mental Propositions
Some concepts for propositions exist only in the mind, and in no language [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: Conceptual terms and the propositions formed by them are those mental words which do not belong to any language; they remain only in the mind and cannot be uttered exteriorly, though signs subordinated to these can be exteriorly uttered.
     From: William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], I.c.i)
     A reaction: [He cites Augustine] A glimmer of the idea of Mentalese, and is probably an integral part of any commitment to propositions. Quine would hate it, but I like it. Logicians seem to dislike anything that cannot be articulated, but brains are like that.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
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').
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 4. Source of Kinds
Some kinds, such as electrons, have essences, but 'cluster kinds' do not [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: Many of the kinds we theorize about and experiment on today simply do not have essences. We can distinguish 'essence kinds', such as electrons, and 'cluster kinds', such as biological species.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 2)
     A reaction: This is an important point for essentialists. He offers a strict criterion, in Idea 15145, for mind membership, but we might allow species to have essences by just relaxing the criteria a bit, and acknowledging some vagueness, especially over time.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature
Many causal laws do not refer to kinds, but only to properties [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: Causal laws often do not make reference to kinds of objects at all, but rather summarize relations between quantitative, causally efficacious properties of objects.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 3)
     A reaction: This would only be a serious challenge if it was not possible to translate talk of properties into talk of kinds, and vice versa.