Suggestions(2)
Exact(6)
Thus, the theory of efficacious ideas enables Malebranche to offer a more unified theory of cognition.
However, the theory of efficacious ideas allowed him to say that this idea is rendered sensible by causing in us the appropriate sensations of color and light.
So it follows that only God can act on the soul and, insofar as they are efficacious, ideas must be the very substance of God.
Make no mistake about it, the theory of efficacious ideas marks a significant development in the doctrine of Vision in God.
One advantage of this extension of the doctrine of efficacious ideas to sensations is that it yields a fairly clear explanation of Malebranche's claim to Arnauld that an idea is "intelligible extension rendered sensible by color or light".
As abstract entities, it is also difficult to understand how ideas can have causal powers, in keeping with the doctrine of efficacious ideas, or how they can be identical with God's substance (Jolley 1990, 76f).
Similar(53)
We have seen that his late doctrine of the efficacious idea involved the position that we have pure intellectual perceptions produced by God's intellectual idea of extension.
After 1695, he developed this suggestion by introducing the notion of "pure" or non-sensory intellectual perceptions that are produced by God's efficacious idea of extension.
A final feature of Malebranche's doctrine of the vision in God is connected to the notion in his writings of the "efficacious idea" (idée efficace).
The theory that ideas are efficacious becomes Malebranche's mature position, and to mark this development changes are made to later editions of the Search and to other writings.
Causal Efficacy: In this argument, Malebranche begins by noting that ideas are causally efficacious 'since they act upon the mind and enlighten it' and 'make it happy or unhappy through pleasant or unpleasant perceptions by which they affect it' (3.2.6, OC 1 442; LO 232).
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Justyna Jupowicz-Kozak
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