Online research in philosophy

For most early Medieval and Scholastic philosophers working in the Aristotelian tradition, knowledge of any specific subject is knowledge of its causes and principles. Knowledge of individuals was no exception. As Jorge Gracia has written "To know individuality [for early Medieval and Scholastic philosophers] is to be able to determine the causes and principles that are responsible for it."1 The achievement of such ability is also known as the problem of individuation. This paper will be concerned with the solution to the problem suggested by Leibniz’s writings and how it relates to the contemporary metaphysical debate. In the first section I introduce the problem of individuation along with the solution Leibniz proposed during the latter part of his life. The second section analyzes Leibniz’s solution in a contemporary perspective. I argue that, unlike during the Medieval and early Modern periods, today the epistemic side of the problem of individuation plays a major role in the debate. In this light, Leibniz’s proposal that humans cannot grasp what the individuality of an individual consists in seems problematic. I show, however, that Leibniz’s proposal can stand on its feet also nowadays, provided we are willing to give up the pretenses that there is a definitive count of individuals and that re-identifying individuals across time and space is part of the problem of individuation.

This paper is a defense of John Duns Scotus’s theory of individuation against one of William of Ockham’s objections. In the Ordinatio II. D.3. P. 1, John Duns Scotus argues for the existence of haecceity, a positive, indivisible distinction which makes an individual an individual rather than a kind of thing. He argues for the existence of haecceity by arguing for a form which is a “real less than numerical unity” and is neither universal nor singular. In the Summa Logicae, William of Ockham objects to Scotus’s theory of haecceity by attacking his theory of universals, claiming that the same thing would be proper and common simultaneously. The basis of Ockham’s objections is that only a real distinction is possible: if things are distinct, then they can exist separately. Without universals, a principle of individuation is unnecessary. To defend Scotus’s principle of individuation, an account and defense of the formal distinction is necessary. Without the formal distinction, metaphysical categories, such as being and one, are incoherent or contradictory. The formal distinction gives rise to a new law of contradiction:two or more entities are formally distinct if and only if contradiction or non-being results from their separation and the properties of one being do not match theproperties of the other being(s).

The status of beauty in Plotinus' metaphysics is unclear: is it a Form in Intellect, the Intelligible Principle itself, or the One? Basing themselves on a number of well-known passages in the "Enneads," and assuming that Plotinus' Forms are similar in function and status to Plato's, many scholars hold that Plotinus theorized beauty as a determinate entity in Intellect. Such assumptions, it is here argued, lead to difficulties over self-predication, the interpretation of Plotinus's rich and varied aesthetic terminology and, most of all, the puzzling dearth of references, in the whole of the "Enneads," to a Form of Beauty. A detailed reading of VI.7.32 and 33 reveals that, in these two crucial passages at least, Plotinus adopts an aesthetic approach to the One and that, far from confining Beauty to Intellect, he equates the One, the Good and the Beautiful. This reading is here supported not only by an analysis of the text but also by a consideration of the semantic differences between μορφή and ε[unrepresentable symbol]δος, the inter-relatedness, in Plotinus' philosophy, of the concepts of love and value, and the exclusion of beauty from the πρ[unrepresentable symbol]τα γένη. In turn, the exegesis of VI.7.32 and 33 raises the issue of the significance for aesthetics understood in the narrow sense of the word, of Plotinus's ontology of beauty. It is here claimed that in so far as sensible beauty, both artistic and natural, can be nothing else than an effect of the shaping action of the Forms and a reflection of their radiance, singular or global, it should not be held that Plotinus had an aesthetics in the modern sense of this term.

The status of beauty in Plotinus' metaphysics is unclear: is it a Form in Intellect, the Intelligible Principle itself, or the One? Basing themselves on a number of well-known passages in the "Enneads," and assuming that Plotinus' Forms are similar in function and status to Plato's, many scholars hold that Plotinus theorized beauty as a determinate entity in Intellect. Such assumptions, it is here argued, lead to difficulties over self-predication, the interpretation of Plotinus's rich and varied aesthetic terminology and, most of all, the puzzling dearth of references, in the whole of the "Enneads," to a Form of Beauty. A detailed reading of VI.7.32 and 33 reveals that, in these two crucial passages at least, Plotinus adopts an aesthetic approach to the One and that, far from confining Beauty to Intellect, he equates the One, the Good and the Beautiful. This reading is here supported not only by an analysis of the text but also by a consideration of the semantic differences between μορφή and ε[unrepresentable symbol]δος, the inter-relatedness, in Plotinus' philosophy, of the concepts of love and value, and the exclusion of beauty from the πρ[unrepresentable symbol]τα γένη. In turn, the exegesis of VI.7.32 and 33 raises the issue of the significance for aesthetics understood in the narrow sense of the word, of Plotinus's ontology of beauty. It is here claimed that in so far as sensible beauty, both artistic and natural, can be nothing else than an effect of the shaping action of the Forms and a reflection of their radiance, singular or global, it should not be held that Plotinus had an aesthetics in the modern sense of this term.

One important part of Aquinas’s theory of the nature of corruptible corporeal substances is his account of the individuation of such entities. In this paper, I examine an aspect of Aquinas’s account of individuation that has not received as much attention as some others, namely, how Aquinas applies his account of individuation specifically to cases involving non-living corporeal substances. I first offer an interpretation of a key passage in Aquinas’s corpus where he explains his theory of individuation. Second, I examine a text where Aquinas applies his account of individuation to a case involving non-living substances. Finally, I raise a possible objection to what Aquinas says about the individuation of non-living substances and in answering the objection suggest that Aquinas holds the view that non-living substances enjoy a less perfect mode of individuality when compared to living substances.

The question “What is an organism?”, formerly considered as essential in biology, has now been increasingly replaced by a larger question, “What is a biological individual?”. On the grounds that i) individuation is theory-dependent, and ii) physiology does not offer a theory, biologists and philosophers of biology have claimed that it is the theory of evolution by natural selection which tells us what counts as a biological individual. Here I show that one physiological field, immunology, offers a theory, which makes possible a biological individuation based on physiological grounds. I give a new answer to the question of the individuation of an organism by linking together the evolutionary and the immunological approaches to biological individuation.

Is the number an absolute intelligible reality? The author investigates the number and its nature in Plotinus. works trying to solve the following question: what number is considered intelligible - the number in general or the number in particular? Three answers are given over this study. Thus, if the number is generally defined as intelligible (as Plotinus sometimes does), than the number in general is an intelligible reality (a general intelligible number, therefore, exists). On the other hand, if we make a distinction between numbers (the plural) and number (the singular), it seems that, for Plotinus, only the particular number could be considered clearly intelligible, while the number as a generic reality is not so. Actually, the final solution comes out from the agreement between these two divergent theses. This agreement is based on the idea of the total number: a number that is in the same time particular and general, a number which is the object of the final part of the present study.

cause other than the very individual itself, and thus there is no ‘metaphysical’ problem of individuation at all—individuality, unlike generality, is primitive and needs no explanation. He supports this view in two ways. First, he argues that there are no nonindividual entities, whether existing in their own right or as metaphysical constituents either of things or in things, and hence that no real principle or cause of individuality (other than the individual itself) is required. Second, he offers a ‘semantic’ interpretation of what appear to be metaphysical difficulties about individuality by recasting the issues in the formal mode, as issues within semantics, such as how a referring expression can pick out a single individual. Yet although there is no ‘metaphysical’ problem of individuation, Buridan discusses two associated problems at some length: the identity of individuals over time and the discernibility of individuals.