Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Comment on Armstrong and Forrest' and 'Summa Theologicae'

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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 / A. Modes of Thought / 6. Judgement / a. Nature of Judgement
First grasp what it is, then its essential features; judgement is their compounding and division [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: The intellect first apprehends the quiddity of a thing. ...Then it acquires the properties, accidents and dispositions associated with the thing's essence. It must proceed from one compounding or dividing of aspects to another, which is reasoning.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologicae [1265], Ia.Q85 5c), quoted by Kretzmann/Stump - Aquinas, Thomas 11
     A reaction: [compressed] Tracking the process of acquiring knowledge of a thing (rather than necessary and sufficient conditions for full knowledge) is closer to Quine's naturalised epistemology than to the standard analytic approach to the concept of knowledge.