82 ideas
13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
Full Idea: Wisdom [phronesis] is correctly given the name 'kalon' [beautiful], since it performs the works that we say are beautiful and welcome as such. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 416d) | |
A reaction: 'Phronesis' in Aristotle is more like prudence, or common sense, rather than wisdom ['sophia']. 'Kalon' also means fine or noble. This translation seems fair enough, though. |
13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: Are good people any different from wise ones? No, they aren't. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 398b) | |
A reaction: This is Socrates's 'intellectualism', his view that being good is entirely a matter of reason and knowledge, and not a matter of habit or emotion. Do we still accept the traditional assumption that wise people are thereby morally good? |
16606 | Original philosophers invariably seek inspiration from past thinkers [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Philosophers almost never strike out on wholly new ground, without the historical inspiration of some figure or other. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) |
16604 | Philosophy consists of choosing between Plato, Aristotle and Democritus [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The history of philosophy consists in a series of choices between three primordial rivals: Plato, Aristotle and Democritus. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau's point is that the importance of Democritus is not usually appreciated. As far as I can see, Democritus may have been the greatest of all philosophers, but most of his works are lost. His fragments are the best fragments. |
16586 | The commentaries of Averroes were the leading guide to Aristotle [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The commentaries of Averroes on virtually the whole Aristotelian corpus became by far the most important scholastic guide to the interpretation of Aristotle. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.1) |
16568 | Modernity begins in the late 12th century, with Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: I tend to think of modernity as coming in the late twelfth century, with Averroes's magisterial commentaries on Aristotle. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 1.1) | |
A reaction: A rather quirky use of 'modernity', but this seems to be a huge landmark. Note that it comes from the Islamic Arab world, not from Europe. |
16653 | Once accidents were seen as real, 'Categories' became the major text for ontology [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Originally you count substances for ontology. Once there is the doctrine of real accidents (in the 14th cent) the list of ten categories begins to look like an inventory of the kinds of things there are, and 'Categories' looks like the fundamental text. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 12.1) | |
A reaction: Prior to this development, 'Categories' was treated as a mere beginner's text, once the major corpus of Aristotle had been rediscovered in the 13th century. The result of this development is sortal essentialism, which I don't like. |
16704 | In 1347, the Church effectively stopped philosophy for the next 300 years [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The year 1347 is a great milestone in the history of philosophy, because then the route to modern philosophy was blocked by Church authorities, and effectively put on hold for almost 300 years. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 19.3) | |
A reaction: It is interesting that it was 100 years after the Reformation before philosophy got going again, and then only thanks to one man. Islam stopped philosophy earlier. |
16605 | After c.1450 all of Plato was available. Before that, only the first half of 'Timaeus' was known [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: From the mid-fifteenth century forward, for the first time, the whole Platonic corpus was available in Ficino's Latin translation. Before then, only the first half of the 'Timaeus' had widely circulated in Latin. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) |
16607 | Renaissance Platonism is peripheral [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The fabled phenomenon of Renaissance Platonism is peripheral. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.3) | |
A reaction: The point is that only a few Italians pursued the Platonic line. Pasnau suggests Cartesian dualism as a possible influence from Plato. |
16715 | Plato only made an impact locally in 15th century Italy [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: In certain limited circles in Italy, Plato made an impact in the fifteenth century, but his influence never came close to challenging Aristotle's. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 20.2) |
16781 | The 17th century is a metaphysical train wreck [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The seventeenth century is a metaphysical train wreck. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.6) | |
A reaction: This is, roughly, because the corpuscularian philosophy lacked the resources to answer all the problems dealt with by substantial forms. |
16610 | Philosophy could easily have died in 17th century, if it weren't for Descartes [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: As scholasticism collapsed in the 17th century, it might easily have happened is that philosophy simply died. That this did not happen is due in large part to René Descartes. …It is remarkable that this brilliant man insisted on still doing philosophy. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.5) | |
A reaction: The alternative view is, of course, that you just can't stop people from thinking philosophically (except by totalitarian education). Are there philosophers in North Korea, or among the Taliban? |
16677 | Anti-Razor: if you can't account for a truth, keep positing things until you can [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The Anti-Razor says 'whenever an affirmative proposition is truly stated, if one thing does not suffice to account for its truth, then one must posit things, and if two do not suffice then three, and so on to infinity'. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.3) | |
A reaction: This is quoted from an anonymous logic text of 1325. Apparently Ockham himself articulated the idea more than once. |
13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
