Abstract
Some philosophers in their work are led on to ever greater complexity; others seek simplicity and clarity of argument and vision. Each type of mind serves to check the shortcomings of the other. In our age philosophy is more professionalized than ever before, so as a result the first sort of mind is in the ascendant. All the more important, therefore, is the role of those who will not let their thought be dissipated in endless ramifications. Richard Taylor’s particular intellectual contribution has been to discover, or to restate, simple and direct, yet profound and forceful, arguments which lead to important conclusions about major philosophical issues. He has done this in a way which involves no sacrifice of contemporary standards of rigor and exactness.
I am greatly indebted to Bruce Langtry, Peter van Inwagen, and Sydney Shoemaker for criticism of earlier drafts of this paper.
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Notes
A Treatise of Human Nature 1. 4. 2, 6, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford University Press, London, 1888, pp. 187–218, 251–263.
One contemporary philosoher who appears to accept an identity analysis of identity through time, at any rate with respect to the self, is Roderick Chisholm. See Section 1 of his `Problems of Identity’ in Identity and Individuation, ed. by Milton K. Munitz, New York University Press, 1971, pp. 3–30.
Presented in his rich though difficult Chap. 27 (`Of Identity and Diversity’) in Book 2 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,2 vols., ed. by A. C. Fraser, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1894, Vol. 1, pp. 439–470.
Essay 2. 27. 28; Fraser edition, Vol. 1, p. 469.
Essay 2. 27. 4; Fraser edition, Vol. 1, pp. 442, emphasis is added.
Essay 2. 27. 12; Fraser edition, Vol. 1, p. 453, emphasis added.
Section 5 may be quoted here (Fraser, Vol. 1, p. 443): “We must therefore consider wherein an oak differs from a mass of matter, and that seems to me to be in this, that the one is only the cohesion of particles of matter any how united, the other such a disposition of them as constitutes the parts of an oak; and such an organization of those parts as is fit to receive and distribute nourishment, so as to continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves, etc., of an oak, in which consists the vegetable life. That being then one plant which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant”.
Essay 2. 27. 28; Fraser, Vol. 1 p. 469.
Treatise 1.4. 5; Selby-Bigge edition, p. 238.
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Armstrong, D.M. (1980). Identity Through Time. In: Van Inwagen, P. (eds) Time and Cause. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3528-5_5
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