work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5642,"","Reading Christopher Westbury and Daniel C. Dennett, ""Mining the Past to Construct the Future: Memory and Belief as Forms of Knowledge."" in Memory, Brain, and Belief. Ed. Daniel L. Schacter and Elaine Scarry. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2000. p. 11.",2009-09-14 19:42:43 UTC,"The analogy between memory and a repository, and between remembering and retaining, is obvious and is to be found in all languages; it being natural to express the operations of the mind by images taken from things material. But in philosophy we ought to draw aside the veil of imagery, and to view them naked.",2009-06-15,15080,•INTEREST. Meta-metaphorical. Reid points up metaphors of mind but then claims we should be able to do without them. REVISIT. USE. FASCINATING.,"""The analogy between memory and a repository, and between remembering and retaining, is obvious and is to be found in all languages.""","",2009-09-14 19:42:43 UTC,""
5642,"",Reading in Google Books,2012-01-31 18:55:10 UTC,"There is a natural order in the progress of the sciences, and good reasons may be assigned why the philosophy of body should be elder sister to that of mind, and of a quicker growth; but the last hath the principle of life no less than the first, and will grow up, though slowly, to maturity. The remains of ancient philosophy upon this subject, are venerable ruins, carrying the marks of genius and industry, sufficient to inflame, but not to satisfy, our curiosity. In later ages, Des Cartes was the first that pointed out the road we ought to take in those dark regions. Malebranche, Arnaud, Locke, Berkeley, Buffier, Hutcheson, Butler, Hume, Price, Lord Kames, have laboured to make discoveries; nor have they laboured in vain. For, however different and contrary their conclusions are, however sceptical some of them, they have all given new light, and cleared the way to those who shall come after them.
(Preface, 5)",,19563,"","""In later ages, Des Cartes was the first that pointed out the road we ought to take in those dark regions [of the mind].""","",2012-01-31 18:55:10 UTC,Preface
5642,"",Reading in Google Books ,2012-01-31 18:57:08 UTC,"4. We frequently meet with a distinction in writers upon this subject, between things in the mind, and things external to the mind. The powers, faculties, and operations of the mind, are things in the mind. Every thing is said to be in the mind, of which the mind is the subject. It is self-evident, that there are some things which cannot exist without a subject to which they belong, and of which they are attributes. Thus colour must be in something coloured; figure in something figured; thought can only be in something that thinks; wisdom and virtue cannot exist but in some being that is wise and virtuous. When therefore we speak of things in the mind, we understand by this, things of which the mind is the subject. Excepting the mind itself, and things in the mind, all other things are said to be external. It ought therefore to be remembered, that this distinction between things in the mind, and things external, is not meant to signify the place of the things we speak of, but their subject.
There is a figurative sense in which things are said to be in the mind, which it is sufficient barely to mention: We say such a thing was not in my mind, meaning no more than that I had not the least thought of it. By a figure, we put the thing for the thought of it. In this sense external things, are in the mind as often as they are the objects of our thought.
(I.i.4, 15)",,19564," Book I, Chapter i Explication of Words. META-METAPHORICAL throughout this opening...","""Thus colour must be in something coloured; figure in something figured; thought can only be in something that thinks; wisdom and virtue cannot exist but in some being that is wise and virtuous.""","",2012-01-31 18:58:13 UTC,"Book I, Chapter i"
5642,"",Reading in Google Books ,2012-01-31 18:59:09 UTC,"A Philosopher is, no doubt, entitled to examine even those distinctions that are to be found in the structure of all languages; and, if he is able to shew that there is no foundation for them in the nature of the things distinguished; if he can point out some prejudice common to mankind which has led them to distinguish things that are not really different; in that case, such a distinction may be imputed to a vulgar error, which ought to be corrected in philosophy. But when, in his first setting out, he takes it for granted, without proof, that distinctions found in the structure of all languages, have no foundation in nature; this surely is too fastidious a way of treating the common sense of mankind. When we come to be instructed by Philosophers, we must bring the old light of common sense along with us, and by it judge of the new light which the Philosopher communicates to us. But when we are required to put out the old light altogether, that we may follow the new, we have reason to be on our guard. There may be distinctions that have a real foundation, and which may be necessary in philosophy, which are not made in common language, because not necessary in the common business of life. But I believe no instance will be found of a distinction made in all languages, which has not a just foundation in nature.
(I.i.9, 20-1)",,19565,"","""When we come to be instructed by Philosophers, we must bring the old light of common sense along with us, and by it judge of the new light which the Philosopher communicates to us.""",Optics,2012-01-31 18:59:09 UTC,"Book I, Chapter i"
5642,"",Reading in Google Books ,2012-01-31 19:00:06 UTC,"It ought to be observed, that the Pythagoreans and the Platonists, whether elder or latter, made the eternal ideas to be objects of science only, and of abstract contemplation, not the objects of sense. And in this the ancient system of eternal ideas differs from the modern one of Father Malebranche. He held in common with other modern Philosophers, that no external thing is perceived by us immediately, but only by ideas: But he thought, that the ideas, by which we perceive an external world, are the ideas of the Deity himself, in whose mind the ideas of all things past, present, and future, must have been from eternity; for the Deity being intimately present to our minds at all times, may discover to us as much of his ideas as he sees proper, according to certain established laws of nature: And in his ideas, as in a mirror, we perceive whatever we do perceive of the external world.
