17 ideas
22121 | 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). |
22122 | 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. |
22125 | Duns Scotus was a realist about universals [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Duns Scotus was a realist on the issue of universals and one of the main adversaries of Ockham's programme of nominalism. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: The view of Scotus seems to be the minority view. It is hard to find thinkers who really believe that universals have an independent existence. My interest in Duns Scotus waned when I read this. How does he imagine universals? |
22127 | Scotus said a substantial principle of individuation [haecceitas] was needed for an essence [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Rejecting the standard views that essences are individuated by either actual existence, quantity or matter, Scotus said that the principle of individuation is a further substantial difference added to the species - the so-called haecceitas or 'thisness'. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: [Scotus seldom referred to 'haecceitas'] I suppose essences have prior existence, but are too generic, so something must fix an essence as pertaining to this particular object. Is the haecceitas part of the essence, or of the particular? |
22126 | Avicenna and Duns Scotus say essences have independent and prior existence [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Duns Scotus endorsed Avicenna's theory of the common nature, according to which the essences have an independence and priority to their existence as either universal in the mind or singular outside it. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: I occasionally meet this weird idea in modern discussions of essence (in Lowe?), and now see its origin. It makes little sense without a divine mind to support the independent essences. Scotus had to add a principle of individuation for essences. |
15645 | Nominal essence are the observable properties of things [Eagle] |
Full Idea: It is clear the nominal essences really are the properties of the things which have them: they are (a subset of) the observable properties of the things. | |
From: Antony Eagle (Locke on Essences and Kinds [2005], IV) | |
A reaction: I think this is wrong. The surface characteristics are all that is available to us, so our classifications must be based on those, but it is on the ideas of them, not their intrinsic natures. That is empiricsm! What makes the properties 'essential'? |
15642 | If kinds depend only on what can be observed, many underlying essences might produce the same kind [Eagle] |
Full Idea: If the kinds there are depend not on the essences of the objects but on their observed distinguishing particulars, ...then for any kind that we think there is, it is possible that there are many underlying essences which are observably indistinguishable. | |
From: Antony Eagle (Locke on Essences and Kinds [2005], IV) | |
A reaction: Eagle is commenting on Locke's reliance on nominal essences. This seems to be the genuine problem with jadeite and nephrite (both taken to be 'jade'), or with 'fool's gold'. This isn't an objection to Locke; it just explains the role of science. |
15643 | Nominal essence mistakenly gives equal weight to all underlying properties that produce appearances [Eagle] |
Full Idea: Nominal essence does not allow for gradations in significance for the underlying properties. Those are all essential for the object behaving as it observably does, and they must all be given equal weight when deciding what the object does. | |
From: Antony Eagle (Locke on Essences and Kinds [2005], IV) | |
A reaction: This is where 'scientific' essentialism comes in. If we take one object, or one kind of object, in isolation, Eagle is right. When we start to compare, and to set up controlled conditions tests, we can dig into the 'gradations' he cares about. |
22129 | Certainty comes from the self-evident, from induction, and from self-awareness [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Duns Scotus grounded certitude in the knowledge of self-evident propositions, induction, and awareness of our own state. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: Induction looks like the weak link here. |
22130 | Scotus defended direct 'intuitive cognition', against the abstractive view [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Scotus allocated to the intellect a direct, existential awareness of the intelligible object, called 'intuitive cognition', in contrast to abstractive knowledge, which seized the object independently of its presence to the intellect in actual existence. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: Presumably if you see a thing, shut your eyes and then know it, that is 'abstractive'. Scotus says open your eyes for proper knowledge. |
22128 | Augustine's 'illumination' theory of knowledge leads to nothing but scepticism [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Scotus rejected Henry of Ghent's defence of Augustine's of knowledge by 'illumination', as leading to nothing but scepticism. ...After this, illumination never made a serious recovery. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 |
22131 | The will retains its power for opposites, even when it is acting [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Scotus said the will is a power for opposites, in the sense that even when actually willing one thing, it retains a real, active power to will the opposite. He detaches the idea of freedom from time and variability. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: In the sense that we can abandon an action when in the middle of it, this seems to be correct. Not just 'I could have done otherwise', but 'I don't have to be doing this'. This shows that the will has wide power, but not that it is 'free'. |
20168 | Blame usually has no effect if the recipient thinks it unjustified [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: One of the most obvious facts about blame is that in many cases it is effective only if the recipient thinks that it is justified. | |
From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5) | |
A reaction: The point of the blame might not be reform of the agent, but a public justification for punishment as deterrence, in which case who cares what the agent thinks? Is blame attribution of causes, or reasons to punish? |
20167 | Blame partly rests on the fiction that blamed agents always know their obligations [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Blame rests, in part, on a fiction; the idea that ethical reasons, in particular the special kind of ethical reasons that are obligations, must, really, be available to the blamed agent. | |
From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5) | |
A reaction: In blaming someone, you may be telling them that they should know their obligations, rather than assuming that they do know them. How else can we give children a moral education? |
15641 | Kinds are fixed by the essential properties of things - the properties that make it that kind of thing [Eagle] |
Full Idea: The natural thought is to think that real kinds are given only by classification on the basis of essential properties: properties that make an object the kind of thing that it is. | |
From: Antony Eagle (Locke on Essences and Kinds [2005], II) | |
A reaction: Circularity alert! Circularity alert! Essence gives a thing its kind - and hence we can see what the kind is? Test for a trivial property! Eagle is not unaware of these issues. Does he mean 'necessary' rather than 'essential'? |
22123 | The concept of God is the unique first efficient cause, final cause, and most eminent being [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Duns Scotus establishes God as first efficient cause, as ultimate final cause, and as most eminent being - his so-called 'triple primacy' - and says there is a unique nature within these primacies. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: This is the first stage of Duns Scotus's unusually complex argument for God's existence. Asserting the actual infinity of this unique being concludes his argument. |
22124 | We can't infer the infinity of God from creation ex nihilo [Duns Scotus, by Dumont] |
Full Idea: Duns Scotus rejected the traditional argument that the infinity of God can be inferred from creation ex nihilo. | |
From: report of John Duns Scotus (works [1301]) by Stephen D. Dumont - Duns Scotus p.206 | |
A reaction: He accepted the infinity of God, however, but not for this reason. I don't know why he rejected it. I suppose the rejected claim is that something has to be infinite, and if it isn't the Cosmos then that leaves God? |