work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3204,"","Reading Paul S. MacDonald History of the Concept of Mind (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 327. Macdonald cites The Selected Works of Gassendi, ed. and trans. Craig B. Bush (New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972), 421.",2004-02-16 00:00:00 UTC,"The soul seems to be like a little flame or a most attenuated kind of fire, which thrives or remains kindled while the animal lives, since if it no longer thrives or is put out, the animal dies.
(p. 327 in Macdonald)",2007-04-26,8429,"•REVISIT: I cannot find the metaphor in the cited edition. MacDonald claims to be quoting from the last chapter of the Syntagma Philosophicum.
• Citation is still missing. MacDonald seems guilty of allowing a typo to sneak in here? See The Selected Works of Gassendi. Ed. and trans. Craig B. Bush. New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972. p. 421. I cannot find the metaphor in that edition, and I can't tell which title is here referred to.","""The soul seems to be like a little flame or a most attenuated kind of fire, which thrives or remains kindled while the animal lives, since if it no longer thrives or is put out, the animal dies.""","",2012-02-03 21:10:32 UTC,""
3570,"",Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"These, Sir, are the points which we wanted you to clarify, so as to enable everyone to derive the utmost benefit from reading your Meditations, which are argued with great subtlety and are also, in our opinion, true. And after giving your solutions to these difficulties it would be worthwhile if you set out the entire argument in geometrical fashion, starting from a number of definitions, postulates and axioms. You are highly experienced in employing this method, and it would enable you to fill the mind of each reader so that he could see everything as it were at a single glance, and be permeated with awareness of the divine power.
(Second Set of Objections, p. 91-2)",,9243,"•First six sets of objections published with first edition. Second edition (1642) contained seventh and letter to Dinet (all in Latin). A French version was published in 1647. Translated by Claude Clerselier.
•Notice the ""as it were""
•Cross reference: Locke's Essay",A geometrical argument fills the mind and allows one to see everything at a single glance,"",2009-09-14 19:34:03 UTC,Second Set of Objections: Friar Marin Mersenne
3571,"",Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"What exactly do you want? You can hardly be after my opinion of the author, since you already know how highly I rate his outstanding intelligence and exceptional learning. Moreover, you know of all the tedious commitments that keep me busy, and if you have an unsuitably high opinion of my powers, that certainly does not make me any less aware of my own inadequacy. Yet the work you are giving me to scrutinize requires both an uncommon intellect and, above all, a calm mind, which can be free from the hurly-burly of all external things and have the leisure to consider itself - something which, as you are well aware, can happen only if the mind meditates attentively and keeps its gaze fixed upon itself. Nevertheless, since you command, I must obey; and if I go astray it will be your fault, since it is you who are compelling me to write. Now it could be claimed that the work under discussion belongs entirely to philosophy; yet since the author has, with great decorum, submitted himself to the tribunal of the theologians, I propose to play a dual role here. Firstly I shall put forward what seem to me to be the possible philosophical objections regarding the major issues of the nature of our mind and of God; and then I shall set out the problems which a theologian might come up against in the work as a whole.
(Fourth Set of Objections, p. 138)",,9244,•First six sets of objections published with first edition. Second edition (1642) contained seventh and letter to Dinet (all in Latin). A French version was published in 1647. Translated by Claude Clerselier.
,"A calm mind, free from the hurly-burly of external things, may fix its gaze on itself","",2009-09-14 19:34:03 UTC,Fourth Set of Objections: Antoine Arnauld
3572,As it Were,Searching in Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"You go on to say that you are not 'that structure of limbs which is called a human body'. We must accept this, since you are considering yourself solely as a thinking thing and as a part of the whole composite that is a human being - a part that is distinct from the external and more solid part. 'I am not', you say, 'some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing. Let this supposition stand. But stop here, O Mind, and let those 'suppositions', or rather fictions, finally depart. You say 'I am not a vapour or anything of this kind.' But if the entire soul is something of this kind, why should you, who may be thought of as the noblest part of the soul, not be regarded as being, so to speak, the flower, or the most refined and pure and active part of it? You say: 'It may be that these very things which I am supposing to be nothing are something real, and that they are not distinct from the ""I"" of which I am aware. I do not know, and for the moment I shall not argue the point.' But if you do not know, if you are not arguing the point, why do you assume that you are none of these things? You say: 'I know I exist; and knowledge of this thing taken strictly cannot depend on that of which I am unaware.' Fair enough; but remember that you have not yet made certain that you are not air or a vapour or something else of this sort.
