138 ideas
| 5082 | Reason grasps generalities, while the senses grasp particulars [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Reason grasps generalities, while the senses grasp particulars. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 189a06) | |
| A reaction: This does not seem to be entirely true. Sherlock Holmes reasons towards the particular. Nevertheless, we see what he means. Reason deals with universals, and reason derives principles and patterns from the particulars. |
| 14227 | We could refer to tables as 'xs that are arranged tablewise' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: We could paraphrase 'some chairs are heavier than some tables' as 'there are xs that are arranged chairwise and there are ys that are arranged tablewise and the xs are heavier than the ys'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 11) | |
| A reaction: Liggins notes that this involves plural quantification. Being 'arranged tablewise' has become a rather notorious locution in modern ontology. We still have to retain identity, to pick out the xs. |
| 13270 | Are a part and whole one or many? Either way, what is the cause? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is a difficulty about part and whole, ...whether the part and the whole are one or more than one, and in what way they can be one or many, and, if they are more than one, in what way they are more than one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 185b11), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.3 | |
| A reaction: He only states the problem here, but doesn't pursue it. I take the real question of mereology to be what makes a many into a one. I don't see a problem with a many being simultaneously a one. |
| 10662 | Mereology is 'nihilistic' (just atoms) or 'universal' (no restrictions on what is 'whole') [Inwagen, by Varzi] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen writes of 'mereological nihilism' (that only mereological atoms exist) and of 'mereological universalism' (adhering to the principle of Unrestricted Composition). | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], p.72-) by Achille Varzi - Mereology 4.3 | |
| A reaction: They both look mereologically nihilistic to me, in comparison with an account that builds on 'natural' wholes and their parts. You can only be 'unrestricted' if you view the 'wholes' in your vast ontology as pretty meaningless (as Lewis does, Idea 10660). |
| 17587 | The 'Law' of Excluded Middle needs all propositions to be definitely true or definitely false [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think the validity of the 'Law' of Excluded Middle depends on the assumption that every proposition is definitely true or definitely false. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this is confused. He cites vagueness as the problem, but that is a problem for Bivalence. If excluded middle is read as 'true or not-true', that leaves the meaning of 'not-true' open, and never mentions the bivalent 'false'. |
| 17558 | Variables are just like pronouns; syntactic explanations get muddled over dummy letters [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Explanations in terms of syntax do not satisfactorily distinguish true variables from dummy or schematic letters. Identifying variables with pronouns, however, provides a genuine explanation of what variables are. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: I like this because it shows that our ordinary thought and speech use variables all the time ('I've forgotten something - what was it?'). He says syntax is fine for maths, but not for ordinary understanding. |
| 17583 | There are no heaps [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Fortunately ....there are no heaps. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: This is the nihilist view of (inorganic) physical objects. If a wild view solves all sorts of problems, one should take it serious. It is why I take reductive physicalism about the mind seriously. (Well, it's true, actually) |
| 9790 | Geometry studies naturally occurring lines, but not as they occur in nature [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Geometry studies naturally occurring lines, but not as they occur in nature. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a09) | |
| A reaction: What a splendid remark. If the only specimen you could find of a very rare animal was maimed, you wouldn't be particularly interested in the nature of its injury, but in the animal. |
| 22962 | Two is the least number, but there is no least magnitude, because it is always divisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The least number, without qualification, is the two. …but in magnitude there is no least number, for every line always gets divided. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 220a27) | |
| A reaction: Showing the geometrical approach of the Greeks to number. Two is the last number because numbers are for counting, and picking out one thing is not counting. |
| 18090 | Without infinity time has limits, magnitudes are indivisible, and numbers come to an end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there is, unqualifiedly, no infinite, it is clear that many impossible things result. For there will be a beginning and an end of time, and magnitudes will not be divisible into magnitudes, and number will not be infinite. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206b09), quoted by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 1.8 | |
| A reaction: This is a commitment to infinite time, and uncountable real numbers, and infinite ordinals. Dedekind cuts are implied. Nice. |
| 22929 | Aristotle's infinity is a property of the counting process, that it has no natural limit [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle infinity is not so much a property of some set of objects - the numbers - as of the process of counting, namely of its not having a natural limit. This is 'potential' infinite | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 06 'Illusion' | |
| A reaction: I increasingly favour this view. Mathematicians have foisted fictional objects on us, such as real infinities, limits and zero, because it makes their job easier, but it makes discussion of the natural world very obscure. |
| 22930 | Lengths do not contain infinite parts; parts are created by acts of division [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says that a length does not already contain, waiting to be discovered, an infinite number of parts; such parts only come into existence once they are defined by an act of division. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 07 'Two' | |
| A reaction: If that is true of infinite parts then it must also be true of finite parts. So a cake has no parts at all until it is cut. That could play merry hell with discussions of mereology. Wholes are ontologically prior to parts. |
| 18833 | A continuous line cannot be composed of indivisible points [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: No continuum can be composed of indivisibles: e.g. a line cannot be composed of points, the line being continuous and the points indivisibles. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 231a23), quoted by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 7.4 | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt observes that ' the basic problem is to say what the ultimate parts of a continuum are, of they are not points'. Early modern philosophers had lots of proposals. |
| 9974 | Ten sheep and ten dogs are the same numerically, but it is not the same ten [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there are ten sheep and ten dogs, the number is the same (because it does not differ by a numerical difference), but it is not the same ten (because the objects it is predicated of are different - dogs in one instance, horses in the other). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 224a2-14) | |
| A reaction: Mega! Abstract objects are unique, and can't be 'added' to themselves. I think we need 'units' here, because 2+2 adds four units, so each 2 refers to something different. '2' must refer to something other than itself. |
| 5105 | The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221b36) | |
| A reaction: This must make Aristotle sympathetic to Platonism in mathematics, even though he rejects the full theory of Forms. Such a view is not uncommon among modern philosophers. Presumably the incommensurability is true in all possible worlds? 'In'? |
| 16115 | Change is the implied actuality of that which exists potentially [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Change is the actuality of that which exists potentially, in so far as it is potentially this actuality. Thus, the actuality of a thing's capacity for alteration, in so far as it is a capacity for alteration, is alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 201a10) | |
| A reaction: Not very informative, until you add Idea 16114, telling us that potentiality is best seen as 'power'. Then we have 'all change is the active expression of powers', which strikes me as rather interesting. |
| 22960 | The sophists thought a man in the Lyceum is different from that man in the marketplace [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The sophists assume that being Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum is different from being Coriscus-in-the-marketplace. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b19) | |
| A reaction: This is what has now been called 'Cambridge change', which is merely change in relations, with no intrinsic change. It is laughed at, but it is a phenomenon worth pointing out, as long as it is not mislabelled, or misunderstood. |
