4 ideas
| 3622 | The Cogito is not a syllogism but a self-evident intuition [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: When someone says 'I am thinking, therefore I am, or I exist', he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognises it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind. | |
| From: René Descartes (Reply to Second Objections [1641], 140) |
| 21862 | Consciousness is based on 'I can', not on 'I think' [Merleau-Ponty] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is in the first place not a matter of 'I think' but of 'I can'. | |
| From: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception [1945], p.159), quoted by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 2 'Sensation' | |
| A reaction: The point here (quoted during a discussion of Spinoza) is that you can't leave out the role of the body, which seems correct. |
| 20750 | The mind does not unite perceptions, because they flow into one another [Merleau-Ponty] |
| Full Idea: I do not have one perception, then another, and between them a link brought about by the mind. Rather, each perspective merges into the other [against a unified background]. | |
| From: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception [1945], p.329-30), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Perceptual' | |
| A reaction: I take this to be another piece of evidence pointing to realism as the best explanation of experience. A problem for Descartes is what unites the sequence of thoughts. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |