Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Posterior Analytics' and 'The Concept of a Person'

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2 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / c. Animal rationality
Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial'
     A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 2. Abstracta by Selection
We learn primitives and universals by induction from perceptions [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: We must get to know the primitives by induction; for this is the way in which perception instils universals.
     From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 100b04)
     A reaction: This statement is so strongly empirical it could have come from John Stuart Mill. The modern post-Fregean view of universals is essentially platonist - that they have a life and logic of their own, and their method of acquisition is irrelevant.