Full Idea: What would you call someone who knows how to ask and answer questions? Wouldn't you call him a dialectician? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 390c) | |
A reaction: Asking good questions and giving good answers sound like two very different skills. I presume dialectic is the process of arriving at answers by means of asking the right questions. |
15647 | Truth definitions don't produce a good theory, because they go beyond your current language [Halbach] |
Full Idea: It is far from clear that a definition of truth can lead to a philosophically satisfactory theory of truth. Tarski's theorem on the undefinability of the truth predicate needs resources beyond those of the language for which it is being defined. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1) | |
A reaction: The idea is that you need a 'metalanguage' for the definition. If I say 'p' is a true sentence in language 'L', I am not making that observation from within language L. The dream is a theory confined to the object language. |
13776 | Truths say of what is that it is, falsehoods say of what is that it is not [Plato] |
Full Idea: Those statements that say of the things that are that they are, are true, while those that say of the things that are that they are not, are false. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385b) | |
A reaction: It was quite a shock to discover this, because the famous Aristotle definition (Idea 586) is always quoted, and no modern writers seem to have any awareness of the Plato remark. Classical scholarship is very poor in analytic philosophy. |
15649 | In semantic theories of truth, the predicate is in an object-language, and the definition in a metalanguage [Halbach] |
Full Idea: In semantic theories of truth (Tarski or Kripke), a truth predicate is defined for an object-language. This definition is carried out in a metalanguage, which is typically taken to include set theory or another strong theory or expressive language. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1) | |
A reaction: Presumably the metalanguage includes set theory because that connects it with mathematics, and enables it to be formally rigorous. Tarski showed, in his undefinability theorem, that the meta-language must have increased resources. |
15655 | Should axiomatic truth be 'conservative' - not proving anything apart from implications of the axioms? [Halbach] |
Full Idea: If truth is not explanatory, truth axioms should not allow proof of new theorems not involving the truth predicate. It is hence said that axiomatic truth should be 'conservative' - not implying further sentences beyond what the axioms can prove. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1.3) | |
A reaction: [compressed] |
15654 | If truth is defined it can be eliminated, whereas axiomatic truth has various commitments [Halbach] |
Full Idea: If truth can be explicitly defined, it can be eliminated, whereas an axiomatized notion of truth may bring all kinds of commitments. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1.3) | |
A reaction: The general principle that anything which can be defined can be eliminated (in an abstract theory, presumably, not in nature!) raises interesting questions about how many true theories there are which are all equivalent to one another. |
15650 | Axiomatic theories of truth need a weak logical framework, and not a strong metatheory [Halbach] |
Full Idea: Axiomatic theories of truth can be presented within very weak logical frameworks which require very few resources, and avoid the need for a strong metalanguage and metatheory. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1) |
15648 | Instead of a truth definition, add a primitive truth predicate, and axioms for how it works [Halbach] |
Full Idea: The axiomatic approach does not presuppose that truth can be defined. Instead, a formal language is expanded by a new primitive predicate of truth, and axioms for that predicate are then laid down. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1) | |
A reaction: Idea 15647 explains why Halbach thinks the definition route is no good. |
15656 | Deflationists say truth merely serves to express infinite conjunctions [Halbach] |
Full Idea: According to many deflationists, truth serves merely the purpose of expressing infinite conjunctions. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1.3) | |
A reaction: That is, it asserts sentences that are too numerous to express individually. It also seems, on a deflationist view, to serve for anaphoric reference to sentences, such as 'what she just said is true'. |
15657 | To prove the consistency of set theory, we must go beyond set theory [Halbach] |
Full Idea: The consistency of set theory cannot be established without assumptions transcending set theory. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 2.1) |
15652 | We can use truth instead of ontologically loaded second-order comprehension assumptions about properties [Halbach] |
Full Idea: The reduction of 2nd-order theories (of properties or sets) to axiomatic theories of truth may be conceived as a form of reductive nominalism, replacing existence assumptions (for comprehension axioms) by ontologically innocent truth assumptions. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1.1) | |
A reaction: I like this very much, as weeding properties out of logic (without weeding them out of the world). So-called properties in logic are too abundant, so there is a misfit with their role in science. |
15651 | Instead of saying x has a property, we can say a formula is true of x - as long as we have 'true' [Halbach] |
Full Idea: Quantification over (certain) properties can be mimicked in a language with a truth predicate by quantifying over formulas. Instead of saying that Tom has the property of being a poor philosopher, we can say 'x is a poor philosopher' is true of Tom. | |
From: Volker Halbach (Axiomatic Theories of Truth (2005 ver) [2005], 1.1) | |
A reaction: I love this, and think it is very important. He talks of 'mimicking' properties, but I see it as philosophers mistakenly attributing properties, when actually what they were doing is asserting truths involving certain predicates. |
13777 | A name is a sort of tool [Plato] |
Full Idea: A name is a sort of tool. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 388a) | |
A reaction: Idea 13775 gives a background for this metaphor, from earlier in the text. Wittgenstein has a famous toolkit metaphor for language. The whole of this text, 'Cratylus', is about names. |
