display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 2297 | 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) |
| 3628 | 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 |
| 16631 | If we remove surface qualities from wax, we have an extended, flexible, changeable thing [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: After taking away what does not belong to the wax, let us see what is left: surely, it is nothing other than a thing that is extended, flexible and changeable. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], (VII:30-1)), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 08.2 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle worried about nothing being left when you 'stripped' an object, so this could be seen as a positive contribution to scholastic philosophy. Why is the substrate 'flexible'? He talks elsewhere of taking the clothes off the wax and seeing it naked. |
| 17865 | Descartes gives an essence by an encapsulating formula [Descartes, by Almog] |
| Full Idea: For Descartes in providing an essence for an item [such as God, wax, or a mathematical kind] we provide an encapsulating formula defining the phenomenon. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Joseph Almog - Nature Without Essence I | |
| A reaction: I argue that this is not what Aristotle intended be an essentialist definition, which can be quite long, like a scientific monograph. Descartes firmly rejected Aristotle's 'substantial form' as essence. |
| 23647 | Objects have an essential constitution, producing its qualities, which we are too ignorant to define [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Individuals and objects have a real essence, or constitution of nature, from which all their qualities flow: but this essence our faculties do not comprehend. They are therefore incapable of definition. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: Aha - he's one of us! I prefer the phrase 'essential nature' of an object, which is understood, I think, by everyone. I especially like the last bit, directed at those who mistakenly think that Aristotle identified the essence with the definition. |