phi kappa

Waltzing is a strangely selfless practice. You work your ass off by yourself, and sacrifice what you've done to the intimacy and closeness of one man and one frame and one step at a time. I am a proud, independent woman who loves and (I daresay) needs the structure only afforded by being able to relinquish control and fall back in those arms--knowing that those arms are confident, capable, and unyielding to the ignorance or unwillingness of the audience to understand or appreciate that relationship. The waltz is beautiful when the audience sees the hearts of those dancing it.

tango

"..tango imparts all the certainty of the past, and all of the openness of the future."

-The Music of the Tango, Ted Gioia

The past is the most comfortable home in which my mind resides. People and places and thoughts and emotions rush back to me without a moment's notice. I'm sentimental, nostalgic.. I long for the past in a way that I never long for the future. It holds within its sometimes fuzzy memories everything and anything certain in my life. The present and future promise nothing of the past's fearlessness and warmth.

The certainty I have about the past isn't just surety of how the story goes. First of all, I can see myself and all that I am distinctly. I can look back, with perhaps more understanding, and see who exactly made those choices and why. My self, my mind, my soul, my hopes and dreams all become immensely clear when crystallized in the past. I don't have to wonder, like right now or right now, what exactly makes me me or who exactly I am. Am I my consciousness? Am I a soul? Am I my soul? Am I a mind? Am I reason? Am I a sack of cells waiting to die?

My memories don't just provide a photograph of my heart's topography at the time--they drive my actions in the present. What kind of memory will this make? Making decisions like this is moving forward while facing backward. Which way should I face? Here, I am looking and delving into what I have learned and what I know for certain. If I made decisions looking toward a hazy and perhaps grimy future, I may make mistakes that I could have avoided. Of course, I am afraid of failure; the error would be willfully blind if I chose to risk present action without an eye to the past. My knowledge in the present is far too inadequate to accurately determine actions. To fail in willful ignorance, or to fail by miscalculation? The past encompasses both my life rushed past and my life rushing onward.

Whatever is in the past, it is in my past. I have no fear, no inhibition, no hesitation in memories. I can traverse the minefield of my memories without recourse. Even in the times where I screwed up, I know that I end up here. The memories don't stop, they don't falter. I might remember every mistake, but none of them were big enough to prevent me from making more memories right alongside them. Somehow this fact is reassuring, comfortable. I feel safe locked away in the bookshelves of the past. Embracing me.

"Nostalgia - it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, ‘nostalgia’ literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved." via stellarstuff

And the embrace of tango.. close, I can feel your breath change with the rhythm.

Tango is about years of tradition and culture embodied in music and movement. My life is a culmination of successes and failures and getting all tangled up in my own tango. I don’t know who is leading yet, or where we’re going, but the music is beautiful. The beat is heavy. I can’t see what is in front of us; I can only watch, with my cheek pressed urgently to yours, the glow of the path behind us and the beauty of our dance. Hold me close.

read a book

Knowledge is what leads us to truth. If it doesn't lead us to truth, it isn't knowledge--knowledge derives its legitimacy from the truth to which it leads. Do you see? Knowledge must, necessarily, be the means of apprehending truth as a human.

Because knowledge and truth are inseparable, knowledge must be good. The underlying assumption is that truth and goodness are also inescapably tied together. Doesn't it seem clear that truth is never anything but goodness? Truth, at any expense and at any loss, is always results in a better state of affairs than the lack of truth.

Deception and manipulation serve a short-term goal of instant gratification. Granted, that path may spare another a bit of heartache at the moment or spare you the shame of truth, but really, resorting to lies as a means of showing affection is a sham. A lover should not knowingly lie, allegedly to spare the loved some pain, when he knows that goodness does not result from a foundation of deception. Goodness cannot come from dishonesty, chiefly because truth and goodness are inseparable and mutually exclude their opposites. Truth and deception do not both lead to goodness--how else would we describe them besides consequentially? If truth and non-truth glean the same results, we have little reason to draw a distinct line between the two.

All of this to say that knowledge, which is intrinsically connected to truth, must be good. The source of goodness is within the knowledge itself (read: comes from its truth-guarantee). You have mistakenly, but predictably, placed the source of goodness within the human. Knowledge is not dependent on mankind, mankind is dependent on knowledge. Those statements show, first, that knowledge is valid and good outside of any human interaction or even (dare I pen it) human existence. Second, humanity cannot approach truth without knowledge. Beauty is a manifestation of perfection--and therefore truth--and we, as humans, experience beauty through knowledge.

For these reasons, education is the standard for human ability to approach what is good in this life and in every other. Man's capacity to reason and defend his passions (thoughts) pushes him to expand his knowledge base and therefore provide himself with more venues from which he may view (as one views the storm from it's center--holistically, actively, safely) truth. Education supplies the necessary tools to engage oneself in this apprehension of knowledge. That process of seeking and approaching truth is goodness in man's life.

In this way, education is the best and most direct way to influence the goodness and quality of a person's life, mostly because it works from the inside out. Educators guide, they do not spoon-feed. The process, the journey--that's when (and where) a person derives knowledge. Knowledge, truth, goodness... I long desperately for the truth in this life, because I know it results in goodness.

self-caused

George Jones, anyone? Like many of us, he struggles with four-day-a-week binge drinking and questionable relationship decisions. Oh, choices.

So, some questions on 'free will'. What an absurd phrase--no definition on what it means to be free, or even what it is to have a will. Thoughts on volition and causation, intermittent discussion on ethical systems.

Take the average person: I want most to be happy. Regardless of whatever I think that means (which may or may not be correct, Aristotle), I will pursue that end. Everything I choose to do falls into this teleology; each step is an action toward the final goal, which is happiness. This teleology does not account for how one treats happiness as an end in itself (refer to Nichomachean Ethics). My favorite example of this is from an intro ethics class I had with one of my very favorite professors. I remember the event distinctly because it was embarrassing.

My wonderfully intelligent, and therefore attractive, professor was spinning sparkles in the minds of his brand new students by asking us ethical questions. Ones that seem harmless enough.. like "Why do you go to the dentist?" His next question was "Rebecca, what do you want from this class?" I, in ignorance and fitful compulsion, blurted out "An 'A'." Sigh.

Of course, he ridiculed my lack of virtue and pointed out, to my horror, that I was treating education (read: knowledge) as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. Travesty. Never again would I make that mistake. A poor decision about what one takes as an end in itself ruins the way one interacts with every other choice. For example, my awful and shameful choice to make knowledge a means to an end (which happened to be a social one, strange) pushed me to treat my reading and studies always as mere means. For the purpose of retaining information, for the purpose of regurgitation in essays, for... you get the idea. Never for itself.

Knowledge is for its own sake, which means that knowledge obtains its goodness from this regenerative, circular nature. Ontology works from the top down--whatever is most real, most good, facilitates the morality of everything below it. For example, Plato's ontology of Forms provides that the form of Goodness (read: Unity, One, Truth..etc) derives its nature from itself, and relies on nothing else for its goodness. Goodness is still perfectly good in the absence of every other thing or idea. In the same way, God is goodness and unity and all perfection (hm) which cannot be added to or subtracted from by anything outside of himself. Goodness is good and real whether things reflect (or partake in) that goodness. God is all goodness and all reality--separate from the existence of anything else.

This has some strange implications...
1. God is entire and whole and complete without any persons in existence. Hm. So does participation in, or recognition of, his goodness add to him? I think not.. but it is interesting.

