Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Bonaventura, Stephen Hetherington and Timothy Smiley

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4 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes
Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: An accident's aptitudinal relationship to a subject is essential, and this is never taken away from accidents….for it is true to say that they are suited to a subject.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], IV.12.1.1.1c)
     A reaction: This is the compromise view that allows accidents to be separated, for Transubstantiation, while acknowledging that we identify them with their subjects.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 6. Successive Things
Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: Everything successive reduces to something permanent.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], II.2.1.1.3 ad 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2
     A reaction: Avicenna first took successive entities seriously, but Bonaventure and Aquinas seem to have rejected them, or given reductive accounts of them. It resembles modern actualists versus modal realists.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding
Aristotle's proofs give understanding, so it can't be otherwise, so consequence is necessary [Smiley, by Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: The ingredient of necessity [in Aristotle's account of consequence] is required by his demand that proof should produce 'understanding' [episteme], coupled with his claim that understanding something involves seeing that it cannot be otherwise.
     From: report of Timothy Smiley (Conceptions of Consequence [1998], p.599) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 3.2
     A reaction: An intriguing reverse of the normal order. Not 'necessity in logic delivers understanding', but 'reaching understanding shows the logic was necessary'.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / b. Gettier problem
A Gettier case is a belief which is true, and its fallible justification involves some luck [Hetherington]
     Full Idea: A Gettier case contains a belief which is true and well justified without being knowledge. Its justificatory support is also fallible, ...and there is considerable luck in how the belief combnes being true with being justified.
     From: Stephen Hetherington (The Gettier Problem [2011], 5)
     A reaction: This makes luck the key factor. 'Luck' is a rather vague concept, and so the sort of luck involved must first be spelled out. Or the varieties of luck that can produce this outcome.