| 17262 | Aristotle's formal and material 'becauses' [aitiai] arguably involve grounding [Aristotle, by Correia/Schnieder] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's distinction between four different kinds of aitia ('becauses'?) arguably involves the recognition of grounding in the formal and material aitia. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24) by Correia,F/Schnieder,B - Grounding: an opinionated introduction 2 | |
| A reaction: Insofar as the other two (efficient and final) involve explanation, one might say that they too involve a different sort of grounding. Is a statue 'grounded' in the sculptor, or in the purpose of the statue? |
| 17578 | I reject talk of 'stuff', and treat it in terms of particles [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I have a great deal of difficulty with an ontology that includes 'stuffs' in addition to things. ...I prefer to replace talk of sameness of matter with talk of sameness of particles. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is wedded to the idea that reality is composed of 'simples' - even if physicists seem now to talk of 'fields' as much as they do about objects in the fields. Has philosophy yet caught up with Maxwell? |
| 17582 | Singular terms can be vague, because they can contain predicates, which can be vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Since singular terms can contain predicates, and since vague predicates are common, vague singular terms are common. For 'the tallest man that Sally knows' there are lots of men for whom it is unclear whether Sally knows them. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) |
| 16656 | The separation from here to there is not the same as the separation from there to here [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Even though two separated things have a single interval between them, still the separation from here to there is not one and the same as the separation from there to here. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 202b19) | |
| A reaction: His example is the road from Athens to Thebes. Since we tend to quantify distances between places more than Aristotle did, we are less impressed by this distinction, which seems a bit subjective. Aristotle seems to be thinking of vectors. |
| 16644 | The features of a thing (whether quality or quantity) are inseparable from their subjects [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to separate [affections/accidents], both in respect of quantity and of quality - of quantity, because there is no minimum magnitude, and of quality, because affections are inseparable. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 188a11) | |
| A reaction: This is an aspect of his famous view that universals, if there are such, are inherent in objects, and can't float free. It was important for scholastic philosophers, who need accidents to float free for the doctrine of Transubstantiation. |
| 5117 | Heavy and light are defined by their tendency to move down or up [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the nature of light and heavy things to tend in certain directions, and this is what it is to be light or heavy; to be light is defined by an upwards tendency, and to be heavy is defined by a downwards tendency. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 255b14) | |
| A reaction: The discredited 'teleological' view of gravity, and yet if we define 'heavy' in Newtonian terms we are in danger of circularity, and of proposing laws which are bafflingly imposed from outside. Hence the 'New Essentialists' prefer Aristotle's view. |
| 17556 | Material objects are in space and time, move, have a surface and mass, and are made of some stuff [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A thing is a material object if it occupies space and endures through time and can move about in space (literally move, unlike a shadow or wave or reflection) and has a surface and has a mass and is made of a certain stuff or stuffs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: It is not at all clear what electrons (which must count for him as 'simples') are made of. |
| 8264 | Maybe table-shaped particles exist, but not tables [Inwagen, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen holds that although table-shaped collections of particles exist, tables do not. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Ch.13) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 2.3 | |
| A reaction: I find this idea appealing. See the ideas of Trenton Merricks. When you get down to micro-level, it is hard to individuate a table among the force fields, and hard to distinguish a table from a smashed or burnt table. An ontology without objects? |
| 17565 | Nihilism says composition between single things is impossible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Nihilism about objects says there is a Y such that the Xs compose it if and only if there is only one of the Xs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 08) | |
| A reaction: He says that Unger, the best known 'nihilist' about objects, believes a different version - claiming there are composites, but they never make up the ordinary objects we talk about. |
| 14228 | If there are no tables, but tables are things arranged tablewise, the denial of tables is a contradiction [Liggins on Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen says 'there are no tables', and 'there are tables' means 'there are some things arranged tablewise'. Presumably 'there are no tables' negates the latter claim, saying no things are arranged tablewise. But he should think that is false. | |
| From: comment on Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction 3 | |
| A reaction: Liggins's nice paper shows that Van Inwagen is in a potential state of contradiction when he starts saying that there are no tables, but that there are things arranged tablewise, and that they amount to tables. Liggins offers him an escape. |
| 14468 | Actions by artefacts and natural bodies are disguised cooperations, so we don't need them [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: All the activities apparently carried out by shelves and stars and other artefacts and natural bodies can be understood as disguised cooperative activities. And, therefore, we are not forced to grant existence to any artefacts or natural bodies. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: In 'the crowd tore her to pieces' are we forced to accept the existence of a crowd? We can't say 'Jack tore her to pieces' and 'Jill tore her to pieces'. If a plural quantification is unavoidable, we have to accept the plurality. Perhaps. |
| 17041 | Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants, and the simple elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants and simple bodies like earth, fire, air, and water. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b09) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, he seems to include lives, and elements, but nothing in between, like planets or stones. |
| 17571 | Every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The thesis about composition and parthood that I am advocating has far-reaching ontological consequences: that every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) | |
| A reaction: A 'simple' is a placeholder for anything considered to be a fundamental unit of existence (such as an electron or a quark). This amazingly sharp distinction strikes me as utterly implausible. There is too much in the middle ground. |
| 16172 | Substance is not predicated of anything - but it still has something underlying it, that originates it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The only thing which is not predicated of some underlying thing is substance, while everything is predicated of it. But the same goes for substances too: there is something underlying them too, which they come from. Plants from seeds, for example. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b01) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I presume 'substance' here is 'ousia'. Aristotle's quest is to pin down 'that which lies under', but this shows that if he identified it, he wouldn't have located what is ultimate. The explanation of a plant extends beyond the plant. |
| 16623 | We only infer underlying natures by analogy, observing bronze of a statue, or wood of a bed [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The underlying nature is an object of knowledge, by an analogy. For as bronze is to a statue, wood to a bed, or matter and the formless before receiving form to any thing which has form, so is the underlying nature of substance, the 'this' or existent. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191a08) | |
| A reaction: Scholastics were perfectly aware of this cautious approach. It is only the critics who jeer at Aristotelians for claiming to know all about the essences of things. Essence is like the Unmoved Mover, inferred but unknown. |
| 16174 | A nature is related to a substance as shapeless matter is to something which has a shape [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What it is to be shapeless is different from what it is to be bronze. …An underlying nature is related to substance as, in general, matter (which is to say, something shapeless), before it gains shape, is to something with shape. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b39-) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting take on the modern problem that the bronze seems to be a separate 'object' from the statue. If bronze is amorphous stuff, it has no shape, presumably because it has no significant shape. |
