Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Community and Citizenship', 'Modal Realism at Work: Properties' and 'Commentary on Sentences'

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5 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes
Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: An accident's aptitudinal relationship to a subject is essential, and this is never taken away from accidents….for it is true to say that they are suited to a subject.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], IV.12.1.1.1c)
     A reaction: This is the compromise view that allows accidents to be separated, for Transubstantiation, while acknowledging that we identify them with their subjects.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 11. Properties as Sets
Properties are sets of their possible instances (which separates 'renate' from 'cordate') [Lewis, by Mellor/Oliver]
     Full Idea: Lewis agrees that properties cannot be sets of their actual instances, but claims they can be sets of their possible instances. This would distinguish coextensive properties like being cordate and renate, since they might be separated.
     From: report of David Lewis (Modal Realism at Work: Properties [1986]) by DH Mellor / A Oliver - Introduction to 'Properties' §10
     A reaction: Sounds wrong. Two properties could be obviously different even if they could never be separated. In this world a creature might briefly survive without kidneys.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 6. Successive Things
Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: Everything successive reduces to something permanent.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], II.2.1.1.3 ad 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2
     A reaction: Avicenna first took successive entities seriously, but Bonaventure and Aquinas seem to have rejected them, or given reductive accounts of them. It resembles modern actualists versus modal realists.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 4. Citizenship
Citizenship involves a group of mutually supporting rights, which create community and equality [Miller,D]
     Full Idea: The idea of citizenship is that rights support each other. Protective and welfare rights provide a basis for a political role. This underpins a sense of membership, and an obligation to provide welfare. Rights confer equal status and self-respect.
     From: David Miller (Community and Citizenship [1989], 3)
     A reaction: A helpful eludation of what a richer concept of citizenship than mere membership might look like. Communitarians have a different concept of rights from that of liberals.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 14. Nationalism
Socialists reject nationality as a false source of identity [Miller,D]
     Full Idea: The socialist tradition has been overwhelmingly hostile to nationality as a source of identity, usually regarding it merely as an artificially created impediment to the brotherhood of man.
     From: David Miller (Community and Citizenship [1989], 2)
     A reaction: I have some sympathy with this, especially when nationalism is expressed in terms of enemies, but the question of what community a person can plausibly identify with is difficult. We start in hunter gather tribes of several hundred.