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Single Idea 18453

[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / c. Features of mind ]

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]

The 14 ideas with the same theme [observing features of a mind]:

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]