Category: Unity of a Complex
-
More on the Unity of Consciousness: From Self to Immortal Soul?
Suppose I see a black cat. The act of visual awareness in a case like this is typically, even if not always, accompanied by a simultaneous secondary awareness of the primary awareness. I am aware of the cat, but I am also aware of being aware of the cat. How does the Humean* account for…
-
Thomas Aquinas: Unity is Our Strength!
Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, Chapter 1, C. J. O'Neill, tr., University of Notre Dame Press, 1975, p. 35, para. 2, emphasis added: . . . since causes are more noble than their effects, the very first caused things are lower than the First Cause, which is God, and still stand out above their effects.…
-
Pluralities
To what does the plural referring expression, 'the cats in my house,' refer? Not to plurality, but to a plurality. A plurality is one item, not many items. It is one item with many members. 'The guitars in my house' refers to a numerically different plurality. It too refers to one item with many members. …
-
Existence, Unity, Possibility, and Actuality: Are There Merely Possible Individuals?
Steven Nemes by e-mail: Here’s a question for you about existence, perhaps one you could discuss on the blog. In your book, you argue that existence is ontological unity. I think that’s right. But a merely possible this-such is a unity as much as an actual this-such. What then distinguishes merely possible existence from actual…
-
Penultimate Draft: Meinertsen Review for Metaphysica
REVIEW ARTICLE Bo R. Meinertsen, Metaphysics of States of Affairs: Truthmaking, Universals, and a Farewell to Bradley's Regress, Springer 2018, 174 + xviii pp. Summary Professor Meinertsen's detailed treatment of states of affairs agrees with the spirit and much of the letter of David M. Armstrong's middle period as represented in his A World of…
-
Van Til on Divine Simplicity and the One and the Many
(Edits added 2/10/19) Cornelius Van Til rightly distinguishes in God between the unity of singularity and the unity of simplicity. The first refers to God's numerical oneness. "There is and can be only one God." (The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., p. 31) The second refers to God's absolute simplicity or lack of compositeness:…
-
The Problem of the Unity of the Proposition
Jacques writes, I'm thinking about this problem and getting increasingly frustrated by the way in which it's discussed in philosophy. I wonder if you have any ideas. Let me explain what bothers me . . . Typically, philosophers begin with the idea that 'the proposition' needs to be explained or characterized in some special way…
-
Working Draft: The Case Against Facts
Comments appreciated if you are en rapport with the subject matter. The Case Against Facts Arianna Betti, Against Facts, The MIT Press, 2015, pp. 296 + xxvii If Buridan's contribution to the bestiarum philosophorum was the ass, and David Armstrong's the ostrich, Arianna Betti's is the hedgehog bristling with spines. The hedgehog…
-
Indeterminate Yet Existent? The Aporetics of Prime Matter and Pure Consciousness
Scott Roberts e-mails in reference to my post Hylomorphic Ontological Analysis and the Puzzle of Prime Matter: I have also been perplexed at hylomorphism's dependence on something called [prime] 'matter', for the same reason as you give. But I think there is a way out, though perhaps not one a hylomorphist will like. You say…
-
Is the Difference Between a Fact and Its Constituents a Brute Difference?
Note to Steven Nemes: Tell me if you find this totally clear, and if not, point out what is unclear. Tell me whether you accept my overall argument. The day before yesterday in conversation Steven Nemes presented a challenge I am not sure I can meet. I have maintained (in my book, in published articles,…
-
Richard Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition
The current issue of Dialectica (vol. 64, no. 2, June 2010) includes a symposium on Richard Gaskin, The Unity of the Proposition (Oxford 2008). Gaskin's precis of his work is followed by critical evaluations by William F. Vallicella ("Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition"), Manuel Garcia-Carpintero ("Gaskin's Ideal Unity"), and Benjamin Schnieder ("Propositions United:…
-
Are the Souls of Brute Animals Subsistent? Considerations Anent the Unity of Consciousness
We have been discussing the view of Thomas Aquinas according to which (i) the soul is the form of the body, and (ii) the souls of some animals, namely rational animals, are subsistent, i.e. capable of an existence independent of matter. I have registered some of my misgivings. Here is another. If our souls are…
-
Richard Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition
The following is my contribution to a symposium on Richard Gaskin's The Unity of the Proposition. The symposium, together with Gaskin's replies, is scheduled to appear in the December 2009 issue of Dialectica. GASKIN ON THE UNITY OF THE PROPOSITION William F. Vallicella While studying Richard Gaskin’s The Unity of the Proposition (Oxford 2008), the word…
-
On the Elusive Notion of a Set: Sets as Products of Collectings
In an important article, Max Black writes: Beginners are taught that a set having three members is a single thing, wholly constituted by its members but distinct from them. After this, the theological doctrine of the Trinity as "three in one" should be child's play. ("The Elusiveness of Sets," Review of Metaphysics, June 1971, p.…