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All the ideas for 'Particulars in Particular Clothing', 'Anti-essentialism' and 'works'

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15 ideas

4. Formal Logic / G. Formal Mereology / 1. Mereology
Abelard's mereology involves privileged and natural divisions, and principal parts [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: Abelard's theory of substantial integral wholes is not a pure mereology in the modern sense, since he holds that there are privileged divisions; ..the division of a whole must be into its principal parts. Some wholes have a natural division.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: This is a mereology that cuts nature at the joints, rather than Lewis's 'unrestricted composition', so I find Abelard rather appealing.
5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 1. Ontology of Logic
Logical space is abstracted from the actual world [Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: Logical space is not given independently of the individuals that occupy it, but is abstracted from the world as we find it.
     From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.85)
     A reaction: I very much like the second half of this idea, and am delighted to find Stalnaker endorsing it. I take the logical connectives to be descriptions of how things behave, at a high level of generality.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / a. Nature of tropes
Internal relations combine some tropes into a nucleus, which bears the non-essential tropes [Simons, by Edwards]
     Full Idea: Simons's 'nuclear' option blends features of the substratum and bundle theories. First we have tropes collected by virtue of their internal relations, forming the essential kernel or nucleus. This nucleus then bears the non-essential tropes.
     From: report of Peter Simons (Particulars in Particular Clothing [1994], p.567) by Douglas Edwards - Properties 3.5
     A reaction: [compression of Edwards's summary] This strikes me as being a remarkably good theory. I am not sure of the ontological status of properties, such that they can (unaided) combine to make part of an object. What binds the non-essentials?
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / b. Nominalism about universals
Abelard was an irrealist about virtually everything apart from concrete individuals [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: Abelard was an irrealist about universals, but also about propositions, events, times other than the present, natural kinds, relations, wholes, absolute space, hylomorphic composites, and the like. The concrete individual is enough to populate the world.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: If a Nominalist claims that 'only particulars exist', this makes him an extreme nominalist, and remarkably materialistic for his time (though he accepted the soul, as well as God).
If 'animal' is wholly present in Socrates and an ass, then 'animal' is rational and irrational [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: Abelard argued that if the universal 'animal' were completely present in both Socrates and an ass, making each wholly an animal, then the same thing, animal, will be simultaneously rational and irrational, with contraries present in the whole thing.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: If we have universals for rationality and irrationality, they can distinguish the two. But we must also say that rationality is not an aspect of animal, which seems to mean that mind isn't either. What is the essence of an animal? Not reason?
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 3. Predicate Nominalism
Only words can be 'predicated of many'; the universality is just in its mode of signifying [Abelard, by Panaccio]
     Full Idea: Abelard concluded that only words can be 'predicated of many'. A universal is nothing but a general linguistic predicate, and its universality depends not on its mode of being, but on its mode of signifying.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter'
     A reaction: Abelard seems to be the originator of what is now called Predicate Nominalism, with Nelson Goodman as his modern representative. If it is just words, is there no fact of two things having the 'same' property?
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 7. Substratum
For the bare particular view, properties must be features, not just groups of objects [Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: If we are to make sense of the bare particular theory, a property must be not just a rule for grouping individuals, but a feature of individuals in virtue of which they may be grouped.
     From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.76)
     A reaction: He is offering an objection to the thoroughly extensional account of properties that is found in standard possible worlds semantics. Quite right too. We can't give up on the common sense notion of a property.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists [Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: If necessity is explained in terms of possible worlds, ...then an essential property is a property that a thing has in all possible worlds in which it exists.
     From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71)
     A reaction: This seems to me to be a quite shocking confusion of necessary properties with essential properties. The point is that utterly trivial properties can be necessary, but in no way part of the real essence of something.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / b. Essence not necessities
Necessarily self-identical, or being what it is, or its world-indexed properties, aren't essential [Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: We can remain anti-essentialist while allowing some necessary properties: those essential to everything (self-identity), relational properties (being what it is), and world-indexed properties (being snub-nosed-only-in-Kronos).
     From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.73)
     A reaction: [a summary] He defined essential properties as necessary properties (Idea 12761), and now backpeddles. World-indexed properties are an invention of Plantinga, as essential properties to don't limit individuals. But they are necessary, not essential!
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Bare particular anti-essentialism makes no sense within modal logic semantics [Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: I argue that one cannot make semantical sense out of bare particular anti-essentialism within the framework of standard semantics for modal logic.
     From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71)
     A reaction: Stalnaker characterises the bare particular view as ANTI-essentialist, because he has defined essence in terms of necessary properties. The bare particular seems to allow the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 4. De re / De dicto modality
The de dicto-de re modality distinction dates back to Abelard [Abelard, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: The de dicto-de re modality distinction dates back to Abelard.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.7
     A reaction: Most modern philosophers couldn't (apparently) care less where a concept originated, but one of the principles of this database is that such things do matter. I'm not sure why, but if we want the whole picture, we need the historical picture.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
Why imagine that Babe Ruth might be a billiard ball; nothing useful could be said about the ball [Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: I cannot think of any point in making the counterfactual supposition that Babe Ruth is a billiard ball; there is nothing I can say about him in that imagined state that I could not just as well say about billiard balls that are not him.
     From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.79)
     A reaction: A bizarrely circumspect semanticists way of saying that Ruth couldn't possibly be a billiard ball! Would he say the same about a group of old men in wheelchairs, one of whom IS Babe Ruth?
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 8. Abstractionism Critique
Abelard's problem is the purely singular aspects of things won't account for abstraction [Panaccio on Abelard]
     Full Idea: Abelard's problem is that it is not clear how singular forms could do the job they are supposed to do - to account for abstraction, namely - if they were purely singular aspects.
     From: comment on Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter'
     A reaction: A very nice question! If we say that abstracta are just acquired by ignoring all but that feature in some objects, how do we identify 'that' feature in order to select it? The instances must share something in common to be abstracted.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
Nothing external can truly be predicated of an object [Abelard, by Panaccio]
     Full Idea: Abelard argued from the commonly accepted definition of a universal as 'what can be predicated of man', that no external thing can ever be predicated of anything.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter'
     A reaction: It sounds to me as if Abelard is confusing predicates with properties! Maybe no external can be a property of anything, but I take predicates to just be part of what you can say about anything, and that had better included external facts.
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 7. Critique of Kinds
Natural kinds are not special; they are just well-defined resemblance collections [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: In Abelard's view a natural kind is a well-defined collection of things that have the same features, so that natural kinds have no special status, being no more than discrete integral wholes whose principle of membership is similarity.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: I take a natural kind to be a completely stable and invariant class of things. Presumably this invariance has an underlying explanation, but Abelard seems to take the Humean line that we cannot penetrate beyond the experienced surface.