more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Since intelligence is intelligible for intelligence, intelligence is its own object. ...Intelligence, therefore, is simultaneously thinker and thought, all that thinks and all that is thought.
Gist of Idea
Intelligence is aware of itself, so the intelligence is both the thinker and the thought
Source
Porphyry (Launching Points to the Realm of the Mind [c.280], 5Enn3 32(5-7))
Book Ref
Porphyry: 'Launching Points to the Realm of the Mind', ed/tr. Guthrie,Kenneth [Phanes 1988], p.48
A Reaction
This is a bit of a problem for Descartes, if the Cogito is taken as offering evidence (thought) for the existence of a thinker ('I'). Porphyry implies that the separation Descartes requires is impossible.
Related Idea
Idea 2259 "I am, I exist" is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind [Descartes]
13784 | Mind is self-ruling, pure, ordering and ubiquitous [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
1714 | Mind involves movement, perception, incorporeality [Aristotle] |
20809 | Eight parts of the soul: five senses, seeds, speech and reason [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
23266 | The spirit in the soul wants freedom, power and honour [Galen] |
18453 | Intelligence is aware of itself, so the intelligence is both the thinker and the thought [Porphyry] |
17196 | The will is not a desire, but the faculty of affirming what is true or false [Spinoza] |
17198 | Will and intellect are the same thing [Spinoza] |
17201 | The will is finite, but the intellect is infinite [Spinoza] |
23242 | Consciousness has two parts, passively receiving sensation, and actively causing productions [Fichte] |
8648 | Ideas are not spatial, and don't have distances between them [Frege] |
2550 | Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia [Rorty] |
3368 | Mind is basically qualities and intentionality, but how do they connect? [Kim] |
12636 | Mental states have causal powers [Fodor] |
6152 | Minds are rational, conscious, subjective, self-knowing, free, meaningful and self-aware [Rowlands] |