  But if the genera are incorporeal beings, is there a special sense in which they are said to be beings? 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. According to Italos (quaestio 19), things that do not subsist (anupostata) but depend on mere thought are not beings. As for things that subsist, he distinguishes between two different kinds of beings; namely, between beings that subsist per se, which he calls subsistences (hupostaseis), and beings that subsist in something else (enupostata). Subsistences are prior by perception, they are particulars and are for the most part bodies, whereas beings that subsist in something else are prior by knowledge, they are incorporeal, they are predicates shared by many things, and they are thoughts (noēmata / dianoēmata). Italos’ terminology here clearly shows the influence of the Christian Fathers, and in particular of John of Damascus, who in his Dialectica draws just this distinction between subsistences, things that subsist in something else, and things that do not subsist. According to Italos, therefore, both subsistences and beings that subsist in something else are beings, and thus do not depend on mere thought. Italos distinguishes these two kinds of beings from the standard examples of things that do not subsist, i.e., goat-stags and centaurs, as well as from his own examples of many-eyed men and four-headed horses; for all these are, on his view, nothing but fabrications of the human mind and products of our imagination (phantasmata). On the other hand, it also is important not to overlook the difference between subsistences and beings that subsist in something else. Although the first subsist per se, the latter are thoughts that subsist in something else.