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    Ideas cannot be modes of the mind — Carmelics
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    Ideas cannot be modes of the mind

    Consciousness & MindDivine Attributes
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Ideas, as Malebranche argues, are the immediate objects of perception distinct from mental acts, possessing objective reality independent of any particular mind.
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    • 2.A mode cannot exist independently of the substance it modifies, yet ideas of eternal truths (e.g., geometric relations) persist regardless of whether any finite mind contemplates them.
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    • 3.Therefore, ideas must be located in an infinite intellect (God), not as modifications of finite minds, since their necessity cannot be grounded in contingent mental states.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Descartes distinguishes formal reality (the act of thinking) from objective reality (the represented content), and a mode of mind possesses only formal, not intrinsic objective, reality.
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    • 2.Causal adequacy requires that the objective reality of an idea have a cause containing at least as much formal reality, which a finite mode cannot supply for ideas of infinity or geometric necessity.
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    • 3.Thus the representational content of ideas outruns what any finite mental modification could intrinsically possess, necessitating an extra-mental or supra-mental ground for ideational content.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.What we know in the most important instances of knowledge is universal, necessary, and infinite (as in certain mathematical knowledge)
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    • 2.Nothing that is a mode of a particular, contingent, and finite mind can be universal, necessary, or infinite
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    • 3.If ideas were modes of the mind, we would not have universal, necessary, and infinite knowledge
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    Topics

    Divine AttributesConsciousness & Mind

    Connections

    2 topics

    Truth & Knowledge3 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

    Related

    A mode cannot exist independently of the substance it modifies, yet ideas of ete...Causal adequacy requires that the objective reality of an idea have a cause cont...Descartes distinguishes formal reality (the act of thinking) from objective real...Ideas, as Malebranche argues, are the immediate objects of perception distinct f...
    +6 moreShow less
    If ideas were modes of the mind, we would not have universal, necessary, and inf...Nothing that is a mode of a particular, contingent, and finite mind can be unive...Therefore, ideas must be located in an infinite intellect (God), not as modifica...

    Similar

    Ideas cannot be modes of the finite human mind89%Ideas exist in God, not as modes of the human mind85%Passion is a mode of the mind, so the mind is capable of varying passi...81%Sensation and imagination are inherently limited as modes of cognition80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: continental-rationalism
    View source passageHide passage
    Not implausibly, Arnauld took Descartes’s claim about the ambiguity of the term “idea” to mean that “idea”, or “perception”, refers to one and the same thing, a thing which stands in two different relations. Insofar as it is related to what is known, it is called an idea; insofar as it is related to the mind, it is called a perception. This (act of) perception he took to be related to the mind as a mode of it. It is at this point that Malebranche detected the threat of skepticism. What we know,
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Thus the representational content of ideas outruns what any finite mental modifi...
    We do have such universal, necessary, and infinite knowledge
    What we know in the most important instances of knowledge is universal, necessar...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit