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    If the agent intellect is identified with God as universa... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→The agent intellect can be identified with God as the universal principle of intelligibility.

    If the agent intellect is identified with God as universal intelligibility principle, the particularity of individual human intellectual acts becomes causally inexplicable without positing direct divine intervention in each act of thought.

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    1 reason for
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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.If intelligibility is universal and transcendent, it cannot originate from particular finite minds without external causation.
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    • 2.Particularity of human thought requires explanation of how universal principles become individuated in specific acts.
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    • 3.Without divine mediation, the gap between abstract intelligibility and concrete cognition remains metaphysically unbridged.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Human cognitive capacities (abstraction, judgment) can explain particularity without invoking divine intervention in each act.
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    • 2.The agent intellect need not be God; it can be an emergent human faculty mediating universal forms and particular thoughts.
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    • 3.Requiring direct divine intervention makes empirical psychology impossible and renders human intellect causally inert.
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    Key Terms

    Causally Inexplicable(as used in metaphysics and philosophy of causation)
    Impossible to explain by tracing back to what caused it—there's no clear reason or mechanism for how it happened.
    Direct Divine Intervention(as used in theology and metaphysics)
    God actively stepping in and directly causing something to happen, rather than working through natural processes or general rules.
    God as Universal Intelligibility Principle(as used in medieval theology and metaphysics)
    The idea that God is the ultimate source or foundation that makes all knowledge and understanding possible in the universe.
    Particularity of Individual Human Intellectual Acts(as used in philosophy of mind and metaphysics)
    The unique, specific moments when one individual person thinks or understands something—the fact that my thoughts are mine, happening in my mind, at a particular time.
    agent intellect(Godfrey's theory of intellectual knowledge)
    A distinct power of the individual human soul that abstracts potentially intelligible content from phantasms and illuminates phantasms so they can actualize the possible intellect

    Connections

    2 topics

    Natural Theology1 linkedDivine Attributes1 linked

    Related

    Human cognitive capacities (abstraction, judgment) can explain particularity wit...If intelligibility is universal and transcendent, it cannot originate from parti...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    Particularity of human thought requires explanation of how universal principles ...
    Requiring direct divine intervention makes empirical psychology impossible and r...
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    The agent intellect can be identified with God as the universal principle of int...The agent intellect need not be God; it can be an emergent human faculty mediati...Without divine mediation, the gap between abstract intelligibility and concrete ...