| 17562 | The statue and lump seem to share parts, but the statue is not part of the lump [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Those who believe that the statue is distinct from the lump should concede that whatever shares a part with the statue shares a part with the lump but deny that the statue is a part of the lump. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 05) | |
| A reaction: Standard mereology says if they share all their parts then they are the same thing, so it is hard to explain how they are 'distinct'. The distinction is only modal - that they could be separated (by squashing, or by part substitution). |
| 17574 | If you knead clay you make an infinite series of objects, but they are rearrangements, not creations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you can make a (random) gollyswoggle by accident by kneading clay, then you must be causing the generation and corruption of a series of objects of infinitesimal duration. ...We have not augmented the furniture of the world but only rearranged it. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen's final conclusion is a bit crazy, but I am in sympathy with his general scepticism about what sorts of things definitively constitute 'objects'. He overrates simples, and he overrates lives. |
| 17043 | Form, not matter, is a thing's nature, because it is actual, rather than potential [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Form is a more plausible candidate for being nature than matter is because we speak of a thing as what it actually is at the time, rather than what it then is potentially. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b07) | |
| A reaction: Note that matter remains potential, even when it is part of an actual thing. This seems to be the obvious point that a statue isn't potentially anything else, but its clay is potentially other objects. Does Aristotle think clay is thereby less real? |
| 16970 | A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In many cases, the last three of the causes [aition] come to the same thing. What a thing is and its purpose are the same, and the original source of change is, in terms of form, the same as these two. After all, it is a man who generates a man. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24) | |
| A reaction: One of the few illuminating remarks about what the 'form' in hylomorphism is supposed to do. This may be the key to virtue ethics - that the form of man, which we learn elsewhere is the psuché, is also man's drive and man's very purpose. |
| 16104 | Unity of the form is just unity of the definition [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Being one in form is just another way of saying one 'in definition'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190a16) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be highly significant in understanding Aristotle. The crucial notion of form is tied to the way in which we understand the world, and does not refer to some independent fact about how it might really be. |
| 11255 | In feature-generation the matter (such as bronze) endures, but in generation it doesn't [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: There is a fundamental distinction between feature-change and generation. ..Materials such as bronze cannot by themselves explain why they are the particular material things they are. But matter which generates things does not endure. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: This very nice distinction is rather undermined by our modern understanding of generation, but it still might work at a lower level. Transmuting an element by bombarding it is different from reshaping the stuff. |
| 17531 | I assume matter is particulate, made up of 'simples' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I assume in this book that matter is ultimately particulate. Every material being is composed of things that have no proper parts: 'elementary particles' or 'mereological atoms' or 'metaphysical simples'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Pref) | |
| A reaction: It may be that modern physics doesn't support this, if 'fields' is the best term for what is fundamental. Best to treat his book as hypothetical - IF there are just simples, proceed as follows. |
| 17560 | If contact causes composition, do two colliding balls briefly make one object? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, if I cause the cue ball to rebound from the eight ball, do I thereby create a short-lived object shaped like two slightly flattened spheres in contact? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 03) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 17561 | If bricks compose a house, that is at least one thing, but it might be many things [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, that tells us that the bricks of a house compose at least one thing; it does not tell us that they also compose at most one thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 04) |
| 17566 | I think parthood involves causation, and not just a reasonably stable spatial relationship [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I propose that parthood essentially involves causation. Too many philosophers have supposed that objects compose something when and only when they stand in some (more or less stable) spatial relationship to one another. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: I have to say that I like this, even though it comes from a thinker who is close to nihilism about ordinary non-living objects. He goes on to say that only a 'life' provides the right sort of causal relationship. |
| 14230 | We can deny whole objects but accept parts, by referring to them as plurals within things [Inwagen, by Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen's claim that nothing has parts causes incredulity. ..But the problem is not with endorsing the sentence 'Some things have parts'; it is with interpreting this sentence by means of singular resources rather than plural ones. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 7) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen notoriously denies the existence of normal physical objects. Liggins shows that modern formal plural quantification gives a better way of presenting his theory, by accepting tables and parts of tables as plurals of basic entities. |
| 16791 | There is no whole except for the parts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is no whole over and above the parts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 210a16) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau says Aristotle contradicts this at Met. 1041b12, where the syllable is more than its elements. |
| 17557 | Special Composition Question: when is a thing part of something? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The Special Composition Question asks, In what circumstances is a thing a (proper) part of something? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: [He qualifies this formulation as 'misleading'] It's a really nice basic question for the metaphysics of objects. |
| 9071 | We first sense whole entities, and then move to particular parts of it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We have to progress from the general to the particular, because whole entities are more intelligible to the senses, and anything general is a kind of whole, in the sense that it includes a number of things which we could call its parts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a22) | |
| A reaction: This is the first step in the process of abstraction, which Aristotle describes further in Posterior Analytics. It is common sense that a child will be aware of a horse before it is aware of its hoof, or its colour, or its strength. |
| 16972 | The four explanations are the main aspects of a thing's nature [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle sees as the main types of aitia (explanation) those that are also to be construed as the main aspects of the physis (nature) of anything. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this suggests that having rejected the Four Causes in favour of the Four Explanations, we might even consider them as the Four Natures, which ties explanation very closely to essence. |
| 5084 | A thing's nature is what causes its changes and stability [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of a thing is a certain principle and cause of change and stability in the thing. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b20) | |
| A reaction: A helpful contribution to the discussion, as most thinkers just boggle when asked to specify the core of something's identity. Aristotle's proposal links identity to causation, which is very appealing to a physical account of all of reality. Cf 5086. |
| 17564 | The essence of a star includes the released binding energy which keeps it from collapse [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think it is part of the essence of a star that the radiation pressures that oppose the star's tendency to gravitational collapse has its source in the release of no-longer-needed nuclear binding energy when colliding nuclei fuse in the star's hot core. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: A perfect example of giving the essence of something as the bottom level of its explanation. This even comes from someone who doesn't really believe in stars! |