13790 | A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato] |
Full Idea: The name-giver might have made a mistake at the beginning and then forced the other names to be consistent with it. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 436c) | |
A reaction: Lovely. This is Gareth Evans's 'Madagascar' example. See Idea 9041. |
13791 | Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: If things cannot be learned except from their names, how can we possibly claim that the name-givers or rule-setters have knowledge before any names had been given for them to know? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 438b) | |
A reaction: Running through this is a hostility to philosophy of language, so I find it very congenial. We are animals who relate to the world before language takes a grip. We have full-blown knowledge of things, with no intervention of words. |
13789 | Anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing [Plato] |
Full Idea: The simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 435d) | |
A reaction: A nice slogan, but it seems to be blatantly false. The best example is Gareth Evans's of joining in a conversation about a person ('Louis'?), and only gradually tuning in to the person to which the name refers. |
2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e) | |
A reaction: A rather Platonic question! I presume that Heraclitus had a sense of beauty, and things regarded as 'sublime' are often tumultuous. |
16598 | Priority was a major topic of dispute for scholastics [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: For a scholastic author, hardly anything was so likely to precipitate a lengthy disputatio as talk of priority, in its various kinds. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.3) |
16727 | In mixtures, the four elements ceased to exist, replaced by a mixed body with a form [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The standard view was that in a mixture there is only the mixed body and its substantial form (gold). There are no further substantial forms of the elements, because the elements do not actually exist within the body. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 22.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to be the key idea that was overthrown in the seventeenth century, so that corpuscular matter kept aspects of its ingredients, which science could then investigate. With the substantial form, investigation seemed impossible. |
13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
Full Idea: If we undertake to cut something and make the cut in whatever way we choose and with whatever tool we choose, we will not succeed. If we cut according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with the natural tool, we'll succeed and cut correctly. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 387a) | |
A reaction: I take this passage to be the creed for realists about the physical world - a commitment not merely to the existence of an external world, but to the existence of facts about it, which we may or may not be able to discover. |
16732 | 17th C qualities are either microphysical, or phenomenal, or powers [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The seventeenth century is often said to have bequeathed us three ways of thinking about sensible qualities: either in reductive microphysical terms, or as internal phenomenal states, or else as powers or dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau goes on to claim that no one in the 17th century believed the third one. I take it to be a very new, and totally wonderful and correct, view. |
16733 | 17th century authors only recognised categorical properties, never dispositions [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: In the seventeenth century, my claim is that authors during the period recognise only categorical properties, and never dispositional properties. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.1) |
16662 | The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Among scholastics the primary agreement is that what primarily exist are substances. The primary disagreement concerns the nature of their changeable properties. Are they real accidents, or mere modes of substance? | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 13.1) |
16767 | There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: One could empirically reject a centralised power within a substance - and still think a genuine substance requires a form of some more abstract kind, not for a physical explanation, but for a full metaphysical understanding of how things are. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.2) | |
A reaction: This divorce of the 'metaphysical' from the physical is a running theme in Pasnau, and he cites support from Leibniz. I'm not sure I understand 'metaphysical' understanding, if it is actually contrary to physics. I take it to be 'psychological'. |
16788 | Instead of adding Aristotelian forms to physical stuff, one could add dispositions [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Someone who wants to enrich a strict corpuscularian account with other metaphysical entities has alternatives other than Aristotelian hylomorphism. One can, for instance, introduce dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 28.2) | |
A reaction: This slightly throws me, because I have been flirting with a dispositional account of hylomorphism. The implication is that the form is abstract and structural, where the disposition is real and physical. But dispositions can do the job of forms. |
16738 | Scholastics reject dispositions, because they are not actual, as forms require [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Scholastics reject anything like bare dispositions, on Aristotelian principles. Powers are forms, and forms actualise their subject, and are causally efficacious. Therefore no powers can be bare dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5) | |
A reaction: The point seems to be that a mere disposition is not actual, as a form is required to be. I would have thought that a power does not have to be operational to be actual. A live electric wire is a real phenomenon. It isn't waiting to be live. |
16649 | Scholastics say there is a genuine thing if it is 'separable' [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Among the scholastics (after Duns Scotus) it would be come to be taken for granted that the crucial test for being a genuine thing - a 'res' - is separability. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 11.2) | |
