11 ideas
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 7639 | The Homunculus Fallacy explains a subject perceiving objects by repeating the problem internally [Evans] |
| Full Idea: The 'homunculus fallacy' attempts to explain what is involved in a subject's being related to objects in the external world by appealing to the existence of an inner situation which recapitulates the essential features of the original situation. | |
| From: Gareth Evans (Molyneux's Question [1978], p.397) | |
| A reaction: This is obviously right, but we aren't forced to settle for direct realism. Inner perception may be very different, or we may employ the idea of Dennett and Lycan, that the homunculi don't regress, they deteriorate steadily down into mechanisms. |
| 12608 | Concepts are distinguished by roles in judgement, and are thus tied to rationality [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: 'Concept' is a notion tied, in the classical Fregean manner, to cognitive significance. Concepts are distinct if we can judge rationally of one, without the other. Concepts are constitutively and definitionally tied to rationality in this way. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to a bit optimistic to say, more or less, that thinking is impossible if it isn't rational. Rational beings have been selected for. As Quine nicely observed, duffers at induction have all been weeded out - but they may have existed, briefly. |
| 12605 | A sense is individuated by the conditions for reference [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: My basic Fregean idea is that a sense is individuated by the fundamental condition for something to be its reference. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: For something to actually be its reference (as opposed to imagined reference), truth must be involved. This needs the post-1891 Frege view of such things, and not just the view of concepts as functions which he started with. |
| 12607 | Fregean concepts have their essence fixed by reference-conditions [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: The Fregean view is that the essence of a concept is given by the fundamental condition for something to be its reference. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Peacocke is a supporter of the Fregean view. How does this work for concepts of odd creatures in a fantasy novel? Or for mistaken or confused concepts? For Burge's 'arthritis in my thigh'? I don't reject the Fregean view. |
| 12609 | Concepts have distinctive reasons and norms [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: For each concept, there will be some reasons or norms distinctive of that concept. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Peacocke's bold Fregean thesis (and it sounds rather Kantian to me). I dislike the word 'norms' (long story), but reasons are interesting. The trouble is the distinction between being a reason for something (its cause) and being a reason for me. |
| 12604 | Any explanation of a concept must involve reference and truth [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: For some particular concept, we can argue that some of its distinctive features are adequately explained only by a possession-condition that involves reference and truth essentially. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: He reached this view via the earlier assertion that it is the role in judgement which key to understanding concepts. I like any view of such things which says that truth plays a role. |
| 12610 | Encountering novel sentences shows conclusively that meaning must be compositional [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: The phenomenon of understanding sentences one has never encountered before is decisive against theories of meaning which do not proceed compositionally. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. It seems obvious, as soon as you begin to slowly construct a long and unusual sentence, and follow the mental processes of the listener. |