3 ideas
16706 | Generation is when local motions aggregate to become a single subject [Nicholas of Autrecourt] |
Full Idea: In the case of natural things there is only local motion. When from such motion there follows an aggregation of natural bodies that are gathered to one another and acquire the nature of a single subject, this is called generation. | |
From: Nicholas of Autrecourt (Tractatus [1335], Ch. 1) | |
A reaction: This is explosive atomistic corpuscularianism, three centuries before its appointed date. He was duly suppressed. Can he give an account of the 'nature of a single subject' in this way? |
6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |
8338 | A phenomenalist about objects has to be a regularity theorist about causation [Strawson,G] |
Full Idea: If you are a phenomenalist about objects, then there is an important sense in which you ought to be a Regularity theorist about what causation is, in such objects. | |
From: Galen Strawson (The Secret Connexion [1989], App C) | |
A reaction: Strawson is denying that Hume is a phenomenalist. One might go a little further, and say that a phenomenalist should abandon the idea of causation (as Russell did). |