A reaction: The idea of separability is implicit in Aristotle. In borderline cases, it seems that they are tempted to claim that things like accidental properties are separable, simply because they want them to be genuine things. A criterion for separability? |
16785 | If you reject essences, questions of individuation become extremely difficult [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Given the accepted linkage between a thing's essence and its identity, the rejection of essences makes a complete mess out of questions of individuation. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 27.6) | |
A reaction: I note that he talks of a thing having 'identity', contra the view of identity as a two-place relation. I agree with this, but there is a chicken-egg problem. Do I perceive an identity and surmise an essence, or surmise an essence and deduce identity? |
16680 | Scholastics thought Quantity could be the principle of individuation [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Quantity was a leading scholastic contender for the principle of individuation. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.4) |
13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Don't you think that just as each thing has a colour or some of those other qualities we mentioned, it also has a being or essence? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 423e) | |
A reaction: The Greek here seems to be 'ousia', which I increasingly think should be translated as 'distinct identity', rather than as 'existence' or as 'essence'. Maybe the philosophical term 'haecceity' captures it best. |
16617 | Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism say only substances exist [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism tend to think that only substances exist. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.2) | |
A reaction: Pasnau treats this as an extreme 17th C reaction which was hopelessly inadequate as metaphysics. We have been struggling with the nature of 'properties' ever since, while losing our grip on the concept of a unified 'substance'. |
16741 | Scholastics wanted to treat Aristotelianism as physics, rather than as metaphysics [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: There is a broad scholastic tendency to understand Aristotelianism not in abstract, metaphysical terms, but as a concrete, physical theory of the world. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5) | |
A reaction: This seems to give a good explanation of why Aristotelianism plummeted to oblivion in the 17th C. Pasnau obviously wants to revive it, by drawing a sharp line between metaphysics and science. I doubt the line. |
16777 | If crowds are things at all, they seem to be Substances, since they bear properties [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Crowds seem to be the bearers of properties, and if they are things at all, then there is no place for them other than in the category of Substance. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.1) | |
A reaction: It is tempting to say, based on Aristotle, that a substance is whatever 1) bears properties, and 2) endures in spite of change, but a crowd is a nice problem case, because it looks too disunited to be a 'substance'. |
16628 | Corpuscularianism promised a decent account of substance [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: One of the great attractions of corpuscularianism is that it promises to put our acquaintance with substances on a solid foundation. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 07.3) | |
A reaction: This is why the seventeenth century did not abandon 'substance', even though they banished 'substantial form'. |
16615 | Scholastics use 'substantia' for thick concrete entities, and for thin metaphysical ones [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Scholastic texts are rife with different senses of 'substantia', using the term to refer, among other things, both to thick concrete entities and to thin metaphysical ones. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau introduces 'thin' and 'thick' substance for this reason. I may adopt this. Without distinctions between thin and thick concepts of things we can get very muddled. I like the word to label something which is an 'entity'. |
16775 | For corpuscularians, a substance is just its integral parts [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: According to strict corpuscularianism the only real constituents of a substance are its integral parts. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.1) | |
A reaction: An understandable reaction to the emptiness of Aristotelian substantial forms in science. It seems to leave out the structural principles that distinguish one arrangement of parts from another. See Koslicki on this. |
16769 | If clay survives destruction of the statue, the statue wasn't a substance, but a mere accident [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The unitarian view of substance says it cannot be divided. If the clay can survive the destruction of the statue, then that shows that the statue was not a substance at all, and that its shape (or whatever made it a statue) was merely a passing accident. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to give the orthodox Aristotelian/Thomist reading, assuming that a substance only has one form, which unifies it. Since clay must have shape, and statues must have matter, I have never understood how there were two objects here. |
16602 | Corpuscularianism rejected not only form, but also the dependence of matter on form [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: What marks the rise of the corpuscularian movement is not just the rejection of form, but the rejection of matter as dependent on form. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.5) | |
A reaction: The point was that matter required form to have any kind of actual existence, but now matter can stand on its own. |
16612 | Hylomorphism may not be a rival to science, but an abstract account of unity and endurance [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Hylomorphism admits of an alternative formulation, as an explanatory schema at a different level of analysis, not competing with corpuscular-mechanistic theory, but accounting for abstract features of the world - notably unity and endurance of substances. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau is clearly sympathetic. As a view of why normal objects have unity and persist over time it is almost the only decent theory around. Hawley, for example, struggles to explain how 'stages' of a thing are linked. Classical mereology is silly. |
