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Locke Revisited

The document discusses whether God could give matter the ability to think or join an immaterial thinking substance to matter arranged in a certain way. It argues that as humans do not understand what thinking is or what types of substances have the ability to think, which is only possible through God's will, we cannot know if God could make matter think.

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Sanjiv Erry
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33 views1 page

Locke Revisited

The document discusses whether God could give matter the ability to think or join an immaterial thinking substance to matter arranged in a certain way. It argues that as humans do not understand what thinking is or what types of substances have the ability to think, which is only possible through God's will, we cannot know if God could make matter think.

Uploaded by

Sanjiv Erry
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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l have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any

mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator. Whether Matter may not be made by God to think is more than man can know. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal thinking Being, or Omnipotent Spirit, should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and though

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