Sunday, August 21, 2011

Scotus on whether Relations Individuate


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Link to: The Smithy: "Scotus on whether Relations Individuate."
Posted by Don Paco at August 21, 2011
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4 comments:

Aquinas3000 said...

Do you agree? What do you think?

7:45 AM
Don Paco said...

I do not agree. I bet you're not surprised, but I hold the Thomistic view: "The principle of individuation, i.e., of numerical distinction of one individual from another with the same specific nature, is matter designated by quantity. Thus in pure spirits there cannot be more than individual in the same specific nature." (Thesis 11, from the 24 Thomistic Theses).

So the soul is individuated through its body. This is the case, even when the soul no longer informs its body body: even then, this soul is still the soul (form) of that body (matter) and of no other.

9:00 AM
Aquinas3000 said...

No, I'm not surprised at all! I just saw the link with no comment so I was wondering a little. It seems my little comment on Feser's blog has set a few other things off (not that that is a bad thing!)

My original explanation was not very good. I have seen done some reading and also spoken to a friend who has been studying and teaching Thomism for nearly fifty years and he gave me a much better reply. Unfortunately it rather too long for comments on the internet and I'm still discussing it with him. He did make the comment as well that it is difficult to discuss it with a Scotist because you run into other disagreements along the way that would need to be sorted out.

Out of curiosity why don't you have some more posts on these sorts of things to get a Scotist/Thomist dialogue happening? All the folk involved in this are good people and it would likely be productive.

4:29 AM
Don Paco said...

Good idea. I'm translating Hugon's "Cursus Philosophiae Thomisticae," a four-volume work that goes deeply into all the main issues in scholastic Thomism. It would be good for me to bring those up. I'll work on that.

10:28 AM

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