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Ideas for 'works', 'Anarchical Fallacies: on the Declaration of Rights' and 'A Subject with No Object'

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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
The old debate classified representations as abstract, not entities [Burgess/Rosen]
     Full Idea: The original debate was over abstract ideas; thus it was mental (or linguistic) representations that were classified as abstract or otherwise, and not the entities represented.
     From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], I.A.1.b)
     A reaction: This seems to beg the question of whether there are any such entities. It is equally plausible to talk of the entities that are 'constructed', rather than 'represented'.