(Fifth Set of Objections, p. 184-5)",2011-09-26,9245,"•First six sets of objections published with first edition. Second edition (1642) contained seventh and letter to Dinet (all in Latin). A French version was published in 1647. Translated by Claude Clerselier.
•Notice the ""so to speak"" (a version of ""as it were"")
","""But if the entire soul is something of this kind, why should you, who may be thought of as the noblest part of the soul, not be regarded as being, so to speak, the flower, or the most refined and pure and active part of it?""","",2011-09-26 17:03:32 UTC,Fifth Set of Objections: Pierre Gassendi
3572,"",Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"You next take what you call the imagination and proceed to describe what it is. You say that 'imagining is simply the contemplation of the shape or image of a corporeal thing', and you say this so that you can go on to infer that it is some form of thought other than imagination that enables you to know your nature. But since you are allowed to define imagination as you like, then if you are corporeal - and you have not yet proved the contrary - why, may I ask, cannot your contemplation of yourself involve some corporeal form or image? And when you do contemplate yourself in this way, I ask you whether you find that anything comes to mind apart from some pure, transparent, rarefied substance like a wind, which pervades the whole body or at least the brain or some other part, and which animates you and performs all your functions. 'I realize', you say, 'that none of the things that the imagination enables me to grasp is at all relevant to this knowledge of myself which I possess.' But you do not say how you recognize this. And since you had decided a little earlier that you did not yet know whether these things belonged to you, how, may I ask, do you now arrive at the conclusion just quoted?
(Fifth Set of Objections, p. 185)",2007-04-26,9246,•First six sets of objections published with first edition. Second edition (1642) contained seventh and letter to Dinet (all in Latin). A French version was published in 1647. Translated by Claude Clerselier.
,"The self may be imagined as a ""pure, transparent, rarefied substance like a wind.""","",2009-09-14 19:34:04 UTC,Fifth Set of Objections: Pierre Gassendi
3572,"",Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"What I find strange here is how you can claim that there is no problem about the idea you are said to have of yourself (an idea which is so fertile that it enables you to derive so many other ideas from it). For in fact you either have no idea of yourself at all, or you have one which is very confused and imperfect, as we have noted when commenting on the previous Meditation. The inference which you yourself drew in that Meditation was that there was nothing which you could perceive more easily or evidently than yourself. But since you neither have nor are capable of having any idea of yourself, should we not rather say that you can perceive anything at all more easily and more evidently than yourself?
When I think about why it is that sight does not see itself and the intellect does not understand itself, it occurs to me that nothing acts on itself. Thus the hand (or the tip of the finger) does not strike itself and the foot does not kick itself. Now if we are to become aware of something, it is necessary for the thing to act on the cognitive faculty by transmitting its semblance to the faculty or by informing the faculty with its semblance. Hence it seems clear that the faculty itself, not being outside itself, cannot transmit a semblance of itself to itself, and hence cannot produce any awareness of itself or, in other words, cannot perceive itself. Why do you think that the eye can see itself in a mirror although it cannot see itself in itself? It is because there is a space between the eye and the mirror, and the eye acts on the mirror, transmitting a semblance of itself onto it, so that the mirror in turn acts on the eye by sending its own semblance back to it. Show me a mirror that you yourself can act on in this way, and I promise that, when it reflects your semblance back to you, you will finally manage to perceive yourself--though not by direct but by a reflexive kind of cognition. But since you cannot provide such a mirror, there is no hope of your knowing yourself.
(Fifth Set of Objections, p. 203-4)",2003-10-23,9250,•First six sets of objections published with first edition. Second edition (1642) contained seventh and letter to Dinet (all in Latin). A French version was published in 1647. Translated by Claude Clerselier.
