As an example of the latter, he mentions questions about the ontological status of genera and species whether they exist or depend on thought; and if they exist, whether they are bodies or incorporeal; and if the latter, whether they are sensible items or exist separately from such.
And since we do not doubt that there are inanimate bodies which can move in as many different ways as our bodies, if not more, and which have as much heat or more, we must believe that all the heat and all the movements present in us, in so far as they do not depend on thought, belong solely to the body" (AT XI 329, CSM I 329).
And, depending on the thought you have previously given to your dog's emotional makeup, you might conceivably learn something yourself.
Italos often makes use of another distinction, which is a commonplace in Platonic texts from Plotinus to Simplicius, but seems to have its origins even earlier; namely, the distinction between something subsisting and something depending on mere thought.
He said this one very early morning last week at the Manhattan Center on West 34th Street, as he and his team put finishing touches on a transformation of that cavernous but grim space into something that resembled a curtained anteroom to heaven (or limbo, depending on your thoughts about Turner Entertainment, which had booked the space for its upfront presentation of next season's shows).
This, of course, shows you how much Google really knows about you – which is either really cool or creepy, depending on your overall thoughts about Google and privacy.
Instead, on both sides, there is a reversion to common sense – the "everyday thinking" which does not require reflection and is "a form of popular, easily available knowledge which contains no complicated ideas, requires no sophisticated argument and does not depend on deep thought or wide reading".
Like all advertising, the quality of the outcome depends on the thought and planning that is put into the campaign.
According to Italos (quaestio 19), things that do not subsist (anupostata) but depend on mere thought are not beings.
According to Italos, therefore, both subsistences and beings that subsist in something else are beings, and thus do not depend on mere thought.
