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16657
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Substance, Quantity and Quality are real; other categories depend on those three [Henry of Ghent]
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Full Idea:
Among creatures there are only three 'res' belong to the three first categories: Substance, Quantity and Quality. All other are aspects [rationes] and intellectual concepts with respect to them, with reality only as grounded on the res of those three.
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From:
Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3
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A reaction:
Pasnau connects with the 'arrangement of being', giving an 'ontologically innocent' structure to reality. That seems to be what we all want, if only we could work out the ontologically guilty bit.
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16645
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Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent]
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Full Idea:
Accidents are beings only in a qualified and diminished sense, because they are not called beings, nor are they beings, except because they are dispositions of an unqualified being, a substance.
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From:
Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], XV.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.4
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A reaction:
This is aimed to 'half' detach the accidents (as the Eucharist requires). Later scholastics detached them completely. Late scholastics seem to have drifted back to Henry's view. The equivocal use of 'being' here was challenged later.
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19743
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A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4)
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A reaction:
This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role?
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22012
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Kant says things-in-themselves cause sensations, but then makes causation transcendental! [Henry of Ghent, by Pinkard]
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Full Idea:
Kant claimed that things-in-themselves caused our sensations; but causality was a transcendental condition of experience, not a property of things-in-themselves, so the great Kant had contradicted himself.
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From:
report of Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], Supplement) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04
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A reaction:
This early objection by the conservative Jacobi (who disliked Enlightenment rational religion) is the key to the dispute over whether Kant is an idealist. Kant denied being an idealist, but how can he be, if this idea is correct?
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19741
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If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2)
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A reaction:
In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong.
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19742
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Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3)
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A reaction:
This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'.
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