Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Commentary on 'De Anima'', 'Time and Free Will' and 'Quaestiones de Potentia Dei'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / b. Unifying aggregates
'One' can mean undivided and not a multitude, or it can add measurement, giving number [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: There are two sorts of one. There is the one which is convertible with being, which adds nothing to being except being undivided; and this deprives of multitude. Then there is the principle of number, which to the notion of being adds measurement.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones de Potentia Dei [1269], q3 a16 ad 3-um)
     A reaction: [From a lecture handout] I'm not sure I understand this. We might say, I suppose, that insofar as water is water, it is all one, but you can't count it. Perhaps being 'unified' and being a 'unity' are different?
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 5. Causal Argument
Experienced time means no two mental moments are ever alike [Bergson]
     Full Idea: If duration [experienced time] is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments in a life-story.
     From: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will [1889], p.220), quoted by Pete A.Y. Gunter - Bergson p.174
     A reaction: This implies that we are intrinsically unpredictable, and there certainly can't be a regularity account of mental causation. The sense of time is said to make the self radically different from the rest of reality. Bergson later rejected dualism.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / e. Death
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.