more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
What really makes for the diversity of two tigers is their difference in space-time location, from which their difference in component matter at any time merely follows as a consequence.
Gist of Idea
Diversity of two tigers is their difference in space-time; difference of matter is a consequence
Source
E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 9.5)
Book Ref
Lowe,E.J.: 'The Possibility of Metaphysics' [OUP 2001], p.201
A Reaction
I daresay this is how we manage to identify the diversity of a pair of tigers (epistemology), but is that what their diversity consists in (ontology)? That they employ different matter seems relevant. If you feed one, the other stays hungry (causation).
| 14960 | Bodies are independent of thought, and coincide with part of space [Hobbes] |
| 17250 | If you separate the two places of one thing, you will also separate the thing [Hobbes] |
| 17249 | If you separated two things in the same place, you would also separate the places [Hobbes] |
| 12506 | A thing is individuated just by existing at a time and place [Locke] |
| 12563 | Obviously two bodies cannot be in the same place [Locke] |
| 12693 | A body is that which exists in space [Leibniz] |
| 13098 | We use things to distinguish places and times, not vice versa [Leibniz] |
| 21535 | Objects only exist if they 'occupy' space and time [Russell] |
| 16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
| 4480 | Times and places are identified by objects, so cannot be used in a theory of object-identity [Loux] |
| 8292 | Diversity of two tigers is their difference in space-time; difference of matter is a consequence [Lowe] |
| 7961 | A 'thing' cannot be in two places at once, and two things cannot be in the same place at once [Macdonald,C] |