Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'God and Human Attributes', 'Quaestiones de Potentia Dei' and 'Reasons and Persons'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / b. Unifying aggregates

17555	'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?

23. Ethics / E. Utilitarianism / 1. Utilitarianism

9762	We should focus less on subjects of experience, and more on the experiences themselves [Parfit]
	Full Idea: It becomes more plausible, when thinking morally, to focus less upon the person, the subject of experiences, and instead to focus more upon the experiences themselves.
	From: Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons [1984], §116)
	A reaction: This pinpoints how Parfit moves from a view of persons in terms of continuity of consciousness to a utilitarian morality. It brings out nicely what is wrong with utilitarianism - the reductio of a great ball of nice experiences, with no one having them.

28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / c. Moral Argument

20713	God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B]
	Full Idea: Rachels argues 1) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship, 2) No being could be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent, so 3) There cannot be a being who is God.
	From: report of James Rachels (God and Human Attributes [1971], 7 p.334) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 9 'd morality'
	A reaction: Presumably Lionel Messi can be a fitting object of worship without being God. Since the problem is with being worshipful, rather than with being God, should I infer that Messi doesn't exist?