Friday 30 March 2018

The Importance of Nietzsche

Some may like Heller's The Importance of Nietzsche. Others, who are almost certain to be triggered by it, may not. I recommend reading it either way. If you want to understand post-modern man, you must understand Nietzsche.

Thursday 29 March 2018

One Blog, Three Bloggers

Ontological Investigations is one blog, but three bloggers. We aren't a hive mind, and what one of us posts shouldn't be taken as indicative of what all of us think.

Wednesday 28 March 2018

Does existence have an essence?

This post assumes distinctions drawn here.

It's sometimes objected that since Thomists say that “that something is” (existence) is really distinct from “what something is” (essence), they can't account for “what existence is”.

The reply is that even though a's existence is distinct from a's essence (a), it doesn't follow that a's existence doesn't have its own essence. So assuming Thomists can give some account of existence (e.g. Barry Miller argues that existence is a property), they can account for “what existence is”.

Three Essential Distinctions

The first is between a's essence and a. a's essence is identical with a. a is identical with a's essence. No matter how you slice it, they're the same thing. (a's essence encompasses all of what a is.) Essence and nature are synonyms.

The second is between a's essence and its substantial form (natural kind). a's essence is what a is; a's substantial form is the natural kind-universal or -instance that is a constituent of a. “a's essence” (a) includes its particularity, and we more or less come to know it through the senses; a's substantial form doesn't include a's particularity, and has to be abstracted from that which we acquire through the senses. If you muddle this distinction, you're going to run into questions like “How do we know x individual's essence?”

The third is between a's essence and a's existence. a's essence is just a. a's existence (say Thomists) is something additional to a (e.g. Barry Miller's existence property-instances). The result (if they're right) is that there is a real distinction between a and existing a.

Thursday 22 March 2018

Properties or Properties?

There is an ambiguity in how philosophers use "properties". Sometimes we talk about properties (universals) as opposed to particulars. Other times, properties as opposed to substances.

FAQ: The Problem of Universals

I originally wrote this for an ontology reading group in 2016. I thought it worth posting here, warts and all:

What is the Problem of Universals?

If I go outside, there are trees with same shaped leaves. If I go into my kitchen, there are bags of same coloured apples or potatoes. It's a Moorean fact—a pre-analytic datum—that many distinct things have identical properties.

The problem of universals asks how to account for this datum.

What is the difference between a realist and a nominalist?

Recall the categories tree from Lowe's A Survey of Metaphysics:

                                                   
Given two identically red apples, the believer in universals will say that the red in each of the apples is the exact same entity wholly present in both apples; the nominalist will deny that there are any such entities. The believer in universals says there are either universals, or universals and particulars in reality; the nominalist says there are only particulars.

Can nominalists still believe in properties?

Yes. Although, given our two apples, they would say that apple1 and apple2 each have their own red property, red1 and red2 respectively. They would, in other words, make the properties into particulars.

Wait, so I can believe in properties even if I'm not a “realist”?

Yes. There is a distinction between realism about universals (universals realism) and realism about properties (property realism). In work on the problem of universals, "realism" is usually used to mean realism about universals, but one shouldn't let this convention mislead them.

What about nominalists that don't believe in properties?

Nominalists that don't believe in properties try to give an analysis of our pre-analytic datum some other way (e.g. they say the two red objects just fall under the same words, or the same mental concepts).

What is the difference between transcendent and immanent realism?

There is an important distinction between instantiated and uninstantiated properties. The property white is instantiated when there is at least one white object in the universe. It's uninstantiated when there are no white objects in the universe.

Transcendent realists say that, whether or not there are instantiated properties, there are uninstantiated properties in the world; immanent realists say there are only instantiated properties.

(Transcendent and immanent realists are sometimes also called Platonic and Aristotelian realists respectively.)

Wednesday 14 March 2018

Indiscernible Universals?

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra on Indiscernible Universals—hardcore ontologyheads only.

Only as that of an Insane or Deranged Person

It was a custom among our ancestors, practiced even into my own lifetime, to add to the opening words of a letter, “If you are doing well, that’s good; I am doing well myself.” The right thing for us to say is, “If you are doing philosophy, that’s good.” For that is the only way one can really be doing well. Without that, the mind is sick; and the body too, even if it has great strength, is sound only as that of an insane or deranged person might be. So care for the mind’s health first and foremost, and for the other only secondarily: it will not cost you much, if you have resolved to be truly well.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters on Ethics.

It follows from Seneca's claim that most people are fit, but "only as [. . .] an insane or deranged person might be".

Tuesday 13 March 2018

Monday 5 March 2018

The Mystery of Time (or, the Man who did not know what Time is)

Bouwsma's The Mystery of Time (or, the Man who did not know what Time is) appeared in The Journal of Philosophy. The first part, however, is a short story. Only later does it turn into a reflection on language and time. The whole essay is a bit dated (1954), but with that in mind it's still worth reading.

Four Quotes on Time

The other day, I found a list of quotes from October 2015. I thought now as good a time as any to post it:

I.
For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past time, and if nothing were coming, there would be no future time; and if nothing were, there would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when even now the past is not; and the future is not as yet? But should the present be always present, and should it not pass into time past, time truly it could not be, but eternity. If, then, time present—if it be time—only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be—namely, so that we cannot say that time is, unless because it tends not to be?

Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. (ca. 400 AD)

II.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven.
That time may cease, and midnight never come

Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Faustus. (ca. 1604 AD)

III.
Philalethes: Our measurement of time would be more accurate if we could keep a past day for comparison with the days to come, as we keep measures of space.

G. W. Leibniz. New Essays on Human Understanding. (ca. 1765 AD)

IV.
The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.

Lord Alfred Tennyson. In Memoriam A.H.H. (ca. 1849 AD)

Saturday 3 March 2018

The Bad and the Ugly

You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can't believe it. Things aren't that way. It is only by showing both sides—3 dimensions and if possible 4 that you can write the way I want to.

Ernest Hemingway to Dr. C. E. Hemingway, Selected Letters, p. 153.