Finite Minds and Their Representations in Leibniz and Kant

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-80
Keyword(s):  
Finite Minds

The Infinite Commitment of Finite Minds

1984 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Finite Axiomatization ◽  
Semantic Constraint ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
Finite Base ◽  
Finite Minds

Chomsky (in syntax) and Davidson (in semantics) have made much of the constraint that speakers’ competence must have a finite base. This base is often supposed to mean a finite axiomatization of beliefs. Section I shows why this is plausible. Section II shows why it is wrong. Section III shows why the semantic constraint is thereby trivialized.'Finite minds cannot have infinitely many beliefs’ has been taken for a useful truism. A theory of meaning, say, for a language may, for each of its infinitely many sentences, attribute to competent speakers knowledge, in some sense, and so in a corresponding sense belief, about the meaning (or some substitute for it) of that sentence. Our truism seems to force this paradox to immediate and constructive resolution: as finite minds we have a finite view on our language that recognizably entails an infinity of propositions about it.

Universals in English Platonism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brunello Lotti
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
Innate Ideas ◽  
The Status ◽  
Theological Voluntarism ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Finite Minds ◽  
Objective Validity ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter reconstructs the topic of universals in the English Platonists’ epistemologies and ontologies. More and Cudworth restrict universals to the mental realm, stating that whatsoever exists without the mind is singular. Despite this nominalistic principle, universal concepts are not inductive constructions, but primarily divine thoughts and secondarily a priori innate ideas in the human mind. The archetypal theory of creation and the connection of finite minds to God’s Mind ensure their objective validity, in antithesis to Hobbes’ phenomenalism and sensationalism. Norris shares the archetypal theory of creation, but refuses innatism, and his doctrine of universals is framed in terms of his theory of the ideal world inspired by Malebranche. Both the Cambridge Platonists and Norris, opposing theological voluntarism, discuss the status of ideas in God’s mind, which oscillate from being merely thoughts of the divine intellect to being its eternal objects.

Spinoza and the Possibility of Error

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Jakob Zigouras
Keyword(s):  
Central Problem ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Finite Minds

If we consider certain features of Spinoza's metaphysics, it can seem very difficult to see how error, or the having of false ideas, is possible. In this paper I want to give the metaphysical background to the problem, before turning to a more detailed consideration of how Spinoza in fact accounts for error, or the having of false ideas. I will show the importance of the notions of adequacy and inadequacy in Spinoza's account. Having done this I will return to the central problem of accounting for the ontological status of false ideas vis a vis both the Infinite Intellect, and finite minds.

Finite Minds

2019 ◽  
pp. 171-187
Author(s):  
Michael Huemer
Keyword(s):  
Finite Minds

Maimon, Salomon (1753/4–1800)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Franks
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Divine Mind ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Finite Minds

Educated as a rabbi in Lithuania, Shlomo (Salomon) ben Yehoshua migrated to Germany and adopted the surname Maimon in honour of Maimonides. His criticism of Kant’s dualism and his monistic account of the human mind as an imperfect expression of God’s infinite mind influenced Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Kant regarded him as the critic who understood him best. Maimon’s system combines rational dogmatism with empirical scepticism. As a rational dogmatist, he argues that cognition requires the absolute unity of subject and object. Maimon therefore criticizes Kant’s dualistic divisions between the mental form and extra-mental matter of knowledge, and between the faculties of sensibility and understanding. Experience in Kant’s sense – empirical knowledge – is possible only if these dualisms are merely apparent. Our finite minds must be imperfect expressions of an infinite, divine mind that produces the form and matter of knowledge. Through scientific progress, our minds become more adequate expressions of the infinite mind. Kant has not refuted Hume’s scepticism, which could be refuted only if science became perfect. Perfect science is an ideal for which we must strive but which we will never reach. Maimon is deeply indebted to Maimonides, but he reformulates Maimonidean ideas in light of modern mathematical physics and deploys them within a Kantian investigation of the possibility of experience. The result is a unique encounter between medieval and modern philosophy that decisively influenced German idealism and remains philosophically interesting.

Temple, William (1881–1944)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith E. Yandell
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Creative Mind ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Finite Minds ◽  
The Universe

William Temple was concerned to unite personal Christian religion and social action, finding in the doctrine of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ the basis for human dignity. He held that while the universe long existed without finite minds, and finite thought has its origin in the functioning of physical organisms, thought transcends its origins, creating ideas not occasioned by or referring to its physical environment, and purposively affecting that environment. Our capacities to seek truth, appreciate beauty and recognize duty are best explained by a purposive creative Mind using physical creation to bring other minds into existence. Created minds continually depend for their existence on God’s continuing to sustain them.

Berkeley and Spinoza

2021 ◽  
pp. 134-144
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Formal Reality ◽  
Finite Minds

There is a widespread assumption that Berkeley and Spinoza have little in common, even though early Jesuit critics in France often linked them. Later commentators have also recognized their similarities. This chapter focuses on how Berkeley’s comments on the Arnauld–Malebranche debate regarding objective and formal reality, and on his treatment of God’s creation of finite minds within nature relate his theory of knowledge to his doctrine in a way similar to that of Spinoza.

Berkeley’s Christian Neoplatonism and Malebranchean Divine Ideas

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-163
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Church Fathers ◽  
Finite Minds ◽  
The Trinity

Berkeley’s doctrine of archetypes explains how God perceives and can have the same ideas as finite minds. His appeal to Christian Neoplatonism opens up a way to understand how the relation of mind, ideas, and their union is modeled on the Cappadocian Church Fathers’ account of the Persons of the Trinity. This way of understanding Berkeley indicates why he, in contrast to Descartes or Locke, thinks that mind (spiritual substance) and ideas (objects of mind) cannot exist or be thought of apart from one another. It also hints at why Gregory of Nyssa’s immaterialism sounds so much like Berkeley’s.

Berkeley’s Pantheistic Discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 237-249
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Karl Barth ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Finite Minds

Berkeley’s immaterialism has more in common with views developed by Henry More, the mathematician Joseph Raphson, John Toland, and Jonathan Edwards than those of thinkers with whom he is commonly associated (e.g. Malebranche and Locke). The key for recognizing their similarities lies in appreciating how St. Paul’s remark that, in God “we live and move and have our being” is an invitation to think of God as the space of discourse in which minds and ideas are identified. This way of speaking about God, adapted by Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, opens up new ways to think about the relation between God and finite minds.

The Argument from Intentionality (or Aboutness)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Juliano Keller
Keyword(s):  
Existence Of God ◽  
Eternal Truths ◽  
Theistic Argument ◽  
Finite Minds ◽  
The Way

The Theistic Argument from Intentionality (TAI) is a venerable argument for the existence of God from the existence of eternal truths. The argument relies inter alia on the premises that (i) truth requires representation, and that (ii) non-derivative representation is a function of, and only of, minds. If propositions are the fundamental bearers of truth and falsity, then these premises entail that propositions (or at least their representational properties) depend on minds. Although it is widely thought that psychologism—the view that the fundamental truth-bearers are mind-dependent—was refuted by Frege, a psychologistic view of propositions has been undergoing a revival. However, this new psychologism suffers from a problem of scarcity—finite minds cannot generate enough thoughts to play the role of fundamental truth-bearers. This objection paves the way for a revised version of the TAI: only an infinite mind can furnish enough thoughts to play the role of propositions.

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