| 17575 | The persistence of artifacts always covertly involves intelligent beings [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Statements that are apparently about the persistence of artifacts make covert reference to the dispositions of intelligent beings to maintain certain arrangements of matter. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: If you build a self-sustaining windmill that pumps water, that seems to have an identity of its own, apart from the intentions of whoever makes it and repairs it. The function of an artefact is not just the function we want it to have. |
| 16173 | Coming to be is by shape-change, addition, subtraction, composition or alteration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things that come to be without further qualification do so either by change of shape (a statue) or by addition (growing things) or by subtraction (a carving) or by composition (a house) or by alteration (things changing their matter). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Aristotle observes that in each case there is clearly some 'underlying thing'. |
| 17042 | Natural things are their own source of stability through change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The obvious difference between natural and non-natural things is that each of the natural ones contains within itself a source of change and of stability, in respect of either movement or increase and decrease or alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b14) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Aristotle places so much emphasis on lives, though elements also have persistence in a similar way. We now have atoms and molecules as well. |
| 16691 | A day, or the games, has one thing after another, actually and potentially occurring [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When we say 'it is day' or 'it is the games', one thing after another is always coming into existence. …There are Olympic Games, both in the sense that they may occur and that they are actually occurring. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206a22) | |
| A reaction: This is, according the Pasnau, the origin of the scholastic concept of an 'entia successiva'. I haven't seen much discussion of this in modern metaphysics, but in what sense does a day exist? |
| 17577 | When an electron 'leaps' to another orbit, is the new one the same electron? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Is the 'new' electron in the lower orbit the one that was in the higher orbit? Physics, as far as I can tell, has nothing to say about this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that physicists would say that philosophers are worrying about such questions because they haven't grasped the new conceptual scheme that emerged in 1926. The poor mutts insist on hanging on to 'objects'. |
| 17589 | If you reject transitivity of vague identity, there is no Ship of Theseus problem [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you have rejected the Principle of the Transitivity of (vague) Identity, it is hard to see how the problem of the Ship of Theseus could arise. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this may well be the best solution to the whole problem |
| 16574 | Coming-to-be may be from nothing in a qualified way, as arising from an absence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We agree that nothing can be said without qualification to come from what is not, …but it may in a qualified sense. For a thing comes to be from a privation, which in its own nature is not-being - this not surviving as a constituent in the result. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191b13) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems to say that genuine creation from nothing at all is impossible. |
| 17588 | We should talk of the transitivity of 'identity', and of 'definite identity' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: In some contexts, the principle of 'the transitivity of identity' should be called 'the transitivity of definite identity'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: He is making room for a person to retain identity despite having changed. Applause from me. |
| 11254 | Matter is potentiality [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle conceives of matter (hulé) as potentiality. ...He has a process-based notion of matter. ...It is something which has the power ('dunamis') to generate a thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis says that 'dunamis' is usually translated as 'potentiality', but he prefers to translate it as 'power'. I take this to be highly significant in connecting Aristotle to modern scientific essentialism. |
| 13110 | Intrinsic cause is prior to coincidence, so nature and intelligence are primary causes, chance secondary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A cause in its own right is prior to a coincidental cause. So spontaneity and chance are posterior to intelligence and nature. Hence however much spontaneity is the cause of the universe, intelligence and nature are more primary causes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Aristotle's final word on chance - that it is a genuine sort of causation, but only a secondary one. I take 'nature' to refer to the powers of essences. Aristotle does not accept meetings in the market as uncaused events. |
| 13108 | Chance is a coincidental cause among events involving purpose and choice [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Clearly chance is a coincidental cause in the sphere of events which have some purpose and are the subject of choice. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 197a05) | |
| A reaction: This is the culmination of his discussion of going to the market place and happening to meet your debtor (196b33). We must now decide whether a 'coincidental cause' is a true case of causation. |
| 13106 | Maybe there is no pure chance; a man's choices cause his chance meetings [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some people find there is no such thing as a chance event. ..If someone chanced to come into the city square and met someone he wanted to meet but had not expected, they say the cause was his wanting to go and do business in the square. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 195b39) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle spends the book discussing the problem. There is a clear candidate for an uncaused event here, in the chance meeting of two people. See Idea 13108. |
| 17572 | Actuality proves possibility, but that doesn't explain how it is possible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A proof of actuality is a proof of possibility, but that does not invariably explain the possibility whose existence it demonstrates, for we may know that a certain thing is actual (and hence possible) but have no explanation of how it could be possible. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because my project is to see all of philosophy in terms of explanation rather than of description. |
| 17579 | Counterparts reduce counterfactual identity to problems about similarity relations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Counterpart Theory essentially reduces all problems about counterfactual identity to problems about choosing appropriate similarity relations. That is, Counterpart Theory essentially eliminates problems of counterfactual identity as such. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) |
| 17590 | A merely possible object clearly isn't there, so that is a defective notion [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a merely possible object is an even more defective notion than the notion of a borderline object; after all, a merely possible object is an object that definitely isn't there. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 17591 | Merely possible objects must be consistent properties, or haecceities [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Talk of merely possible objects may be redeemed in either maximally consistent sets of properties or in haecceities. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 8331 | To know something we need understanding, which is grasp of the primary cause [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The point of our investigation is to acquire knowledge, and a prerequisite for knowing [eidenai] anything is understanding why it is as it is - in other words, grasping its primary cause. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b18) | |
| A reaction: He then proceeds to identify four types of cause (Idea 8332). I can't think of a better account of knowledge. If we want to know that cigarettes cause cancer, we must get beyond the statistical correlation, and grasp the physical mechanisms. |
| 5080 | We know a thing if we grasp its first causes, principles and basic elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We think we know a thing only when we have grasped its first causes and principles and have traced it back to its elements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a12) | |
| A reaction: A nice Aristotelian analysis. It is hard to see what else you need to know about a thunderstorm, once you know what causes it, the principles which guide its operation, and the elements of which it is composed. But doesn't Aristotle seek its purpose…? |
| 11250 | Four Explanations: the essence and form; the matter; the source; and the end [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle gives us four explanations (or causes) of things: the essence (to ti estin, to ti en einai) and the form (he morphe, to eidos); the matter (hule); the source of change and generation (to kinoun); and the end (telos) at which change is directed. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis presents these as primarily the Four Explanations, rather than under the better-known label of the 'Four Causes'. It is interesting that essence and form are lumped in together, under what is normally labelled the 'formal cause'. |
| 12045 | Aristotle's four 'causes' are four items which figure in basic explanations of nature [Aristotle, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: The four so-called 'causes' are the different types of item which figure in what Aristotle thinks are the four fundamental types of explanation of nature. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This interpretation now seems to be standard among modern scholars. The word 'aitia' translates as 'explanation', but it is important to remember that it also translates as 'cause'. Aristotelian explanations are essentially causal. |
| 16969 | Science refers the question Why? to four causes/explanations: matter, form, source, purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the natural scientist refers the question 'Why?' to this set of four causes [aition] - matter, form, source of change, purpose - he will be explaining things in the way a natural scientist should. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a23) | |
| A reaction: This is even more conclusive than Idea 16968 in showing that we have the Four Modes of Explanation, not the so-called Four Causes. |
| 16968 | There are as many causes/explanations as there are different types of why-question [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are causes [aition] and there are as many of them as we have been saying, since there are just as many different kinds of question covered by the question 'Why?'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a16) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to split the questions into 'what is it?' and 'what initiated the change?'. This, along with Idea 16969, is Exhibit A for saying Aristotle has the Four Explanations, not the Four Causes (which are so famous). |
| 13109 | Chance is inexplicable, because we can only explain what happens always or usually [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Chance is inexplicable, because explanations can only be given for things that happen either always or usually, but the province of chance is things which do not happen always or usually. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 197a19) | |
| A reaction: This seems wrong. We can explain perfectly well a chance meeting in the market place - it is just that the explanation is not of much use in making future predictions. But we may avoid the market place because of the danger of chance meetings. |
| 9789 | You can't abstract natural properties to make Forms - objects and attributes are defined together [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Those who say there are Forms abstract natural properties, even though they are less separable than mathematical properties. This is clear if you try to define both the objects themselves and their attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b36) | |
| A reaction: (Compare Idea 9788) This is Frege's black and white cats, where you cannot abstract the black without thinking of the cat, but Aristotle thinks mathematical abstraction is more feasible. |
| 9788 | Mathematicians study what is conceptually separable, and doesn't lead to error [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Mathematicians abstract properties which are conceptually separable from the world of change. It makes no difference if you treat them as separate, in the sense that it does not result in error. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b33) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a crucial point to make against Frege (if Aristotle is right). Frege hates abstractionism precisely because it is psychological, and hence admits subjective error, instead of objective truth. Does 'pure' abstraction avoid error? |
| 5107 | Predicates are substance, quality, place, relation, quantity and action or affection [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The categories of predication are substance, quality, place, relation, quantity and action or affection. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 225b06) | |
| A reaction: A note says this omits time from the 'familiar list' of eight predicates. |
| 20042 | We assign the cause of someone's walking when we say why they are doing it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is he going for a walk? We say 'to be healthy', and having said that we have assigned the cause. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b33-5) | |
| A reaction: Stout gives this as the predecessor of Anscombe's account of intentions. The thought is that the explanation of the act is its purpose. Such teleology is more plausible than the Aristotelian teleology about non-human events. |
| 18678 | Maybe final value rests on the extrinsic property of being valued by a rational agent [Korsgaard, by Orsi] |
| Full Idea: Korsgaard argues for the ultimate dependence of final value on the extrinsic property of being valued by a rational agent. | |
| From: report of Christine M. Korsgaard (Creating the Kingdom of Ends [1992]) by Francesco Orsi - Value Theory 2.3 n4 | |
| A reaction: This hyper-Kantian view doesn't strike me as very plausible. Not philosophical theory which entirely cuts animals out of the story has much appeal for me. |
| 5110 | Goodness is when a thing (such as a circle) is complete, and conforms with its nature [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Goodness is a kind of completion: it is when something becomes as good as it may be that we say that it is complete, because that is when it pre-eminently conforms with its nature. A circle is complete when it is as good a circle as there could be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 246a12) | |
| A reaction: This, in turn, is said by Aristotle to result from the telos (purpose) of the thing. This won't eliminate the problem of relativism, unless we say that something cannot have an evil 'nature'. Was the Black Death good, by this definition? |
| 5111 | All moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasure and pain [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasure and pain. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 247a08) | |
| A reaction: Not to be misunderstood. The 'intellectual virtues' are different, for one thing. And he is not implying hedonism, but that moral virtue concerns our judgements and habits in relation to pleasure and pain. What do we count as acceptable pleasures? |
| 5092 | Nature is a principle of change, so we must understand change first [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nature is the subject of our enquiry, and nature is a principle of change, so if we do not understand the process of change, we will not understand nature either. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 200b12) | |
| A reaction: This is a very distinctively Greek attitude which doesn't seem to concern us much, but perhaps it should. Movement is just as fundamental as forces, particles and the rest that physicist talk about. Why do particles respond to forces? |
| 5085 | 'Nature' refers to two things - form and matter [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: 'Nature' refers to two things - that is, both to form and to matter. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a12) | |
| A reaction: The 'New Essentialism' (e.g. book by Brian Ellis) seems to imply that matter is basic, and that form is the result of the essence of matter. They seem to have parted company with Aristotle. Does he think matter is created on Thursday, and form on Friday? |
| 5113 | Nothing natural is disorderly, because nature is responsible for all order [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nothing natural - nothing due to nature - is disorderly, because in all things nature is responsible for order. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 252a11) | |
| A reaction: This sounds dangerously tautological. What is responsible for disorder? If a forest is smashed up by an earthquake, 'order' doesn't sound like a good description of the result. It is certainly no more orderly than if people smash the forest. |
| 5089 | Nature has purpose, and aims at what is better. Is it coincidence that crops grow when it rains? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is wrong with the idea that nature does not act purposively, and does not do things because they are better? The proper analogy is the idea that it is sheer coincidence that the crops grow when it rains. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198b16) | |
| A reaction: In this context, it simply never occurred to Aristotle to give a causal explanation instead of a purposive one. Or that he had got it the wrong way round - growth of crops is 'for the better' only because we eat them, but are we 'for the better'? |
| 5091 | Teeth and crops are predictable, so they cannot be mere chance, but must have a purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things such as teeth and crops turn out as they do either always or usually, whereas no chance or spontaneous event does. ..So, given that these things cannot be accidents or spontaneous events, they must have some purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 199b33) | |
| A reaction: This is a good argument, and Darwin's theory does not destroy it. We have no idea why there is order, regularity and pattern in nature. Aristotle does not leap to a divine explanation. The 'purpose' of things might be non-conscious. |
