display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 7840 | For all we know, an omnipotent being might have enabled material beings to think [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We may never be able to know whether any material being thinks; it being impossible for us, by contemplation of our own ideas to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.06) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz attacked this vigorously, but I have to agree with Locke. We now see that it is just as mysterious for 'mental' substance to think as it is for physical substance. If in doubt, apply the Razor, and stick with the substance you know. |
| 12500 | Thinking without matter and matter that thinks are equally baffling [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It is no harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.32) | |
| A reaction: This kind of aporia is at the heart of modern 'mysterianism', exemplified by Colin McGinn, and I find that Locke fully endorses such an attitude, and should be seen as the first Mysterian. |
| 15996 | We can't begin to conceive what would produce some particular experience within our minds [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We are so far from knowing what figure, size or motion of parts produce a yellow colour, sweet taste, or sharp sound, that we cannot conceive how any size, figure or motion can produce in us the colour, taste or sound. There is no conceivable connection. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.13) | |
| A reaction: There is a good case for naming Locke as the first mysterian, and he puts his finger here on what I think is the weirdest puzzle of the mind - why THAT experience for THAT stimulus. In the 21st century we should not give up so easily. |
| 12552 | Thoughts moving bodies, and bodies producing thoughts, are equally unknowable [Locke] |
| Full Idea: How any thought should produce a motion in body is as remote from the nature of our ideas, as how any body should produce any thought in the mind. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.28) | |
| A reaction: Compare McGinn's Idea 2540. Locke was a thoroughgoing Mysterian, but in his case it was part of a widespread pessimism about penetrating any of the inner secrets of nature. Modern Mysterians see it as the one secret we can't get. |