In scholastic metaphysics, a formal distinction is a distinction intermediate between what is merely conceptual, and what is fully real or mind-independent. It was made by some realist philosophers of the Scholastic period in the thirteenth century, and particularly by Duns Scotus.
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Famous quotes containing the words formal and/or distinction:
“Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily.
Let not our looks put on our purposes,
But bear it as our Roman actors do,
With untired spirits and formal constancy.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)