This last problem threatens to be the most serious of four phenomena, for as James Hill has pointed out (2004, p. 628), the problems about gravity, sensation, and motion arise subsequent to our having conceived of body, whereas the problem about cohesion may thwart our very ability to conceive clearly of body.
Hill (2004, p. 627, 628) argues that the concept of superaddition "is quite out of place" in connection with cohesion, because Locke regards cohesion as a foundational problem, which thwarts our efforts to conceive of body.
Where Democritus believed that matter could not move through space without a vacuum and that light was the rapid movement of particles through a void, Aristotle rejected the existence of vacuums because he could not conceive of bodies falling equally fast through a void.
Cordemoy's first question is how, on this account, can we individuate a body at rest: "According to their doctrine, we cannot conceive of a body at rest between other bodies, because supposing that it is touching them, this doctrine teaches that together with them it makes only one body.
With the emergence of Kabbalah at the end of the twelfth century, ru'aḥ ha-qodesh was no longer tied to the aforementioned metaphysical overflow, but rather to the divine overflow; that is, the kabbalists articulated a theory of a godhead conceived of as a body of divine energy radiating or emanating its essence "down" into the created worlds and the human realm.
Several passages in Descartes' analysis of motion seem to support this strong variety of relationism: "we cannot conceive of the body AB being transported from the vicinity of the body CD without also understanding that the body CD is transported from the vicinity of the body AB" (Pr II 29).
The fact that we can clearly and distinctly conceive of the body existing without the mind and vice versa entails that the body is really distinct from the mind.
More conceived of both spirit and body as spatially extended, but defined spiritual substance as the obverse of material extension: where body is inert and solid, but divisible; spirit is active and penetrable, but indivisible.
The brain cannot be conceived of apart from the body, which provides its first and continuing "values".
Hence we must not believe the old tale which says that the world needs some Atlas to keep it safe-a tale composed, it would seem, by men who, like later thinkers, conceived of all the upper bodies as earthy and endowed with weight, and therefore supported it in their fabulous way upon animate necessity.
For example, what grounds our confidence that we have conceived of a mind without a body simply by conceiving of consciousness without a body being present?
