5 ideas
| 16641 | Whiteness does not exist, but by it something can exist-as-white [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Whiteness is said to exist not because it subsists in itself, but because by it something has existence-as-white. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], IX.2.2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.2 | |
| A reaction: It seems unavoidable to refer to the whiteness as 'it'. It might be called the 'adverbial' theory of properties, as ways of doing something. |
| 22170 | Senses grasp external properties, but the understanding grasps the essential natures of things [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Our imagination and senses grasp only the outer properties of things, not their natures. ...Understanding, however, grasps the very substance and nature of things, so that what is represented in understanding is a likeness of thing's very essence. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], 8.2.2) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the picture I endorse for modern science. Explanation is the path to understanding, and that must venture beyond immediate experience. |
| 22169 | Initial universal truths are present within us as potential, to be drawn out by reason [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: For present in us by nature are certain initial truths everyone knows, in which lie potentially known conclusions our reasons can draw out and make actually known. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], 8.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Note that these are truths rather than concepts, but that they have to be 'drawn out' by reason. This is Descartes' view of the matter, where the 'natural light' of reason is needed to articulate what is innate, such as geometry. |
| 22168 | Minds take in a likeness of things, which activates an awaiting potential [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: What the mind takes in is not some material element of the agent, but a likeness of the agent actualising some potential the patient already has. This, for example, is the way our seeing takes in the colour of a coloured body. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], 8.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly right. Descartes agreed. It works for colour, but not (obviously) for cheese graters. |
| 14644 | If my conception of pain derives from me, it is a contradiction to speak of another's pain [Malcolm] |
| Full Idea: If I obtain my conception of pain from pain that I experience, then it will be a part of my conception of pain that I am the only being that can experience it. For me it will be contradiction to speak of another's pain. | |
| From: Norman Malcolm (Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' [1954]), quoted by Alvin Plantinga - De Re and De Dicto p.44 | |
| A reaction: This obviously has the private language argument in the background. It seems to point towards a behaviourist view, that I derive pain from external behaviour in the first instance. So how do I connect the behaviour to the feeling? |