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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 Ref
'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.
| 6230 | If the soul were a tabula rasa, with no innate ideas, there could be no moral goodness or justice [Cudworth] |
| 6223 | If the will and pleasure of God controls justice, then anything wicked or unjust would become good if God commanded it [Cudworth] |
| 6226 | The requirement that God must be obeyed must precede any authority of God's commands [Cudworth] |
| 6225 | Obligation to obey all positive laws is older than all laws [Cudworth] |
| 6227 | Keeping promises and contracts is an obligation of natural justice [Cudworth] |
| 6224 | An omnipotent will cannot make two things equal or alike if they aren't [Cudworth] |
| 6228 | Senses cannot judge one another, so what judges senses cannot be a sense, but must be superior [Cudworth] |
| 6229 | Sense is fixed in the material form, and so can't grasp abstract universals [Cudworth] |
| 6231 | There is a self-determing power in each person, which makes them what they are [Cudworth] |