Burley on being

There is an interesting post from the Maverick today on the being-essence distinction. About this question "you have no idea how much ink, and vitriol too, has flooded the scholastic backwaters". Very true. He mentions Aquinas, but there were many others. Here is a link to my translation of Walter Burley's discussion of the question, with parallel Latin text. Walter provides a nice summary of the origins of the question in Boethius, and Avicenna and Al-Ghazali, as well as the different positions held by the main thirteenth century philosophers (Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines). Walter agrees with Godfrey that existence (i.e. being) and essence are the same:

Concerning this [Godfrey's] position, it should be understood that nothing is actually in a real genus unless it actually exists. Which is clear from this: the Philosopher (Metaphysics VI at the end), divides being into true being outside the soul, and diminished being that only has being in the soul, and that being he excludes from his consideration. Next, he divides true being outside the soul into the ten categories, and thus every category is true being outside the soul, and nothing is actually in a category unless it actually exists outside the soul.

Maverick's discussion has more in common with the question of individuation, however, over which much ink was also spilled.

[Edit] I am right.  The question of whether it is existence that determines numerical distinction is discussed by Scotus in Question 3 of the third distinction of Book II of his Ordinatio.  The third distinction is all about the problem of numerical individuation.  Angels are immaterial, they have no matter in which their form is embedded.  But angels are numerically distinct, and if so, the distinction cannot be grounded in different material of which they are made, for they aren't made of material at all. In the six questions of this distinction, Scotus considers different answers to the problem, before settling on his own answer: numerical distinction and hence individuation must be grounded in some positive feature, some intrinsic 'thisness' or haecceity (from the Latin haec meaning 'this').  I never got round to working on questions 4-6 because they are so difficult, and not on account of the Latin.  Scotus is one of those writers - Sartre is another - whose prose becomes more obscure and more difficult in proportion to the difficulty of the question.  Why not the other way round?

Vallicella on Existence and Completeness

Vallicella says

Why can't there be complete nonexistent objects? Imagine the God of
Leibniz, before the creation, contemplating an infinity of possible worlds, each
of them determinate down to the last detail. None of them exists or is
actual. But each of them is complete. One of them God calls
'Charley.' God says, Fiat Charley! And Charley exists. It is exactly
the same world which 'before' was merely possible, only 'now' it is actual.

I say: if the God of Leibniz is contemplating something, then there is something he is contemplating. And I say that if each of them is determinate down to the last detail, some things are equivalent to them. And if each of them is complete, at least one of them is complete. All of the consequents imply existential statements, and whatever follows from the consequent, follows from the antecedent. I may be wrong, but all of this looks like an elementary example of the quantifier shift fallacy. If it is possible that a unicorn exists, it does not follow that some unicorn is such that it possibly exists. 'Possibly Ex Fx' does not imply 'Ex possibly Fx'.

The very last argument (that the possible world is identical in all respects, save actuality, to the world that actualises it) is similar to an argument that Burley considers in his Questions on the Perihermenias. I will dig it out later, meanwhile I have an old comment on it here.

Burley on empty names

I have been reading the early fourteenth century writer Walter Burley. He was working at the same place (Oxford) and the same time (late 1290s) as Scotus, and I wanted to understand how Burley approaches certain questions mentioned by Scotus. In his Questions on the Perihermenias, written in 1301, edited by Stephen Brown (Franciscan Studies 34 (1974) 200-295), question 4, Burley considers the question of whether existence is the same as essence, and in part of that question (4.44) he considers whether propositions like 'Caesar is a man' and 'a man is an animal' are eternally and necessarily true (even if Caesar no longer exists, and even if no man were existing).

He claims that nothing is actually in a real genus, unless it actually exists (nihil est in genere reali actualiter nisi actu exsistat). This (he says) follows from what Aristotle says in Metaphysics 6 at the end, where he divides being into being outside the mind, and a sort of diminished being in the mind, which he excludes from consideration. True being is divided into the ten categories, and so every category of being is true being outside the mind. Thus 'Caesar is a man' is false. He also mentions an argument that Scotus considers in his questions on the Perihermenias, namely Averroes' dictum that in substantial change, a thing loses its name and definition.

He considers the objection (4.54) that every proposition in which genus is predicated of species is necessary, such as 'A man is an animal' and 'a rose is a substance'. He replies that such propositions do not have to be necessary, nor true, unless the species necessarily has being. If 'man exists' is necesary and always true, then 'a man is an animal' is necessary and always true. Otherwise not.

This is opposite to the Scotus' conclusion. Scotus finds that 'Caesar is a man' is true, and he holds that essential propositions (which are sort of our 'analytic propositions') are eternally and necessarily.

Whether the two men met, we do not really know. One source (article "Walter Burley", by Mary Sommers, Blackwell Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages) claims that Walter attended Scotus' lectures in 1298, but does not identify her source (beyond the three secondary sources mentioned in the article, I am following these up).

On the question of whether existence and essence are the same, Walter agrees with the opinion of Godfrey of Fontaines (a writer that Scotus was certainly familiar with). Perhaps more about Godfrey later, when I finally track down the elusive De Wulf editions of his work.