Here I put together some of the more interesting passages or
?transformations? I encountered. Perhaps plugging them all together like
this may help in seeing what any of the possibilities might be???.
"The soul is a kind of spiritual automaton, which is to say: In thinking we
obey only the laws of thought, laws that determine both the form and the
content of true ideas...(EIP 140)"
"Ideas have a logical form that should not be confused with a form of
psychological consciousness. They have a material content that should not be
confused with their representative content. One has only to discover this
true form and true content, to conceive their unity: the soul or or
understanding as a "spiritual automaton." Its form, as a form of truth, is
one with the content of any true idea: it is by thinking the content of some
true idea which we have that we reflect the idea in its form, and understand
our power of thinking. (EIP 132)"
"..even before knowing a part of God, our soul is itself "a part of God's
infinite understanding": for we have a power of understanding or knowing
only to extent that we participate in the absolute power of knowing
corresponding to the idea of God. (EIP 143)"
"There are no existing bodies, within Extension, that are not composed of a
very great number of simple bodies. And the soul, insofar as it is the idea
of an existing body, is itself composed of a great number of ideas which
correspond to the body's component parts, and which are extrinsically
distinct from another. The faculties, furthermore, which the soul possesses
insofar as it is the idea of an existing body, are genuine extensive parts,
which cease to belong to the soul once the body itself ceases to exist. (EIP
201/2)"
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David M. Patt, University of Michigan
the trapdoor in the sun X-).
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