Sentence examples for essence of mind from inspiring English sources
The essence of mind is thought.
It is akin to asking why extension is the essence of body, or why thought is the essence of mind.
Accordingly, perception or representation is the essence of mind, and consciousness follows as a result of the mind's being a representing substance.
In metaphysics, he provided arguments for the existence of God, to show that the essence of matter is extension, and that the essence of mind is thought.
Descartes has a specific answer to this question: the human mind comes supplied with innate ideas that allow it to perceive the main properties of God (infinity and perfection), the essence of matter, and the essence of mind.
In his favour, he never strayed from the Cartesian metaphysics, i.e., its substance dualism of mind and matter, substance-mode ontology, mind-body union and interaction, and the view that extension is the essence of matter and thought the essence of mind; and he remained loyal to the Cartesian physics against that of the atomists.
God creates the eternal truths (concerning logic, mathematics, the nature of the good, the essences of mind and matter), and he creates the human mind and provisions it with innate ideas that correspond to those truths.
He based this argument on clear and distinct intellectual perceptions of the essences of mind and matter, not on the fact that he could doubt the existence of one or the other.
This means that, in order to procure the fundamental truths of metaphysics, we must "withdraw the mind from the senses" (7:4, 12, 14) and turn toward our innate ideas of the essences of things, including the essences of mind, matter, and an infinite being (God).
