Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Symington, Paul

Titel

Powerful Logic: Prime Matter as Principle of Individuation and Pure Potency

Ist Teil von

• The Review of metaphysics, 2020-03, Vol.73 (3), p.495-529

Ort / Verlag

Washington: The Philosophy Education Society, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [...]species is a logical composition of a genus and a difference. [...]a species expresses the definition of a thing, and from this we can make two observations. 12 In order to understand Aquinas, and to envision coherently the various roles played by prime matter, prime matter as the ultimate subject of predication of substantial properties should be located as something like a mathematical limit or target at the top ("substance" side) as opposed to the bottom of the Porphyrean tree ("rational" side).13 Similar to calculus, in which there is a limit of a specific value as the value of a function approaches it, prime matter as substratum is to be understood as the limit approached by increasingly generic conceptualizations. To put it another way, to say that the genus expresses the subject of the difference is to say that when we think of the difference "sentient," the order of the tree tells us that we do not think that it could be equally true of the genera "living" and "nonliving," but that it is only true of things that are also "living." [...]a consideration of a genus, from the side of a difference, points us up the tree to the ultimate substratum of predication.