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6007
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If you know your father, but don't recognise your father veiled, you know and don't know the same person [Eubulides, by Dancy,R]
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Full Idea:
The 'undetected' or 'veiled' paradox of Eubulides says: if you know your father, and don't know the veiled person before you, but that person is your father, you both know and don't know the same person.
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From:
report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School
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A reaction:
Essentially an uninteresting equivocation on two senses of "know", but this paradox comes into its own when we try to give an account of how linguistic reference works. Frege's distinction of sense and reference tried to sort it out (Idea 4976).
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6008
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Removing one grain doesn't destroy a heap, so a heap can't be destroyed [Eubulides, by Dancy,R]
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Full Idea:
The 'sorites' paradox of Eubulides says: if you take one grain of sand from a heap (soros), what is left is still a heap; so no matter how many grains of sand you take one by one, the result is always a heap.
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From:
report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School
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A reaction:
(also Cic. Acad. 2.49) This is a very nice paradox, which goes to the heart of our bewilderment when we try to fully understand reality. It homes in on problems of identity, as best exemplified in the Ship of Theseus (Ideas 1212 + 1213).
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16665
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There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
Beyond the entities there are certain real 'modes', which are positive, and in their own right act on those entities, giving them something that is outside their whole essence as individuals existing in reality.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3
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A reaction:
Suárez is apparently the first person to formulate a proper account of properties as 'modes' of a thing, rather than as accidents which are separate, or are wholly integrated into a thing. A typical compromise proposal in philosophy. Can modes act?
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16666
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A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
The inherence of quantity is called its mode, because it affects that quantity, which serves to ultimately determine the state and character of its existence, but does not add to it any new proper entity, but only modifies the preexisting entity.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3
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A reaction:
He seems to present mode as a very active thing, like someone who gives it a coat of paint, or hammers it into a new shape. I don't see how a 'mode' can have any ontological status at all. To exist, there has to be some way to exist.
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17007
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Forms must rule over faculties and accidents, and are the source of action and unity [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
A form is required that, as it were, rules over all those faculties and accidents, and is the source of all actions and natural motions of such a being, and in which the whole variety of accidents and powers has its root and unity.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.1.7), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4
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A reaction:
Pasnau emphasises that this is scholastics giving a very physical and causal emphasis to forms, which made them vulnerable to doubts among the new experiment physicists. Pasnau says forms are 'metaphysical', following Leibniz.
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16780
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Partial forms of leaf and fruit are united in the whole form of the tree [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
In a tree the part of the form that is in the leaf is not the same character as the part that is in the fruit., but yet they are partial forms, and apt to be united ….to compose one complete form of the whole.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.30), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 26.6
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A reaction:
This is a common scholastic view, the main opponent of which was Aquinas, who says each thing only has one form. Do leaves have different DNA from the bark or the fruit? Presumably not (since I only have one DNA), which supports Aquinas.
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16758
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The best support for substantial forms is the co-ordinated unity of a natural being [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
The most powerful arguments establishing substantial forms are based on the necessity, for the perfect constitution of a natural being, that all the faculties and operations of that being are rooted in one essential principle.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.64), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4
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A reaction:
Note Idea 15756, that this stability not only applies to biological entities (the usual Aristotelian examples), but also to non-living natural kinds. We might say that the drive for survival is someone united around a single entity.
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16742
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We only know essences through non-essential features, esp. those closest to the essence [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
We can almost never set out the essences of things, as they are in things. Instead, we work through their connection to some non-essential feature, and we seem to succeed well enough when we spell it out through the feature closest to the essence.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5
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A reaction:
It is a common view that with geometrical figures we can actually experience the essence itself. So has science broken through, and discerned actual essences of things?
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15149
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Properties cluster together, either because of intrinsic relations, or because of an underlying process [Boyd, by Chakravartty]
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Full Idea:
Boyd analyses 'sociability' between properties in terms of 'homeostasis', as causal relations between properties that favour clustering, or underlying processes that favour coinstantiation, or both.
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From:
report of Richard Boyd (Homeostasis, Species and Higher Taxa [1999]) by Anjan Chakravarrty - Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences 3
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A reaction:
Chakravarty criticises this claim, by Boyd is clearly onto something. If, like me, you think natural kinds are overrated, you have to like his view.
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7563
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The old 'influx' view of causation says it is a flow of accidental properties from A to B [Suárez, by Jolley]
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Full Idea:
The 'influx' model of causation says that causes involve a process of contagion, as it were; when the kettle boils, the gas infects the water inside the kettle with its own 'individual accident' of heat, which literally flows from one to the other.
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From:
report of Francisco Suárez (works [1588]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.2
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A reaction:
This nicely captures the scholastic target of Hume's sceptical thinking on the subject. However, see Idea 2542, where the idea of influx has had a revival. It is hard to see how the water could change if it didn't 'catch' something from the gas.
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