59 ideas
21844 | The history of philosophy is an agent of power: how can you think if you haven't read the great names? [Deleuze] |
21849 | Thought should be thrown like a stone from a war-machine [Deleuze] |
21845 | Philosophy aims to become the official language, supporting orthodoxy and the state [Deleuze] |
5486 | Essentialism says metaphysics can't be done by analysing unreliable language [Ellis] |
21839 | When I meet objections I just move on; they never contribute anything [Deleuze] |
21841 | We must create new words, and treat them as normal, and as if designating real things. [Deleuze] |
21842 | Don't assess ideas for truth or justice; look for another idea, and establish a relationship with it [Deleuze] |
21850 | Dualisms can be undone from within, by tracing connections, and drawing them to a new path [Deleuze] |
21838 | Before we seek solutions, it is important to invent problems [Deleuze] |
21847 | Before Being there is politics [Deleuze] |
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] |
15959 | If the substantial form of brass implies its stability, how can it melt and remain brass? [Alexander,P] |
15956 | The peripatetics treated forms and real qualities as independent of matter, and non-material [Alexander,P] |
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] |
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] |
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] |
15975 | Can the qualities of a body be split into two groups, where the smaller explains the larger? [Alexander,P] |
21840 | A meeting of man and animal can be deterritorialization (like a wasp with an orchid) [Deleuze] |
21843 | People consist of many undetermined lines, some rigid, some supple, some 'lines of flight' [Deleuze] |
5457 | Predicates assert properties, values, denials, relations, conventions, existence and fabrications [Ellis, by PG] |
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] |
5490 | Essentialism fits in with Darwinism, but not with extreme politics of left or right [Ellis] |
21848 | Some lines (of flight) are becomings which escape the system [Deleuze] |
15963 | Science has been partly motivated by the belief that the universe is run by God's laws [Alexander,P] |
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] |
15951 | Alchemists tried to separate out essences, which influenced later chemistry [Alexander,P] |
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] |
15981 | Absolute space either provides locations, or exists but lacks 'marks' for locations [Alexander,P] |