| 5087 | A thing's purpose is ambiguous, and from one point of view we ourselves are ends [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: From one point of view we too are ends. What a thing is for is ambiguous. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a35) | |
| A reaction: A really interesting concession from the great teleologist. This opens up what I think of as the 'existentialist' possibility - that we can invent our own purposes. If there are two types of 'telos', which one matters for morality? |
| 5086 | The nature of a thing is its end and purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of a thing is its end and purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a29) | |
| A reaction: Cf 5084. This is the teleologists' manifesto, but it is very hard to find out why Aristotle took this view. He seems to offer it as self-evident. What would he have made of the proposal that there is no ultimate purpose to anything? |
| 5108 | Is ceasing-to-be unnatural if it happens by force, and natural otherwise? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If what happens by force is unnatural, then forced ceasing-to-be is unnatural, and is opposed to natural ceasing to be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 230a29) | |
| A reaction: This is an important matter for Aristotle, who needs a concept of 'unnatural' behaviour for his ethics. Our law enshrines the idea of 'death by natural causes'. But 'force' needs discussion. Why is a hitman unnatural, and lightning natural? |
| 5093 | Continuity depends on infinity, because the continuous is infinitely divisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In defining continuity one is almost bound to rely on the notion of infinity; it is because the continuous is what is infinitely divisible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 200b18) | |
| A reaction: Parmenides and the Achilles Paradox lie behind this view, and the fact that Aristotle was opposed to the view that some things are indivisible ('atomism'). Nice point, though - that space and time immediately imply the infinite. |
| 5095 | The heavens seem to be infinite, because we cannot imagine their end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The region beyond the heavens seems to be infinite because it does not give out in our thoughts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 203b25) | |
| A reaction: An interesting case of inconceivability (of a limit) implying impossibility. But it is undeniable that the outer limit of the cosmos is unimaginable for us. Is there a 'Road Closed' sign? |
| 16762 | Matter desires form, as female desires male, and ugliness desires beauty [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What desires the form is matter, as the female the male, and the ugly the beautiful. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192a22) | |
| A reaction: Wow! This is a very active view of matter. The drive in nature (the 'conatus' in Spinoza) can be discerned in all sorts of levels. It is Nietzsche's will to power. It seems to be the opposite of entropy. |
| 17464 | When Aristotle's elements compound they are stable, so why would they ever separate? [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to understand what would induce a compound to dissociate into its elements on Aristotle's theory, which seems entirely geared to showing how a stable equilibrium results from mixing. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Weisberg/Needham/Hendry - Philosophy of Chemistry 1.1 |
| 11252 | The 'form' of a thing explains why the matter constitutes that particular thing [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: By the form of a thing, such as a changing human being, Aristotle means that which explains why the matter of this particular thing constitutes the thing that it constitutes: a particular human being. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: If Politis is right then clearly the so-called 'formal cause' is much better understood as the 'formal explanation'. The Greek word for cause/explanation is 'aitia'. |
| 11253 | A 'material' cause/explanation is the form of whatever is the source [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: In the 'material cause/explanation', it is especially important to emphasise Aristotle's view that it is not simply the parent that generates the offspring, but the form of the parent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 |
| 13107 | Causes produce a few things in their own right, and innumerable things coincidentally [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A cause may be a cause either in its own right or coincidentally. The cause in its own right of a house is house-building ability, but a house may coincidentally be caused by something pale or educated. ..There could be infinite coincidental causes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 196b25) | |
| A reaction: If we seriously want to identify THE cause of an event, this distinction seems useful, even though a cause 'in its own right' is a rather loose locution. It leads on to analyses of necessary and sufficient conditions. |
| 8332 | The four causes are the material, the form, the source, and the end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The first type of cause is that from which a thing is made (bronze of a statue); the second type is the form or pattern (ratio 2:1 for the octave); the third is the source (the deviser of a plan); the fourth type is the end (as health causes walking). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b23-) | |
| A reaction: [Compressed quotation] These four became known as the Material Cause, the Formal Cause, the Efficient Cause, and the Final Cause. For a statue they are the bronze, the shape, the sculptor, and the beauty. We now focus on the Efficient Cause. |
| 9787 | Scientists must know the essential attributes of the things they study [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It would be strange for a natural scientist to know what the sun and the moon are, but to be completely ignorant about their necessary attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b27) | |
| A reaction: This nicely captures the common sense idea of essentialism - that we must know the essential features of things, and ignore the incidental ones (like sunspots, or phases of the moon). |
| 5114 | If movement can arise within an animal, why can't it also arise in the universe? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Movement can arise within a motionless animal out of the object itself, rather than being due to some external agent. But why should this not also be true of the universe? | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 252b24) | |
| A reaction: A nice objection to the Unmoved Mover concept of God. Unfortunately it is ruined by the modern realisation that an animal is never 'motionless', because brain activity is continuous, and ceases only with death. |
| 5116 | When there is unnatural movement (e.g. fire going downwards) the cause is obvious [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Examples of unnatural movements are something earthy moving upwards and fire moving downwards. …When they are moved unnaturally it is obvious what they are moved by, but this is not obvious in the case of their natural movements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 254b21) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle always struggles when he tries to give an account of 'unnatural' events. It is hard to see how it is unnatural when a wind blows a flame down, or volcanoes blow earth up. There is hardly a natural distinction of causes which are 'obvious'. |
| 20063 | Motion fulfils potentiality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Motion is the fulfilment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 201a10-11), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Two' | |
| A reaction: We might put that as 'all motion is the fulfilment of a natural power'. But that gives the source of motion, and not its intrinsic nature. |
| 17563 | The strong force pulls, but also pushes apart if nucleons get too close together [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The strong force doesn't always pull nucleons together, but pushes them apart if they get too close. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: Philosophers tend to learn their physics from other philosophers. But that's because philosophers are brilliant at picking out the interesting parts of physics, and skipping the boring stuff. |
| 5099 | The universe as a whole is not anywhere [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The universe as a whole is not anywhere. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 212b14) | |
| A reaction: This is what we pay philosophers for! Point out all the things which are staring us in the face, but we have never actually noticed. 'Everything that exists must have a location'? Can this truism really be false? |
| 5097 | If everything has a place, this causes an infinite regress, because each place must have place [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If place is an existing thing, then it will exist somewhere. For Zeno's puzzle needs explaining: if every existing thing is in place, an infinite regress occurs, because there will clearly have to be a place for place. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 209a23) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the basic dilemma with space. If it exists independently, it requires a location, but if it doesn't exist, how can anything have a location? Neither Newton, Leibniz nor Einstein seem to have solved the dilemma. |