(i.i.10, 24)",,19566,"","""And in his [God's] ideas, as in a mirror, we perceive whatever we do perceive of the external world.""",Optics,2012-01-31 19:00:06 UTC,"Book I, Chapter i"
5642,"",Reading in Google Books ,2012-01-31 19:02:22 UTC,"Aristotle taught, that all the objects of our thought enter at first by the senses; and, since the sense cannot receive external material objects themselves, it receives their species; that is, their images or forms, without the matter; as wax receives the form of the seal without any of the matter of it. These images or forms, impressed upon the senses, are called sensible species and are the objects only of the sensitive part of the mind: But, by various internal powers, they are retained, refined, and spiritualized, so as to become objects of memory and imagination, and, at last, of pure intellection. When they are objects of memory and of imagination, they get the name of phantasms. When, by farther refinement, and being stripped of their particularities, they become objects of science; they are called intelligible species: So that every immediate object, whether of sense, of memory, of imagination, or of reasoning, must be some phantasm or species in the mind itself.
(I.i.10, 25)
",,19567,CROSS-REFERENCE. See Reid in Essays (on touch).,"""Aristotle taught, that all the objects of our thought enter at first by the senses; and, since the sense cannot receive external material objects themselves, it receives their species; that is, their images or forms, without the matter; as wax receives the form of the seal without any of the matter of it.""",Impressions,2012-01-31 19:02:22 UTC,"Book I, Chapter i"
5642,"",Reading in Google Books ,2012-01-31 19:03:45 UTC,"The theory of Democritus and Epicurus, on this subject, was not very unlike to that of the Peripatetics. They held, that all bodies continually send forth slender films or spectres from their surface, of such extreme subtilty, that they easily penetrate our gross bodies, or enter by the organs of sense, and stamp their image upon the mind. The sensible species of Aristotle were mere forms without matter. The spectres of Epicurus were composed of a very subtile matter.
(I.i.10, 26)",,19568,"","""They held, that all bodies continually send forth slender films or spectres from their surface, of such extreme subtilty, that they easily penetrate our gross bodies, or enter by the organs of sense, and stamp their image upon the mind.""",Impressions,2012-01-31 19:03:45 UTC,"Book I, Chapter i"
5642,"",Reading in Google Books ,2012-01-31 19:05:09 UTC,"Modern Philosophers, as well as the Peripatetics and Epicureans of old, have conceived, that external objects cannot be the immediate objects of our thought; that there must be some image of them in the mind itself, in which, as in a mirror, they are seen. And the name idea, in the philosophical sense of it, is given to those internal and immediate objects of our thoughts. The external thing is the remote or mediate object; but the idea, or image of that object in the mind, is the immediate object, without which we could have no perception, no remembrance, no conception of the mediate object.
(I.i.10, 26)",,19569,"","""Modern Philosophers, as well as the Peripatetics and Epicureans of old, have conceived, that external objects cannot be the immediate objects of our thought; that there must be some image of them in the mind itself, in which, as in a mirror, they are seen.""",Optics,2012-01-31 19:05:09 UTC,"Book I, Chapter i"
5642,"",Reading in Google Books ,2012-01-31 19:07:41 UTC,"When we speak of making an impression on the mind, the word is carried still farther from its literal meaning; use, however, which is the arbiter of language, authorises this application of it. As when we say that admonition and reproof make little impression on those who are confirmed in bad habits. The same discourse delivered in one way, makes a strong impression on the hearers; delivered in another way, it makes no impression at all.
(I.i.11, 31)",,19570,USE IN ENTRY. META-METAPHORICAL. CITED IN ENTRY.,"""When we speak of making an impression on the mind, the word is carried still farther from its literal meaning; use, however, which is the arbiter of language, authorises this application of it.""",Impressions,2012-01-31 19:08:05 UTC,"Book I, Chapter i"
5642,"",Reading,2012-03-01 17:26:53 UTC,"There are other opinions that appear to be universal, from what is common in the structure of all languages, ancient and modern, polished and barbarous. Language is the express image and picture of human thoughts; and, from the picture, we may often draw very certain conclusions with regard to the original. We find in all languages the same parts of speech, nouns substantive and adjective, verbs active and passive, varied according to the tenses of past, present, and future; we find adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. There are general rules of syntax common to all languages. This uniformity in the structure of language, shows a certain degree of uniformity in those notions upon which the structure of language is grounded.
(I.ii.7, p. 44)",,19614,"","""Language is the express image and picture of human thoughts; and, from the picture, we may often draw very certain conclusions with regard to the original.""","",2012-03-01 17:26:53 UTC,Chapter 2. Principles Taken for Granted