16613 | Hylomorphism declined because scholastics made it into a testable physical theory [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Scholastics lost their grip on hylomorphism as a metaphysical theory, conceiving of it as a concrete, physical hypothesis about causal forces. Once form and matter were made subject to empirical research, their days were inevitably numbered. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau seems to make a sharp distinction between science, and a separate realm he labels 'metaphysical'. You can't keep causation out of Aristotelian hylomorphism. The defence is that it is at a higher level of generality than science. |
16747 | Scholastics made forms substantial, in a way unintended by Aristotle [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The conception of form as somehow substantial took on new life among scholastic Aristotelians, and was developed in ways that Aristotle himself never suggested. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
A reaction: This is music to we modern neo-Aristotelians, because scholasticism was rightly dumped in the 17th C, but we can go back and start again from what The Philosopher actually said. |
16759 | Scholastics began to see substantial form more as Aristotle's 'efficient' cause [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The whole scholastic conception of substantial form came to have more and more in common with an Aristotelian efficient cause. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.2) | |
A reaction: Aristotle, of course, identified the form with the 'formal cause [aitia]', which is the shape of the statue, rather than the efficient cause, which is the sculptor. |
16748 | Aquinas says a substance has one form; Scotists say it has many forms [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Aquinas subscribes to the unitarian doctrine that a single substance has just a single substantial form, but authors like Scotus subscribe to a plurality of substantial forms. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
A reaction: The Scotists seem to think that qualities themselve can have forms. I take it that Aristotle would have agreed with Aquinas. |
16671 | Scholastic Quantity either gives a body parts, or spreads them out in a unified way [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: On one version of Quantity realism it is what makes a body have parts; on another version, it is what makes the body's parts be spread out in a continuous and unified way. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.1) |
16596 | A substratum can't be 'bare', because it has a job to do [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: A completely bare substratum seems not just incoherent but also unable to carry out the function for which it is intended - to be a substratum. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.3) |
16579 | There may be different types of substrate, or temporary substrates [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The substratum thesis says …perhaps there is a different subject for different kinds of changes, and perhaps what endures through one kind of change will be corrupted by another. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
16584 | If a substrate gives causal support for change, quite a lot of the ingredients must endure [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: When the substratum thesis is grounded on the idea that the ingredients must endure through the change, if they are to play a causal role, then it is natural to suppose that quite a lot of the ingredients must endure. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) | |
A reaction: Aristotle sharply distinguishes alteration from substantial change, but as the substrate gets thinner, the boundary between those two would blur. |
16580 | A substrate may be 'prime matter', which endures through every change [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The 'conservation thesis' about substrates says that there is a single, most basic substrate that endures through every material change, something we call 'prime matter'. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
16749 | Aristotelians deny that all necessary properties are essential [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: For an Aristotelian not all necessary properties are essential; the essential properties are those that define a thing as what it is. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
A reaction: I take it as basic that whatever is essential is in some way important, whereas necessities can be trivial. |
13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is the being or essence of each of the things that are something private to each person, as Protagoras tells us? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385e) | |
A reaction: This kind of drastic personal relativism about essences doesn't sound very plausible, but the idea that essences are private to each culture, or to each language, must certainly be taken seriously. |
16694 | Typical successive things are time and motion [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The standard scholastic examples of 'entia successiva' are time and motion. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 18.1) | |
A reaction: Aristotle's examples of a day and the Games seem clearer, as time and motion do not count so clearly as 'things'. |
16583 | Weak ex nihilo says it all comes from something; strong version says the old must partly endure [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The weak ex nihilo principle says that everything comes from something, and the strong ex nihilo principle says that in everything new, something of the old must endure | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
Full Idea: Soc: Suppose we made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you; would there then be two Cratyluses, or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus? Crat: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 432c) | |
A reaction: Don't think that science fiction examples are a modern development in philosophy. Plato has just invented the Startrek transporter. The two Cratyluses are the two spheres in Max Black's famous example. |
13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
