西方哲学史笔记（四）

• On Trinity

Catholic (Orthodox): "The Farther and the Son are equal, and of the same substance; they are, however, distinct Persons".

Arian: "The Son is not the equal of the Father, but created by Him".

Sabellian: "The are not distinct, but only different aspects of one Being".

• Semitic, Hebrew, Israeli, Jewish的区别

参考: SEMITIC / HEBREW / ISRAELI / JEWISH

Hebrew是指“the children of Eber”，Semite则是指“descendants of Shem(Sem)”，Eber是Shem的后代，因此Hebrew也属于Semites。但是，“In western countries the term of Semite or Semitic has traditionally referred only to Jews”。所以，所谓的anti-semitism通常就是指反犹太人。

Israeli则纯粹是国家概念。Israeli曾经分裂成南北两个国家，北边仍叫Israeli，南边则叫Judah，Jew一开始只用以称呼Judah国（族）人，后来也泛指所有以色列人。

• St. Augustine

• • On Time

"Why was the world not created sooner? Because there was no 'sooner'. Time was created when the world was created. God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless; in God there is no before and after, but only an eternal present. God's eternity is exempt from the relation of time; all time is present to Him at once. He did not precede His own creation of time, for that would imply that He was in time, whereas He stand eternally outside the stream of time."

"Neither past nor future... but only the present, really is;... past and future can only be thought of as present: 'past' must be identified with memory, and 'future' with expectation, memory and expectation being both present facts. There are... three times: 'a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future'. 'The present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, and the present of things future is expectation.' "

显然，St. Augustine认为时间只能通过某种心理活动(remember, expect)，某种连贯的感觉被感知到，超出人的意识，时间将不复存在。而感知过去与未来，只能发生在当下；固然有过去之过去，过去之将来，将来之过去，将来之将来，也只有在过去之当下，未来之当下，方能感觉到时间的流逝。而过去与未来，由于只能在当下的回忆和期望中感知时间，故而一切对时间的感觉，可以说都是在当下产生的。

"You, who wish to know, do you know you are? I know it. Whence are you? I know not. Do you feel yourself single or multiple? I know not. Do you feel yourself moved? I know not. Do you know that you think? I do."

Descartes' cogito.

・St. Anselm

・Ontological Argument for The Existence of God

"We define 'God' as the greatest possible object of thought. Now if an object of thought does not exist, another, exactly like it, which does exist, is greater. Therefore the greatest of all objects of thought must exist, since, otherwise, another, still greater, would be possible. Therefore God exists."

这个论证有个明显的问题，即如果一个想象的事物[A]不存在，怎么可能又存在完全相同的事物[B]呢？不太清楚Anselm是如何看待一个想象事物的存在性的。

"Is there anything we can think of which, by the mere fact that we can think of it, is shown to exist outside our thought?" (Russell)

该想法让人联想起Parmenides的学说，但是对于Anselm的论证而言，是另一层面的事。

・Avicenna

"Thought brings about the generality in forms."

"Genera—that is, universals—are, he says, at once before things, in things, and after things."

"They are before things in God's understanding. (God decides, for instance, to create cats, which is thus, in this respect, anterior to particular cats.) Genera are in things in natural objects. (When cats have been created, felinity is in each of them.) Genera are after things in our thought. (When we have seen many cats, we notice their likeness to each other, and arrive at the general idea 'cat'.)"

・Abélard

"As for univiersals, i.e. what can be predicated of many different things, he holds that we do not predicate a thing, but a word."

"Things, he says, resemble each other, and these resemblances give rise to universals. But the point of resemblance between two similar things is not itself a thing."

"General concepts are not based in the nature of things, but are confused images of many things."

那什么是"the nature of things"？

"They (Platonic ideas) exist in the divine mind as patterns for creation; they are, in fact, God's concepts."

・St. Thomas Aquinas

・Wisdom

"All particular ends are subordinate to the end of the universe, and wisdom per se is conserned with the end of the universe. Now the end of the universe is the good of the intellect, i.e. truth."

・关于上帝存在的五种证明

i) The argument of unmoved mover.

ii) The argument of the First Cause, which again depends upon the impossibility of an infinite regress.

iii) That there must be an ultimate source of all necessity.

iv) That we find various perfections in the world, and that these must have their source in something completely perfect.

v) That we find even lifeless things serving a purpose, which must be that of some being outside them, since only living things can have an internal purpose.

证明一前文已作过反驳，其余四证明也不如人意。

・关于上帝

"A reason can be assigned for His volition, but not a cause."

"He cannot make a man have no soul, or make the sum of the angles of a triangle be not two right angles. He cannot undo the past, commit sins, make another God, or make Himself not exist."

很显然，Aquinas眼中的上帝不是全能的(omnipotent)。

・其它

"The intellect is part of each man's soul."

"Universals do not subsist outside the soul, but the intellect, in understanding universals, understands things that are outside the soul."

・Roger Bacon

"There are, he says, four causes of ignorance: First, the example of frail and unsuited authority...Second, the influence of custom. Third, the opinion of the unlearned crowd...Fourth, the concealment of one's ignorance in a display of apparent wisdom."

・Principle of Individuation

Principle of Individuation := which makes one thing not identical with another.

Property accidental (essential) := that it can (can't) lose without losing its identity.

St Thomas认为，对于material substances而言，两个事物可能具有完全相同的essence；而对于immaterial (spiritual) substances则不可能。照此逻辑，则essence不是principle of individuation。

Duns Scotus认为两个事物的essence始终是不同的。"There is no difference between being and essence."

文中提到关于该问题的现代的看法。Leibniz认为首先应当"get rid of the distinction between essential and accidental properties"，认为其与其它来自Aristotle的概念一样，"turns out to be unreal as soon as we attempt to state it carefully"。（还是回到概念的存在性/真实性问题，如何理解这里所谓的unreality？）相比essence，不如直接关注"all the propositions that are true of the thing in question"。

这个问题比较复杂，有待研究。

・William of Occam

Occam's razor: "Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity" or "It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer".

"Terms which point at things are called 'terms of first intention'; terms which point at terms are called 'terms of second intention'. The term in science are of first intention; in logic, of second."

・Realism vs. Nominalism

参考：Understand the Philosophical Theories of Nominalism and Realism

" Realists postulate the existence of two kinds of entities, particulars, and universals."

" Realism allows us to take seriously the subject-predicate structure of discourse through which we represent the world. When we say that Socrates is wise it is because there are both Socrates (the particular) and wisdom (the universal) and the particular exemplifies the universal."

" Nominalists offer a radical definition of reality: there are no universals, only particulars. The basic idea is that the world is made exclusively from particulars and the universals are of our own making. They stem from our representational system (the way we think about the world) or from our language (the way we speak of the world). "

・Porphyry's questions

i) Are genera and species substances?

ii) Are they corporeal or incorporeal?

iii) If the latter, are they in sensible things or separated from them?