Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Matter and Memory', 'Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr)' and 'After Finitude'

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3 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / b. Primary/secondary
Which of the contrary features of a body are basic to it? [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: What sorts of contrarities, and how many of them, are to be accounted 'originative sources' of body?
     From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 329b04)
     A reaction: Pasnau says these pages of Aristotle are the source of the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities. Essentially, hot, cold, wet and dry are his four primary qualities.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / c. Primary qualities
The aspects of objects that can be mathematical allow it to have objective properties [Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: All aspects of the object that can give rise to a mathematical thought rather than to a perception or a sensation can be meaningfully turned into the properties of the thing not only as it is with me, but also as it is without me.
     From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1)
     A reaction: This is Meillassoux's spin on the primary/secondary distinction, which he places at the heart of the scientific revolution. Cartesian dualism offers a separate space for the secondary qualities. He is appalled when philosophers reject the distinction.
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 4. Memory
Bergson showed that memory is not after the event, but coexists with it [Bergson, by Deleuze]
     Full Idea: Bergson has shown that memory is not an actual image which forms after the object has been perceived, but a virtual image coexisting with the actual perception of the object.
     From: report of Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory [1896]) by Gilles Deleuze - The Actual and the Virtual p.114
     A reaction: It strikes me as plausible to say that all conscious life is memory. Perceiving the present instant is only possible because it endures for a tiny moment.