Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Commentary on 'De Anima'', 'City of God' and 'Ethics and Language'

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4 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 4. The Cogito
3912 I must exist in order to be mistaken, so that even if I am mistaken, I can't be wrong about my own existence [Augustine]
     Full Idea: Since therefore I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, there can be no doubt that I am not mistaken in my knowledge that I exist…. I know that I exist, and I also know that I know.
     From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], Ch.XI.26)
     A reaction: Fine, but the main problem is his over-confidence about a stable personal identity that does the thinking.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 2. Interactionism
6683 The contact of spirit and body is utterly amazing, and incomprehensible [Augustine]
     Full Idea: The manner of contact of spirit with body, which produces a living being, is utterly amazing and beyond our powers of comprehension
     From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], XXI.10)
     A reaction: This leads to a rather clear objection against a theory which needs a miracle to explain a common natural phenomenon. At least Augustine was beginning to recognise that interaction is a bit of a problem.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / h. Expressivism
23689 Moral words have an inherited power from expressing attitudes in emotional situations [Stevenson,CL]
     Full Idea: A term is moral because of the power that the word acquires, on account of its history in emotional situations, to evoke or directly express attitudes, as distinct from describing or designating them.
     From: Charles Leslie Stevenson (Ethics and Language [1944], p.33), quoted by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought 1 'Ayer'
     A reaction: Invites the question of what the words meant before they acquired this patina of historical usage. If 'good' orginally meant 'hurray!', its repeated usage doesn't seem to change that. If it was descriptive, why would that change with time?
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / e. Death
16764 The soul conserves the body, as we see by its dissolution when the soul leaves [Toletus]
     Full Idea: Every accident of a living thing, as well as all its organs and temperaments and its dispositions are conserved by the soul. We see this from experience, since when that soul recedes, all these dissolve and become corrupted.
     From: Franciscus Toletus (Commentary on 'De Anima' [1572], II.1.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5
     A reaction: A nice example of observing a phenemonon, but not being able to observe the dependence relation the right way round. Compare Descartes in Idea 16763.