Caterus, Johannes [Johan de Kater]

Objections and Replies

Paris

Michel de Soly

1641

The mind may ebb and flow "like the Euripus with its violent tides"

But here I am forced to stop for a while to avoid becoming exhausted. My mind ebbs and flows like the Euripus with its violent tides: first I accept, but then I deny; I give my approval but then I withdraw it; I am unwilling to disagree with the author, but I am unable to agree with him. My question is this: what sort of cause does an idea need? Indeed, what is an idea? It is the thing that is thought of, in so far as it has objective being in the intellect. But what is 'objective being in the intellect'? According to what I was taught, this is simply the determination of an act of the intellect by means of an object. And this is merely an extraneous label which adds nothing to the thing itself. Just as 'being seen' is nothing other than an act of vision attributable to myself, so 'being thought of', or having objective being in the intellect, is simply a thought of the mind which stops and terminates in the mind. And this can occur without any movement or change in the thing itself, and indeed without the thing in question existing at all. So why should I look for a cause of something which is not actual, and which is simply an empty label, a non-entity?
(First Set of Objections, p. 66-7)

Liquid::Tides

Past Masters

Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothof, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

10/07/2003