Single Idea 6229

[catalogued under 17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / a. Physicalism critique]

Full Idea

Sense which lies flat and grovelling in the individuals, and is stupidly fixed in the material form, is not able to rise up or ascend to an abstract universal notion.

Gist of Idea

Sense is fixed in the material form, and so can't grasp abstract universals

Source

Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.III.III.2)

Book Reference

'British Moralists 1650-1800 Vol. 1', ed/tr. Raphael,D.D. [Hackett 1991], p.116


A Reaction

This still strikes me as being one of the biggest problems with reductive physicalism, that a lump of meat in your head can grasp abstractions (whatever they are) and universal concepts. Personally I am a physicalist, but it is weird.