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2 ideas
2628 | Why would mind mix with matter if it didn't need it? [Cicero] |
Full Idea: If the gods have no need of the sensible world, why mix up mind with water and water with mind, if mind can exist by itself without any need of matter? | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.24) | |
A reaction: This question migrates into our puzzles about why a separate mental substance would be produced by evolution. If it is device physical systems use to promote themselves, mental substance is reduced to an inferior and dependent role. |
6229 | Sense is fixed in the material form, and so can't grasp abstract universals [Cudworth] |
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. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.III.III.2) | |
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. |