•INTEREST
,"""Now if we are to become aware of something, it is necessary for the thing to act on the cognitive faculty by transmitting its semblance to the faculty or by informing the faculty with its semblance. Hence it seems clear that the faculty itself, not being outside itself, cannot transmit a semblance of itself to itself, and hence cannot produce any awareness of itself or, in other words, cannot perceive itself. Why do you think that the eye can see itself in a mirror although it cannot see itself in itself?""",Optics,2012-05-09 14:05:06 UTC,Fifth Set of Objections: Pierre Gassendi
3570,"",Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"If you do not accept this, then you must untie the knot which in your view must be binding us with adamantine bonds and preventing our mind from soaring above every kind of body. The knot is this. We perceive very well that three and two make five and that if you take equals from equals the remainders will be equal; we are convinced of these and numerous other matters, just as you find yourself to be. But why are we not similarly convinced on the basis of your ideas, or our own, that the soul of man is distinct from the body, or that God exists? You will say that you cannot graft this truth into us unless we are prepared to meditate along with you. Well, we have read what you have written seven times, and have lifted up our minds, as best we could, to the level of the angels, but we are still not convinced. We do not believe you will allege that our minds are in the grip of a brutish stupor and are wholly unfitted for metaphysical subjects, when we have had thirty years practice in them! Surely you will prefer to accept that your arguments derived from the ideas of the mind and of God do not have the kind of weight or strength that could or should conquer the minds of learned men who have tried with all their might to detach themselves from corporeal stuff. Indeed we think you will readily admit this if you re-read your Meditations in the spirit of analytical scrutiny which you would adopt if they had been put forward for your examination by an opponent.
(Sixth Set of Objections, p. 283-4)",2003-10-23,9251,•I've included twice: Knot and Soaring
•First six sets of objections published with first edition. Second edition (1642) contained seventh and letter to Dinet (all in Latin). A French version was published in 1647. Translated by Claude Clerselier.
,"""If you do not accept this, then you must untie the knot which in your view must be binding us with adamantine bonds and preventing our mind from soaring above every kind of body.""","",2009-09-14 19:34:04 UTC,Sixth Set of Objections: Mersenne
3572,"",Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"You may say that you occupy the citadel in your brain and there receive whatever messages are transmitted by the animal spirits which move through the nerves, and sense-perception thus occurs there, where you dwell, despite the fact that it is said to occur throughout the body. Let us accept this; but the brutes have nerves, animal spirits and a brain, and in the brain there is a principle of cognition that receives the messages from the spirits in an exactly similar fashion and thus completes the act of sense-perception. You may say that this principle in the brains of animals is simply the corporeal imagination or faculty of forming images. But in that case you must show that you who reside in the brain are something different from the corporeal imagination or the human faculty of forming images. I asked you a little while ago for a criterion which would prove that you are something different, but I do not think you will be able to supply one. You may cite operations which far surpass those performed by animals. But although man is the foremost of the animals, he still belongs to the class of animals; and similarly, though you prove yourself to be the most outstanding of imaginative faculties, you still count as one of these faculties. You may attach the special label 'mind' to yourself, but although the name may be more impressive, this does not mean that your nature is therefore different. To prove that your nature is different (that is, incorporeal, as you maintain), you ought to produce some operation which is of a quite different kind from those which the brutes perform - one which takes place outside the brain, or at least independently of the brain; and this you do not do. On the contrary, when the brain is disturbed, you are disturbed, and when the brain is overwhelmed you are overwhelmed, and if the images of things leave the brain you do not retain any trace of them. You may say that everything which occurs in animals happens by means of a blind impulse of the animal spirits and the other organs, in just the same way as motion is produced in a clock or other machine. This may be true in the case of functions like nutrition or the pulsing of the arteries, which occur in exactly similar fashion in the case of man. But can you cite any sensory acts or so-called 'passions of the soul' which are produced by a blind impulse in the case of the brutes but not in our case? A scrap of food transmits its image into the eye of a dog, and the image is then transferred to the brain and as it were hooks on to the soul, so that the soul and the entire body joined to it is drawn towards the morsel as if by the most tiny and delicate chains. And if someone aims a stone, the stone transmits its image and, like a lever, pushes the soul away and simultaneously drives off the body or forces it to flee. But does not all this occur in the case of man? Perhaps you have in mind some quite different way in which this occurs in man, in which case I should be much obliged if you would explain it.
(Fifth Set of Objections, p. 187-8)",2004-01-25,9254,"•I've included twice: Citadel and Inhabitant.
•Interesting paragraph. And a kind of anti-metpahor
","""You may say that you occupy the citadel in your brain and there receive whatever messages are transmitted by the animal spirits which move through the nerves, and sense-perception thus occurs there, where you dwell, despite the fact that it is said to occur throughout the body.""",Inhabitants,2012-04-27 16:22:05 UTC,Fifth Set of Objections: Pierre Gassendi