Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Actualism and Thisness', 'Human Freedom and Divine choice' and 'Letters to Edward Stillingfleet'

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4 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity

16463	Adams says actual things have haecceities, but not things that only might exist [Adams,RM, by Stalnaker]
	Full Idea: Adams favours haecceitism about actual things but no haecceities for things that might exist but don't.
	From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Actualism and Thisness [1981]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.2
	A reaction: This contrasts with Plantinga, who proposes necessary essences for everything, even for what might exist. Plantinga sounds crazy to me, Adams merely interesting but not too plausible.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences

15990	Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke]
	Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties

13083	The essence is the necessary properties, and the concept includes what is contingent [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Of the essence of a particular thing is what pertains to it necessarily and perpetually; of the concept of an individual thing on the other hand is what pertains to it contingently or per accidens.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Human Freedom and Divine choice [1690], Grua 383), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 3.3.1
	A reaction: This arbitrates on the apparent conflict between his remarks in Idea 13077 and Idea 10382. There seems to be a distinction between the 'concept' of a thing, and the 'complete concept', the latter including the contingent properties.

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty

15994	If it is knowledge, it is certain; if it isn't certain, it isn't knowledge [Locke]
	Full Idea: What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be knowledge.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 2), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: I much prefer that fallibilist approach offered by the pragmatists. Knowledge is well-supported belief which seems (and is agreed) to be true, but there is a small shadow of doubt hanging over all of it.