more on this theme     |     more from this thinker


Single Idea 22741

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 4. Emergentism ]

Full Idea

The incorporeal will never come into existence from body because the nature of the incorporeal does not exist in body.

Gist of Idea

The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it

Source

Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.225)

Book Ref

Sextus Empiricus: 'Against the Physicists/Against the Ethicists', ed/tr. Bury,R.G. [Harvard Loeb 1997], p.113


A Reaction

So nothing high could be made of pebbles because pebbles are not high? His argument depends on incorporeality having an intrinsically incorporeal nature. Pebbles have some height which can be extended.


The 20 ideas from 'Against the Physicists (two books)'

Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus]
All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus]
It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus]
The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus]
God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus]
The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus]
God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus]
The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus]
An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus]
God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus]
God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus]
The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus]
Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus]
Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus]
If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus]
A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus]
Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus]
Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus]
Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus]
If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus]