Corpus evidence — top 10 passages

Most-relevant passages from the entire indexed corpus (67,286 paragraph chunks across YouTube transcripts, PubMed, arXiv, archive.org, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, OpenAlex, and more) ranked by semantic similarity (bge-small-en-v1.5).

1. 01 · gutenberg0.791

   A _system of thought_ must always have an architectonic connection or coherence, that is, a connection in which one part always supports the other, though the latter does not support the former, in which ultimately the foundation supports all the rest without being supported by it, and the apex is supported without supporting. On the other hand, a _single thought_, however comprehensive it may be, must preserve the most perfect unity. If it admits of being broken up into parts to facilitate its communication, the connection of these parts must yet be organic, _i.e._, it must be a connection in…

   gutenberg/PG-38427-the-world-as-will-and-idea-vol-1-of-3/PG-38427.txt

2. 02 · blog0.780

   Essentialist Claims in Arguments for Nonidentities Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. The Modal Characterization of the Essential/Accidental Property Distinction According to the basic modal characterization of the distinction between essential and accidental properties, which is the characterization given at the outset, \(P\) is an essential property of an object \(o\) just in case it is necessary that \(o\) has \(P\), whereas \(P\) is an accidental property of an object \(o\) just in case \(o\) has \(P\) but it is possible that \(o\) lacks \(P\). Putting …

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/essential-vs-accidental-properties.md

3. 03 · blog0.780

   The second property is uniqueness: the necessary has no “homologue”: there is nothing that—even if equivalent to it as regards its definition—could exist together with it and thus occupy the same rank of existence, without being either its cause or its effect. Two necessary beings would in fact either both be caused (and therefore both non-necessary), or refer to a cause that would make only one of them exist; but in the latter case, they could no longer be defined as equivalent or homologous ( mutakāfī al-wuǧūd ): one would be possible and caused, while the other—in the absence of another ext…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/ibn-sina-s-metaphysics.md

4. 04 · blog0.775

   On this basis a theory of meaning for German that was given in English might be expected to generate theorems that would explicate the German sentence ‘Schnee ist weiss’ as meaning that snow is white. Since the number of potential sentences in any natural language is infinite, a theory of meaning for a language that is to be of use to creatures with finite powers such as ourselves, must be a theory that can generate an infinity of theorems (one for each sentence) on the basis of a finite set of axioms. Indeed, any language that is to be learnable by creatures such as ourselves must possess a s…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/donald-davidson.md

5. 05 · blog0.771

   It is also closely linked to recent discussions regarding metaphysical grounding , to which we will return later, in §5 . One upshot of all this is that, for the purpose of defining ontologically independent existents (if there are any) , (EDR) should be replaced, at least to a first approximation, by something like: (EDX) x depends X for its existence upon y = df Necessarily, x exists only because y exists. We use the subscript “X” because, in line with foregoing remarks, it seems appropriate to call this species of ontological dependence eXplanatory existential dependence. (We shall need the…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/ontological-dependence.md

6. 06 · blog0.770

   Common notions, which started out, in Aristotle and later the Stoics, as shared starting points for inquiry and argument, are expanded by Alexander to incorporate features of dialectical starting points, points about which there is general agreement, and scientific axioms. They are not innate, but immediately evident to everyone, and serve as indemonstrable starting points for scientific knowledge — the prime example for metaphysics being the principle of non-contradiction (de Haas 2021). Another core problem in the Metaphysics for ancient readers of Aristotle, was the status of the eidos or f…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/alexander-of-aphrodisias.md

7. 07 · blog0.770

   The challenge in this context is to provide an ontological ground of unity of particulars and universals, and the worry is that any appeal to a relation R (of instantiation, exemplification, etc.) to unify a particular a with its respective property universal F sets off an infinite regress of relations, similar to the regresses described by Bradley. In the light of this problem, some realists such as Olson (1987), and Armstrong (1997) have argued that it is a third entity – the fact or state of affairs of a being F that provides the ontological ground of unity of a and Fness as well as the tru…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/bradley-s-regress.md

8. 08 · blog0.769

   Independently of his counterpart theory, Lewis’s definition of a possible object has some peculiar consequences, given that existence in general is understood as bearing of the part-of relation to the whole that constitutes the domain of discourse. Take any two possible worlds w 1 and w 2 . Lewis wants to assert that both w 1 and w 2 exist in some sense. So for the assertion to be true, it must be true relative to a domain of discourse which contains as a sub-domain some whole of which both w 1 and w 2 are part. Not both are part of a single possible world or of its part. The smallest whole of…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/possible-objects.md

9. 09 · blog0.768

   The thought here is that we need more fine-grained tools than mere necessary equivalence: two statements can apply to the very same entities across all possible worlds but not be equivalent. Here, the notion of essence is often invoked, and many would now regard the ultimate basis of dependence (and indeed of modality itself) to be essence (see Fine 1994a, Lowe 1998, Correia 2005, and Koslicki 2012). Finally, it is entirely possible to deny both approaches and regard the notion of ontological dependence itself as a primitive (see Thomasson 1998: Ch. 2 and Barnes 2012: 879). Some would regard t…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/ontological-dependence.md

10. 10 · blog0.768

    Chatton disapproves of Ockham’s contention that there are ten categories for only two sorts of things, substances and some of their qualities. To establish his ontological claim, Chatton argues for each class on a case-by-case basis, employing the Chatton Principle (see above 3.2). He had already done this in the case of relations in the earlier Reportatio , arguing that we are ontologically committed to certain classes of relational entities in order to make the propositions “a heat causes heat” or “the soul causes an intellection” and “Plato generates Socrates” true. Now, in the Lectura , he…

    blog/plato-stanford-edu/walter-chatton.md