Geach argues that Aquinas's view of abstraction in his mature thought is not like that, but more akin to a light that creates the concepts. Abstraction of the essential pressupposes that the intellect already knows what is going to be essential (to be picked out) and what is going to be accidental. It cannot be that the intellect somehow "extracts" the universal from particular beings by attending to what is common and essential to all of them, because, as Peter Geach argues, in order for our intellect to selectively extract what is the essential F in a being, leaving aside its accidents X, it must *already* be able to identify F in opposition to X. But how do we come to know universals? I find the theory of abstraction to be very problematic when it comes to explaining our knowledge. We use them in thought and they are necessary for valid reasoning, even. Universals exist and we think of universal concepts. Also, I think I realized that there might be a further problem with the idea of neutral "common natures" that are held by both Aquinas and Scotus. I will shamelessly repost my previous comment on to this thread, in hopes that more people can eventually answer me - maybe even Feser.
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