Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Quodlibeta' and 'In Defense of a Dogma'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

7 ideas

7. Existence / E. Categories / 3. Proposed Categories

16657	Substance, Quantity and Quality are real; other categories depend on those three [Henry of Ghent]
	Full Idea: Among creatures there are only three 'res' belong to the three first categories: Substance, Quantity and Quality. All other are aspects [rationes] and intellectual concepts with respect to them, with reality only as grounded on the res of those three.
	From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3
	A reaction: Pasnau connects with the 'arrangement of being', giving an 'ontologically innocent' structure to reality. That seems to be what we all want, if only we could work out the ontologically guilty bit.

8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations

16658	The only reality in the category of Relation is things from another category [Henry of Ghent]
	Full Idea: There is beyond a doubt nothing real in the category of Relation, except what is a thing from another category.
	From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3
	A reaction: This seems to have been the fairly orthodox scholastic view of relations.

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes

16645	Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent]
	Full Idea: Accidents are beings only in a qualified and diminished sense, because they are not called beings, nor are they beings, except because they are dispositions of an unqualified being, a substance.
	From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], XV.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.4
	A reaction: This is aimed to 'half' detach the accidents (as the Eucharist requires). Later scholastics detached them completely. Late scholastics seem to have drifted back to Henry's view. The equivocal use of 'being' here was challenged later.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / b. Transcendental idealism

22012	Kant says things-in-themselves cause sensations, but then makes causation transcendental! [Henry of Ghent, by Pinkard]
	Full Idea: Kant claimed that things-in-themselves caused our sensations; but causality was a transcendental condition of experience, not a property of things-in-themselves, so the great Kant had contradicted himself.
	From: report of Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], Supplement) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04
	A reaction: This early objection by the conservative Jacobi (who disliked Enlightenment rational religion) is the key to the dispute over whether Kant is an idealist. Kant denied being an idealist, but how can he be, if this idea is correct?

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy

7319	If we give up synonymy, we have to give up significance, meaning and sense [Grice/Strawson]
	Full Idea: If we are to give up the notion of sentence-synonymy as senseless, we must give up the notion of sentence-significance (of a sentence having meaning) as senseless too. But then perhaps we might as well give up the notion of sense.
	From: P Grice / P Strawson (In Defense of a Dogma [1956]), quoted by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2
	A reaction: This is very prescient. Nearly all American philosophers seem to embrace Quine's view of analyticity (the philosophical equivalent of Americans putting a man on the moon?), but have they digested the implications (which Quine later largely admits)?

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature

1748	Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless.
	From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3

27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution

5989	Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield]
	Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime.
	From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus
	A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea.