8 ideas
| 11993 | Jones may cease to exist without some simple property, but that doesn't make it essential [Kung] |
| Full Idea: If Jones ceases to be a father, or ceases to be over eight years old, he will cease to exist, yet these properties surely do not belong essentially to him. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to correct, though I would doubt whether either of these count as true properties, in the causal sense I prefer. If being 'over 8' is a property, how many 'over n' or 'under m' properties does he have? One for each quantum moment? |
| 11997 | A property may belong essentially to one thing and contingently to another [Kung] |
| Full Idea: It is possible that a property may belong essentially to one thing and contingently to another. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], III) | |
| A reaction: Thus a love of blues music may be part of your essence, but only a minor part of me. Sounds right. Spin or charge are part of the essence of an electron, but only contingently part of a child's top. |
| 11992 | Aristotelian essences underlie a thing's existence, explain it, and must belong to it [Kung] |
| Full Idea: Three essentialist claims are labelled 'Aristotelian': the thing would cease to exist without the property; an essential property is explanatory; and it is such that it must belong to everything to which it belongs. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], Intro) | |
| A reaction: She says the second one is indispensable, and that it rules out the third one. My working assumption, like hers, is that the second one is the key part of the game, because Aristotle wanted to explain things. |
| 11995 | Some peripheral properties are explained by essential ones, but don't themselves explain properties [Kung] |
| Full Idea: There will be demonstrated properties at the edge of the system, so to speak. They will be explained in terms of the essential properties of the basic entities and principles of the science, but will themselves not be explanatory of further properties. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: This is an important line of thought which needs clarification. We can't glibly say that essences are what explain the other properties. Some properties do more than others to explain subsequent dependent properties. |
| 11996 | Some non-essential properties may explain more than essential-but-peripheral ones do [Kung] |
| Full Idea: It seems highly likely that some non-essential properties may explain more about the individual or about things of his kind than the peripheral properties. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: Another important issue, if one is defending the explanatory role of essences. It is not only essences which explain. A key question is whether we endorse individual essences as well as generic ones. I think we should. They explain the details. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 4677 | If suicide is wrong because only God disposes of our lives, it must also be wrong to save lives [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were the disposal of human life so much the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on His right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction. | |
| From: David Hume (On suicide [1775]), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13 | |
| A reaction: A characteristically wicked and neat point. Maybe we can intervene in the environment (diverting a falling stone), but not directly in a life? Life is sacred, but stones are not? |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |