Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'works' and 'Problems in Personal Identity'

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3 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / a. Nature of Being
The concept of being has only one meaning, whether talking of universals or of God [Duns Scotus, by Dumont]
     Full Idea: Duns Scotus was the first scholastic to hold that the concept of being and other transcendentals were univocal, not only in application to substance and accidents, but even to God and creatures.
     From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.205
     A reaction: So either it exists or it doesn't. No nonsense about 'subsisting'. Russell flirted with subsistence, but Quine agrees with Duns Scotus (and so do I).
Being (not sensation or God) is the primary object of the intellect [Duns Scotus, by Dumont]
     Full Idea: Duns Scotus said the primary object of the created intellect was being, rejecting Aquinas's Aristotelian view that it was limited to the quiddity of the sense particular, and Henry of Ghent's Augustinian view that it was God.
     From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.205
     A reaction: I suppose the 'primary object of the intellect' is the rationalist/empiricism disagreement. So (roughly) Aquinas was an empiricist, Duns Scotus was a rationalist, and Augustine was a transcendentalist? Augustine sounds like Spinoza.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence
Chrysippus says action is the criterion for existence, which must be physical [Chrysippus, by Tieleman]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus regarded power to act and be acted upon as the criterion for existence or being - a test satisfied by bodies alone.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Teun L. Tieleman - Chrysippus
     A reaction: This defines existence in terms of causation. Is he ruling out a priori a particle (say) which exists, but never interacts with anything? If so, he is inclining towards anti-realism.