Quote:
|
the notion is in your mind or it is not
|
Yes, this criterion completely baffles me.
All notions that I can conjure must inhere in my mind, by definition. There are only a few ways I can think of which could point otherwise. First, you could apply a "computer terminal" theory to minds generally: it's being thought, but not by me, I'm just a "terminal". Second, we could think of something like the square root of a negative number, perhaps. Mathematicians say "we can't
take the square root, but we can call it 'i' and manipulate it and study it like any other mathematical object" This kind of notion is also seen as an escape from Berkelean ontology, i.e. "To be is to be, or to be perceived". Basically you say that, no, you can't think of something which isn't thought of (to think it brings it into existence) but I can imagine books in a closet. I'm only saying they
exist, but I'm not imagining them, I'm only thinking of the exterior of closet. The idea being I'm referring
to the thing mentally but "it" in its entirety (the root-taking of -1, the actual books in the closet) is not in my mind.
Perhaps we could convert this into some kind of logical calculus so I can get a handle on it. The subjunctive "unthought-thoughts" might have a correlate in something like a mathematical null-space. I mean at least that I can understand!