| 5098 | Place is not shape, or matter, or extension between limits; it is the limits of a body [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Place must be one of four things: shape, or matter, or some kind of extension between the limits of the container, or the limits themselves. …The first three can evidently be ruled out…so it must be the limit of the containing body. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 211b06) | |
| A reaction: As it stands this doesn't have much intuitive appeal. It is rather difficult to define a 'limit' without making some reference to 'space' and 'place'. One must read this chunk of Aristotle to see his drift. |
| 20920 | If there were many cosmoses, each would have its own time, giving many times [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there were a plurality of heavens, in the same way the movement of each of them would be a time, so that many times would coexist. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b3) | |
| A reaction: I take it that for Aristotle this is an absurdity, but for a modern cosmologist this is a real possibility. So which one is fastest? Can God rank them according to speed? |
| 22967 | It is unclear whether time depends on the existence of soul [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One might find it a difficult question, whether if there were no soul there would be time or not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223a22) | |
| A reaction: If only we could arrange a meeting with Kant. Personally I take it to be simple - obviously time passed before minds emerged in the universe. Our whole modern account of reality realies on it. His problem is that only souls count things. |
| 5106 | Would there be time if there were no mind? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It might be wondered whether or not there would be time if there were not mind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223a21) | |
| A reaction: I like his caution. Some people leap to the conclusion that time is a product of mind. Personally (with my strongly realist tendencies) I don't believe it. |
| 22885 | For Aristotle time is not a process but a means for measuring processes [Aristotle, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle time is not a process: It is a kind of 'number' or unit that can be used to describe processes in nature, analagous to the way ordinary numbers can be used to count things. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Aristotle's' | |
| A reaction: Bardon cites this when discussing Aristotle on Zeno's paradoxes. If the equivalent idea of length is that length is merely rulers for measuring it, this sounds like a bad idea. But if processes occur in time, how could time be a process? |
| 8590 | Time does not exist without change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time does not exist without change. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b32) | |
| A reaction: His reasons are epistemological, and are nicely attacked by Shoemaker, in 'Time without Change'. There is something intuitively wrong about Aristotle's claim. If reality freezes, then 'how long was it frozen?' is a quite reasonable question. |
| 5104 | Time is an aspect of change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is not change, but it is an aspect of change. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219a09) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of a better definition of time. Intuition says that time could continue when all change stopped (the 'frozen worlds' thought experiment), so that we can distinguish time from the change that gave rise to it (or the idea of it). |
| 22965 | Time measures rest, as well as change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Since time is the measure of change, it will be measure of rest also. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221b07) | |
| A reaction: The thought seems to be that change leads us to a system of temporal measurement, which is then available fro measurement periods of rest. But totally eventless time would be a problem. Aristotle had no clocks. |
| 22959 | Time is not change, but the number we associate with change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is a number of change in respect of the before and after. So time is not change but in the way in which change has a number. We discern the greater and the less by number, and greater and less change by time. Hence time is a kind of number. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b01) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle's firmest assertion of the nature of time. It seems to be false to say that we need number in order to discern size (e.g. seeing who was given the biggest slice of cake). Surely we discern time before we measure it? |
| 22964 | Change only exists in time through its being temporally measure [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time measures at once the change and the being of change, and this is what it is, for the change, to be in time, viz. its being's being measured. …This is what it is to be in time: their being's being measured by time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221a05) | |
| A reaction: Among other things, this would presumably mean that animals are unaware of change, which seems unlikely. He may have a relaxed and intuitive (rather than precise) concept of 'measured'. |
| 22956 | How can time exist, when it is composed of what has ceased to be and is yet to be? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some of time has been and is not, some of it is to be and is not yet. …But it would seem to be impossible that what is composed of things that are not should participate in being. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 217b33) | |
| A reaction: This is his opening remark in the discussion of time, and he seems to be endorsing it, since he thinks of time as a form of measurement of change. |
| 5102 | If all of time has either ceased to exist, or has not yet happened, maybe time does not exist [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some suspicion arises that time does not exist, since some of it has happened and does not exist, and some of it is in the future and does not yet exist. It appears impossible for anything that consists of things that do not exist to exist itself. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 217b34) | |
| A reaction: This generates the popular paradox that Socrates cannot die, because no moment exists when his death could occur. It may be (as David Marshall has pointed out) that we do not experience the present, but only a vivid memory of the immediate past. |
| 5103 | Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is not change … but time is not without change, for without any change (or any noticeable change) in our minds, time does not seem to pass. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b19) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle has spotted what seems to be a key problem in understanding time, which is disentangling what occurs in nature from what occurs in our consciousness. The extreme views (naïve realism about time, or the view that it is imaginary) both seem wrong. |
| 22961 | The present moment is obviously a necessary feature of time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is manifest that if time were not, the now would not be either, and if the now were not, time would not be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b33) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be Aristotle's commitment to the A-series view, which needs a moving present moment. Despite Einstein and B-series eternalism, I remain in agreement with Aristotle. B-series fans struggle like theologians to explain 'now'. |
| 22916 | Unlike time, change goes at different rates, and is usually localised [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says time could not be the same thing as change, for first change can go at different rates, but not so time, and secondly change is confined to a part of space whereas time is universal. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b11-) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 02 'As Change' | |
| A reaction: The observation that the speed of change varies seems to need a belief in uniform time. Le Poidevin doubts Aristotle's objections, because the theory concerns change in general, and not particular instances of it. |
| 16693 | Time has parts, but the now is not one of them, and time is not composed of nows [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time has parts, some of which have been, others of which are going to be, but no part of it is. The now is not a part, because a part is a measure of the whole, which must be composed of parts. Time, however, does not seem to be composed of nows. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a05), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.1 | |
| A reaction: As good an expression as you will ever find of the baffling nature of time. Only the past and the future seem substantial enough to exist. Only the now can be real, and yet it seems to be a nothing. In Phys IV.14 time is mind-dependent. |
| 22958 | Nows can't be linked together, any more than points on a line [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We take it that it is impossible for the nows to be adjoining one another, as it is for a point to be adjoining a point. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a18) | |
