55 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
16123 | Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato] |
5486 | Essentialism says metaphysics can't be done by analysing unreliable language [Ellis] |
16125 | To reveal a nature, divide down, and strip away what it has in common with other things [Plato] |
16124 | No one wants to define 'weaving' just for the sake of weaving [Plato] |
5468 | Properties are 'dispositional', or 'categorical' (the latter as 'block' or 'intrinsic' structures) [Ellis, by PG] |
5469 | The passive view of nature says categorical properties are basic, but others say dispositions [Ellis] |
5456 | Redness is not a property as it is not mind-independent [Ellis] |
5481 | Properties have powers; they aren't just ways for logicians to classify objects [Ellis] |
5458 | Nearly all fundamental properties of physics are dispositional [Ellis] |
5443 | Kripke and others have made essentialism once again respectable [Ellis] |
5444 | 'Individual essences' fix a particular individual, and 'kind essences' fix the kind it belongs to [Ellis] |
5462 | Essential properties are usually quantitatively determinate [Ellis] |
5448 | 'Real essence' makes it what it is; 'nominal essence' makes us categorise it a certain way [Ellis] |
5477 | One thing can look like something else, without being the something else [Ellis] |
5479 | Scientific essentialists say science should define the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
5483 | Essentialists deny possible worlds, and say possibilities are what is compatible with the actual world [Ellis] |
5447 | Metaphysical necessities are true in virtue of the essences of things [Ellis] |
5476 | Essentialists say natural laws are in a new category: necessary a posteriori [Ellis] |
5478 | Imagination tests what is possible for all we know, not true possibility [Ellis] |
5482 | Possible worlds realism is only needed to give truth conditions for modals and conditionals [Ellis] |
5961 | The soul gets its goodness from god, and its evil from previous existence. [Plato] |
5453 | Essentialists mostly accept the primary/secondary qualities distinction [Ellis] |
5466 | Primary qualities are number, figure, size, texture, motion, configuration, impenetrability and (?) mass [Ellis] |
5485 | Emeralds are naturally green, and only an external force could turn them blue [Ellis] |
5484 | Essentialists don't infer from some to all, but from essences to necessary behaviour [Ellis] |
5457 | Predicates assert properties, values, denials, relations, conventions, existence and fabrications [Ellis, by PG] |
283 | The question of whether or not to persuade comes before the science of persuasion [Plato] |
5488 | Regularity theories of causation cannot give an account of human agency [Ellis] |
5489 | Humans have variable dispositions, and also power to change their dispositions [Ellis] |
282 | Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato] |
5490 | Essentialism fits in with Darwinism, but not with extreme politics of left or right [Ellis] |
281 | The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato] |
22559 | Democracy is the worst of good constitutions, but the best of bad constitutions [Plato, by Aristotle] |
1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
5472 | Natural kinds are of objects/substances, or events/processes, or intrinsic natures [Ellis] |
5471 | Essentialism says natural kinds are fundamental to nature, and determine the laws [Ellis] |
5446 | For essentialists two members of a natural kind must be identical [Ellis] |
5480 | The whole of our world is a natural kind, so all worlds like it necessarily have the same laws [Ellis] |
5445 | Essentialists regard inanimate objects as genuine causal agents [Ellis] |
5463 | Essentialists believe causation is necessary, resulting from dispositions and circumstances [Ellis] |
5491 | A general theory of causation is only possible in an area if natural kinds are involved [Ellis] |
5442 | For 'passivists' behaviour is imposed on things from outside [Ellis] |
5473 | The laws of nature imitate the hierarchy of natural kinds [Ellis] |
5474 | Laws of nature tend to describe ideal things, or ideal circumstances [Ellis] |
5475 | We must explain the necessity, idealisation, ontology and structure of natural laws [Ellis] |
5460 | Causal relations cannot be reduced to regularities, as they could occur just once [Ellis] |
5459 | Essentialists say dispositions are basic, rather than supervenient on matter and natural laws [Ellis] |
5461 | The essence of uranium is its atomic number and its electron shell [Ellis] |
5464 | For essentialists, laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, being based on essences of natural kinds [Ellis] |
5487 | Essentialism requires a clear separation of semantics, epistemology and ontology [Ellis] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
279 | Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |