7 ideas
| 17962 | The truth-maker principle is that every truth has a sufficient truth-maker [Forrest] |
| Full Idea: Item x is said to be a sufficient truth-maker for truth-bearer p just in case necessarily if x exists then p is true. ...Every truth has a sufficient truth-maker. Hence, I take it, the sum of all sufficient truth-makers is a universal truth-maker. | |
| From: Peter Forrest (General Facts,Phys Necessity, and Metaph of Time [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Note that it is not 'necessary', because something else might make p true instead. |
| 12354 | A 'categorial' property is had by virtue of being or having an item from a category [Wedin] |
| Full Idea: A 'categorial' property is a property something has by virtue of being or having an item from one of the categories. | |
| From: Michael V. Wedin (Aristotle's Theory of Substance [2000], V.5) | |
| A reaction: I deny that these are 'properties'. A thing is categorised according to its properties. To denote the category as a further property is the route to madness (well, to a regress). |
| 12358 | Substance is a principle and a kind of cause [Wedin] |
| Full Idea: Substance [ousia] is a principle [arché] and a kind of cause [aitia]. | |
| From: Michael V. Wedin (Aristotle's Theory of Substance [2000], 1041a09) | |
| A reaction: The fact that substance is a cause is also the reason why substance is the ultimate explanation. It is here that I take the word 'power' to capture best what Aristotle has in mind. |
| 12346 | Form explains why some matter is of a certain kind, and that is explanatory bedrock [Wedin] |
| Full Idea: The form of a thing (of a given kind) explains why certain matter constitutes a thing of that kind, and with this, Aristotle holds, we have reached explanatory bedrock. | |
| From: Michael V. Wedin (Aristotle's Theory of Substance [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: We must explain an individual tiger which is unusually docile. It must have an individual form which makes it a tiger, but also an individual form which makes it docile. |
| 16083 | Aristotelian matter seriously threatens the intrinsic unity and substantiality of its object [Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: On the interpretation of Aristotelian matter that I shall propose, matter seriously threatens the intrinsic unity, and hence the substantiality, of the object to which it contributes. | |
| From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the thought is that if an object is form+matter (hylomorphism), then forms are essentially unified, but matter is essentially unified and sloppy. |
| 17006 | Prime matter has no place in Aristotle's theories, and passages claiming it are misread [Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: I argue that prime matter has no place in Aristotle's elemental theory. ..References to prime matter are found in Aristotle's work because his theory was thought to need the doctrine. If I am right, these passages will all admit of another interpretation. | |
| From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], App) | |
| A reaction: If correct, this strikes me as important for the history of ideas, because scholastics got themselves in a right tangle over prime matter. See Pasnau on it. It pushed the 17th century into corpuscularianism. |
| 16093 | Prime matter is actually nothing and potentially everything (or potentially an element) [Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Prime matter is supposed to be actually nothing and potentially everything or, at any rate, potentially the simplest bodies - earth, water, air and fire. | |
| From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: The view that the four elements turn out to be prime matter is distinctive of Gill's approach. Prime matter sounds like quark soup in the early universe. |