Full Idea: It isn't even reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things are passing on and none remain. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 440a) | |
A reaction: This encapsulates Plato's horror at Heraclitus scepticism about the stable identity of things. It leads to the essentialism of Aristotle and Leibniz, who fear that there is no knowledge if we can't pin down individual identities. Know processes? |
16783 | Essences must explain, so we can infer them causally from the accidents [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Without the explanatory role of essence, the underlying epistemic picture would be jeopardised, because there would no longer be any causal route by which we might get from accidents to essence. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 27.5) | |
A reaction: There is a slight whiff of circularity here. It could be that we are psychologically desperate for essences, and so we invent bogus causal routes from the accidents to get at them. Can we know there are essences awaiting us, on independent grounds? |
13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
Full Idea: Those who named the soul thought that when the soul is present in the body, it causes it to live and gives it the power to breathe the air and be revitalized [anapsuchon]. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 399d) | |
A reaction: I quote this to emphasis that Greek psuché is very different from the consciousness which is largely discussed in modern philosophy of mind. I find it helpful to make a real effort to grasp the Greek concept. The feeling of life within you. |
13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
Full Idea: 'Areté' signifies lack of perplexity [euporia, ease of movement], and that the flow of a good soul is unimpeded. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 415d) | |
A reaction: Some highly dubious etymology going on here, and throughout 'Cratylus', but it gives a nice feeling for the way Socrates and Plato saw virtue. |
16609 | Atomists say causation is mechanical collisions, and all true qualities are microscopic [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The atomist view is that causation is limited to collisions among corpuscles (which is 'mechanism'), and the only bodily qualities are those found at the microcorpuscular level; sensible qualities are in fact sensations. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.4) | |
A reaction: [Part of a full summary of atomism by Pasnau] |
16603 | In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: In the seventeenth century, matter becomes body, and body becomes the object of natural science. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.5) |
16592 | Atomism is the commonest version of corpuscularianism, but isn't required by it [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Atomism is the most common version of corpuscular prime matter, but it is not the only option. Indeed, atomism neither entails nor is entailed by the combination of corpuscularianism and the substratum thesis. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.2) | |
A reaction: The point is that the corpuscles may be endlessly divisible (which Lewis called 'gunk'). |
16750 | If there are just arrangements of corpuscles, where are the boundaries between substances? [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: If all there are corpuscles of various shapes and sizes, variously arranged, it is not easy to see how we might draw the boundary lines, at any given moment, between one substance and another. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.2) | |
A reaction: We still have precisely that problem, and it leads to the nihilism about ordinary objects found in Unger, Van Inwagen and Merricks. I have so far found modern defences of ordinary objects unpersuasive. |
16722 | Scholastic causation is by changes in the primary qualities of hot, cold, wet, dry [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: There is a scholastic theory of causation. Of Aristotle's Four Causes, the main one is the 'formal' cause, and that consists of changes in the primary, elemental qualities, which are hot, cold, wet and dry. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 21.2) | |
A reaction: [my summary] It is probably right to call this 'scholastic' rather than 'Aristotelian', as I take Aristotelian essence to run deeper than this, and involve principles as well as qualities. |
16760 | Substantial forms were a step towards scientific essentialism [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Substantial forms might well be viewed as an early step in the development of scientific essentialism. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.4) | |
A reaction: This is the scholastic view of substantial forms, which is much more physical and causal, rather than Aristotle's more abstract view. The rejection of substantial forms led to the 'Humean' view of laws of nature. |
16581 | Scholastic authors agree that matter was created by God, out of nothing [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Authors from 1274 to 1671 unanimously endorse the Christian doctrine that matter was created by God, before which time there was no material world at all. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
13779 | The natural offspring of a lion is called a 'lion' (but what about the offspring of a king?) [Plato] |
Full Idea: It seems to me that it is right to call a lion's offspring a 'lion' and a horse's offspring a 'horse' (I'm talking about natural offspring, not some monster). ...but by the same argument any offspring of a king should be called a 'king'. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 393b) | |
A reaction: The standard modern difficulty is whether all descendants of dinosaurs are still called 'dinosaur', which they are not. |
13783 | Even the gods love play [Plato] |
Full Idea: Even the gods love play. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 406c) |
16642 | Transubstantion says accidents of bread and wine don't inhere in the substance [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Transubstantiation maintains that the accidents of the bread and wine endure after consecration without inhering in the substance. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 10.3) | |
A reaction: It's a big puzzle to outsiders why softness and nice taste should have theological significance. If it is the body and blood of Christ, presumably a miracle has occurred, so normal theories don't apply. It is the key difficulty for scholastic metaphysics. |