Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Scientific Revolution 1500-1800' and 'Meditations'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / c. Unity as conceptual
If I can separate two things in my understanding, then God can separate them in reality [Descartes]
     Full Idea: My ability clearly and distinctly to understand one thing without another suffices to make me certain that the one thing is different from the other, since they can be separated from each other (at least by God).
     From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78)
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / e. Substance critique
Substance cannot be conceived or explained to others [Gassendi on Descartes]
     Full Idea: The alleged naked, or rather hidden, substance of wax is something that we can neither ourselves conceive nor explain to others.
     From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.31) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 273
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail
Dion and Theon coexist, but Theon lacks a foot. If Dion loses a foot, he ousts Theon? [Chrysippus, by Philo of Alexandria]
     Full Idea: If two individuals occupied one substance …let one individual (Dion) be thought of as whole-limbed, the other (Theon) as minus one foot. Then let one of Dion's feet be amputated. Theon is the stronger candidate to have perished.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Philo (Alex) - On the Eternity of the World 48
     A reaction: [SVF 2.397 - from Chrysippus's lost 'On the Growing Argument'] This is the original of Tibbles the Cat. Dion must persist to change, and then ousts Theon (it seems). Philo protests at Theon ceasing to exist when nothing has happened to him.