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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The first God remains absolutely simple despite being an intellect, because the first God thinks only itself, making its being and its object of thought identical.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Self-thinking thought still requires a structural distinction between the act of thinking and the content thought, even when they share the same referent.
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    • 2.This internal reflexive structure introduces a real duality—thinker-as-subject and thinker-as-object—that compromises absolute simplicity.
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    • 3.Plotinus explicitly argues in Enneads V.3 that any intellect, even self-directed, entails a dyad and therefore cannot be the absolutely simple First Principle.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aristotle's self-thinking God in Metaphysics Lambda is already criticized by later Neoplatonists as insufficiently unified to serve as the ultimate first principle.
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    • 2.If the first God is modeled on Aristotelian noesis noeseos, it inherits the problem that intellection presupposes a capacity for thought distinct from its actualization.
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    • 3.A principle with unrealized potential, even formally, cannot be absolutely simple in the sense required by apophatic theology.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If an intellect thinks only itself, its being and object of thought are identical.
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    • 2.When being and object of thought are identical, no multiplicity is introduced.
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    • 3.The first God thinks only itself, like the Aristotelian God of Metaphysics Lambda.
      ?

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