8 ideas
| 21962 | Metaphysics is the roots of the tree of science [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647]), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 01.2 | |
| A reaction: If Descartes had not believed this he would not have bothered with metaphysics, and philosophy might have been dead by 1650. |
| 3659 | I know the truth that God exists and is the author of truth [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have very clearly deduced the following truths, that there is a God who is the author of all that is in the world, and who is the source of all truth. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.180) |
| 16643 | Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura] |
| Full Idea: An accident's aptitudinal relationship to a subject is essential, and this is never taken away from accidents….for it is true to say that they are suited to a subject. | |
| From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], IV.12.1.1.1c) | |
| A reaction: This is the compromise view that allows accidents to be separated, for Transubstantiation, while acknowledging that we identify them with their subjects. |
| 16696 | Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura] |
| Full Idea: Everything successive reduces to something permanent. | |
| From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], II.2.1.1.3 ad 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Avicenna first took successive entities seriously, but Bonaventure and Aquinas seem to have rejected them, or given reductive accounts of them. It resembles modern actualists versus modal realists. |
| 3657 | Understanding, not the senses, gives certainty [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Certainty is not in the sense but in the understanding alone, when it has evident perceptions. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.177) |
| 7861 | Libet says the processes initiated in the cortex can still be consciously changed [Libet, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Libet himself points out that the conscious decisions still have the power to 'endorse' or 'cancel', so to speak, the processes initiated by the earlier cortical activity: no action will result if the action's execution is consciously countermanded. | |
| From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.4 | |
| A reaction: This is why Libet's findings do not imply 'epiphenomenalism'. It seems that part of a decisive action is non-conscious, undermining the all-or-nothing view of consciousness. Searle tries to smuggle in free will at this point (Idea 3817). |
| 6660 | Libet found conscious choice 0.2 secs before movement, well after unconscious 'readiness potential' [Libet, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Libet found that a subject's conscious choice to move was about a fifth of a second before movement, and thus later than the onset of the brain's so-called 'readiness potential', which seems to imply that unconscious processes initiates action. | |
| From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: Of great interest to philosophers! It seems to make conscious choices epiphenomenal. The key move, I think, is to give up the idea of consciousness as being all-or-nothing. My actions are still initiated by 'me', but 'me' shades off into unconsciousness. |
| 3660 | Atheism arises from empiricism, because God is intangible [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The existence of God has been doubted by some, because they attributed too much to the perceptions of the senses, and God can be neither seen nor touched. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.180) |