Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'De Corpore (Elements, First Section)' and 'There is no a Priori'

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2 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes
Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: An accident is a mode of conceiving a body.
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.02)
     A reaction: In contrast to the other thinkers who followed Suárez on modes in the early 17th century, Hobbes thinks they are just ways of 'conceiving' bodies, rather than actual features of them.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 12. Denial of Properties
Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: An accident's being in a body is not to be taken as something contained in that body - as if redness were in blood like blood in a bloody cloth, as part of the whole, for then accident would be a body. It is like body having size or rest or movement.
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.03)
     A reaction: [compressed] Hobbes is fishing for something like the Quinean view of properties, but no one seems to be able to articulate this sceptical view very well. Pasnau says he means to talk of 'the mode of conceiving a body' (De C 8.2).