| A reaction: This implies that instants are abstractions, rather than physical realities. Aristotle rejects atoms, so presumably sees prime matter as the underlying uniter of matter. Insistence on linking the smallest parts leads to modern physics. |
| 22968 | Circular motion is the most obvious measure of time, and especially the celestial sphere [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Uniform circular motion is most of all a measure, because the number of this is most easily known. …This is why time is thought to be the motion of the [celestial] sphere, because the other changes are measured by this one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223b14) | |
| A reaction: This makes the year the basic unit of time for the human race. Apparently minutes only became of interest when railway timetables appeared in the 1850s. |
| 22963 | We measure change by time, and time by change, as they are interdefined [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Not only do we measure change by time, but time by change also, because they are defined by one another. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 220b14) | |
| A reaction: He defends the idea that time is the 'number' of change, but this idea should sound a warning bell. He rejects the idea that time IS change. It is seems instrumentalist to make the existence of time depend on its measurement. |
| 22957 | We can't tell whether the changing present moment is one thing, or a succession of things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to see whether the now, which appears to be the boundary between past and future, remains always one and the same or is different from time to time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a08) | |
| A reaction: [also 219b13] Presumably the A-series view suggests that each present moment is different, but Broad's moving spotlight analogy gives the impression of a single present instant moving through time. If the present is one, what sort of thing is it? |
| 22966 | The present moment is a link (of past to future), and also a limit (of past and of future) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The now is a link of time, for it links together past and future time, and is a limit of time, since it is a beginning of one and an end of the other. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 222a10) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear how a limit (such as the boundary between two overlapping bits of paper) can also be a 'link'. He noticed the problem in Idea 22958. |
| 5083 | Do things come to be from what is, or from what is not? Both seem problematical. [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Early thinkers made the mistake of claiming that nothing comes to be or ceases to be, on the grounds that for anything to come to be it would have to come either from what is or from what is not, but that neither of these is possible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191a27) | |
| A reaction: Nothing in modern physics has (I think) solved this problem. On the one hand we have the conservation of energy, and on the other the Big Bang. Some talk of 'quantum fluctuations' triggering coming-to-be. Hm. |
| 17559 | Is one atom a piece of gold, or is a sizable group of atoms required? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A physicist once told me that of course a gold atom was a piece of gold, and a physical chemist has assured me that the smallest possible piece of gold would have to be composed of sixteen or seventeen atoms. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: The issue is at what point all the properties that we normally begin to associate with gold begin to appear. One water molecule can hardly have a degree of viscosity or liquidity. |
| 17586 | At the lower level, life trails off into mere molecular interaction [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The lives of the lower links of the Great Chain of Being trail off into vague, temporary episodes of molecular interaction. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: His case involves conceding all sorts of vagueness to life, but asserting the utter distinctness of the full blown cases of more elaborate life. I don't really concede the distinction. |
| 17568 | A tumour may spread a sort of life, but it is not a life, or an organism [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A tumour is not an organism (or a parasite) and there is no self-regulating event that is its life. It does not fill one space, but is a locus within which a certain sort of thing is happening: the spreading of a certain sort of (mass-term) life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17581 | Being part of an organism's life is a matter of degree, and vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Being caught up in the life of an organism is, like being rich or being tall, a matter of degree, and is in that sense a vague condition. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is trying to cover himself, given that he makes a sharp distinction between living organisms, which are unified objects, and everything else, which isn't. There may be a vague centre to a 'life', as well as vague boundaries. |
| 17584 | Some events are only borderline cases of lives [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are events of which it is neither definitely true nor definitely false that those events are lives. I do not see how we can deny this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Very frustrating, since this is my main objection to Van Inwagen's distinction between unified lives and mere collections of simples. Some boundaries are real enough, despite their vagueness, and others indicate that there is no real distinction. |
| 17569 | Unlike waves, lives are 'jealous'; it is almost impossible for them to overlap [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A wave is not a 'jealous' event. Lives, however, are jealous. It cannot be that the activities of the Xs constitute at one and the same time two lives. Only in certain special cases can two lives overlap. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17580 | One's mental and other life is centred on the brain, unlike any other part of the body [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: One's life - not simply one's mental life - is centered in the activity of the simples that virtually compose one's brain in a way in which it is not centered in the activity of any of the other simples that compose one. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 15) | |
| A reaction: This justifies the common view that 'one follows one's brain'. I take that to mean that my brain embodies my essence. I would read 'centered on' as 'explains'. |
| 17570 | The chemical reactions in a human life involve about sixteen elements [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are sixteen or so chemical elements involved in those chemical reactions that collectively constitute the life of a human being. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17585 | Life is vague at both ends, but could it be totally vague? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Individual human lives are infected with vagueness at both ends. ...But could there be a 'borderline life'? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen says (p.239) that there may be wholly vague lives, though it would suit his case better if there were not. |
| 17567 | A flame is like a life, but not nearly so well individuated [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A flame, though it is a self-maintaining event, does not seem to be nearly so well individuated as a life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: This is to counter the standard problem that if you attempt to define 'life', fire turns out to tick nearly all the same boxes. The concept of 'individuated' often strikes me as unsatisfactory. How does a bonfire fail to be individuated? |
| 17576 | If God were to 'reassemble' my atoms of ten years ago, the result would certainly not be me [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If God were to 'reassemble' the atoms that composed me ten years ago, the resulting organism would certainly not be me. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: What is obvious to Van Inwagen is not obvious to me. He thinks lives are special. Such examples just leave us bewildered about what counts as 'the same', because our concept of sameness wasn't designed to deal with such cases. |
| 5119 | The source of all movement must be indivisible and have no magnitude [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We proved that there cannot be an infinite magnitude, and that it is impossible for something finite to have infinite power, but the first agent of movement causes eternal movement for an infinite time, so it must be indivisible and have no parts or size. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 267b19) | |
| A reaction: Note that Aristotle is already attributing 'infinite power' to this special thing. It is more than just a first domino to fall over. Its having no size quickly takes it outside of space, and makes it a 'spirit'. We are watching the construction of God. |
| 17573 | There is no reason to think that mere existence is a valuable thing [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to suppose - whatever Saint Anselm and Descartes may have thought - that mere existence is a valuable thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the simplest and most powerful objections to the Ontological Argument. God's existence may be of great value, but the existence of Hitler wasn't. |