Concept tag
#universals
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Reading group: Porphyry’s Isagoge and the three questions he refused to answer
Porphyry wrote the Isagoge, a short "Introduction" to Aristotle's Categories, in the late third century. In the opening lines he raises three questions about genera and species, and then declines to answer them because they need a deeper inquiry: Do they subsist,…
Started by Siobhán Keane6 replies138 views -
What is apoha, and how can a word mean something by excluding everything else?
I'm a poet and new to formal philosophy, so please be gentle. In a seminar on translation someone mentioned that the Buddhist philosopher Dignāga held that the word “cow” means something like “not non-cow”. Everyone nodded. I laughed, because it sounded like…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies202 views -
Is Zhu Xi’s li a universal? What does ‘principle is one, manifestations many’ mean?
I teach ethics at a secondary school in Seoul. Toegye is on the 1,000-won note and my students can tell you he was a Neo-Confucian, but not what that means. This term I am trying to explain li (理, "principle" or "pattern")…
Started by Ji-woo Park5 replies205 views -
Does a diagnosis name a real condition, or a useful bundle of symptoms?
I work in internal medicine in Addis Ababa. Some diagnoses I make every day feel like discoveries: a particular infection, caused by a particular organism, with a test that finds it. Others feel more like agreements. "Metabolic syndrome" is a cluster of…
Started by Tsion Bekele5 replies157 views -
How is apoha supposed to work? ‘Cow’ means ‘not non-cow’ sounds circular to me
I teach mathematics, and when I read that Dignāga's theory of meaning says a word like "cow" works by exclusion, meaning roughly "not non-cow", my first reaction was the one I would have to a student's proof: this is circular. To exclude…
Started by Vikram Sethi5 replies194 views