Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Stilpo, Bonaventura and Peter Carruthers

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6 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.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 5. Self as Associations
Can the mental elements of a 'bundle' exist on their own? [Carruthers]
     Full Idea: If the mind is merely a bundle of states and events, it must be logically possible for the various elements of the bundle to exist on their own.
     From: Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons [1986], 2.iii (A))
     A reaction: Depends how literally you take the bundle metaphor, and how much you are worried about 'logical' possibility (which only seems to mean imaginable). The answers to these questions do not have to be all-or-nothing.
Why would a thought be a member of one bundle rather than another? [Carruthers]
     Full Idea: What makes it true that a particular thought or experience is a member of one bundle rather than another?
     From: Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons [1986], 2.iii (B))
     A reaction: I'm not sure if you can answer this nice question without mentioning values. The mental events in are in my bundle because they matter to me (because they are related to my body, for which I am responsible). Compare picking my possessions out of a pile.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / c. Inadequacy of mental continuity
We identify persons before identifying conscious states [Carruthers]
     Full Idea: We can have no conception of the particularity of conscious states prior to, and independently of, a conception of a particularity of persons.
     From: Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons [1986], 2.iii (C))
     A reaction: agrees with Butler
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Stilpo asked a man whether Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and when he said yes, said,"But this statue of Athena by Phidias is the child of Phidias, so it is not a god."
     From: report of Stilpo (fragments/reports [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.10.5