2. There is no void in God. Way to go, Spinoza. Because this ontology is grounded in all existence being derived from the existence of God, there is no void in God. God lacks nothing and never has excess--therefore, neither does all of existence. Existence that is derived from God is a part of God and acts in unity with him.
sub-implications:
a. No excess and no lack=no driving force of change? But no, don't read this incorrectly. An assertion that there is no lack or excess in God (or anything else that exists, incidentally) does not mean that there is no change in God. As a matter of fact, it provides that there may be constant change, so long as the scales are never tipped, as it were. Think of a favorite professor doodling a huge circle on the board over and over that is filled with tiny circles. Not one void. The tiny circles are us, the world. God is what encompasses all. Now, who would say that we never interact with one another? That there is no string of causation? Of course there is. A model that presents God as this unity provides for a complete (and possibly predetermined?) chain of causality within itself. The parts may move and shift and interact, but the whole remains unchanged.
b. No existence outside of God=everything, material and immaterial, is part and parcel of God. I exist because God does. This leads many a dear mind astray--no, they say, God exists because I do. This mistake is a simple matter of chronology. To claim that God exists because I do (ie, I created God, my worship continues God, religion is a man-centered enterprise, etc) is to claim that the reality of everything that exists depends on me. Au contraire.. you and I will die. Many have done so, many will do so. Although for you, and by you I mean your soul, this world may cease to be relevant.. others will remain. We watch people come and go. The world is by no means a constant, but it is evidence in this case that the existence of absoloutely nothing relies on you. You are on the bottom of the proverbial food chain of reality. Your existence may play a part in the causal chain of other existences (ie, giving birth) but that existence does not continue due to you. Your existence, however, relies solely on the fact that God continues to exist. This is certainly a reading of the implication that involves a certain idealism slant--a bit of Berkeley's watcher-god and a bit of Kant's experiencer-man with a heavy dose of Spinoza's God-substance (read read read it, it's straightforward).

So what do you want?
What it is that you want is what you're taking as an end in itself. Is it knowledge? Virtue? Reason? God? Are they synonymous?
Now, for the wanting.
You want. I want. It's a capacity to first, have a desire and second, exercise your will in accordance with your intellect in order to achieve said desire. =volition.
Oh, yes, we want to be 'independent' creatures with 'unique' and 'free' wills. Blah blah blah. The will is a capacity, an ability, that humans possess. Not just humans, mind you, but also animals and who knows what else. The will is more than a need, more than a weakness. It is a power to have a desire (to have a need, a weakness) and then act appropriately. This is a potentially controversial claim:
1. Is the capacity to act necessary for having a will? Think about good ole Terry Schiavo. She did not possess the capacity to act on her desires, although she retained the capacity to have desires. For example, a desire to live. It's pretty common. Is it your desire to live? Do you act toward that desire? Yep, most of the time. So here we have a crossroads. Is it the ability to act on a desire (in accordance with reason) that is the will? Or is it a blanket ability to desire?
2. And so we split between will and volition..with a sub-split involving intellect. Will is (a)the ability to desire, (b)to evaluate that desire using intellect, (c) to act on desire, (d) to act on desire in tandem with intellect? Also, does the will require intellect? In T's case, could she exercise her intellect (reason)? If so, is that enough to will something? Perhaps the capacity to have a desire is will and acting on that will is volition.
More questions--is the will unlimited? Certainly, you can want anything you please, I suppose. Is the intellect? Oh dear, I'd never accept that.

So what's it about, then? Is your will constrained or expanded by your intellect? In my pursuit of education I am clearly endorsing the latter.

What makes your will your own?
It's another way to ask about 'free will'. I'm guessing that by 'free', most people mean 'belonging solely to oneself'. This sure is insightful, and I think it's true.. just with a bit of tweaking. Here we start to wonder about determinism and whether God decides everything we do and so we can just blame all our shortcomings on his poor planning and thereby escape ethical accountability.

Well, I'll assert that God does know what a person does, and also that he chooses not to interfere. Legally, would he be culpable? Strange that the law books of the USA do not apply to God, because that would be a scandalous trial. Which is exactly what some of us want--taking attention away from my own shortcomings to point fingers at someone else.

There will be claim that God's not interfering with awful decisions is unfair, unloving. How could he let that happen? Yeah, we've heard this one before. Shit happens because God loves people enough to let them be self-determined. Say, for example, that I am your mother. I hover over you and forbid you from all sorts of things and prevent you from making mistakes. You may be without blemish, but of what value? Would you love me? No, I don't think so. You would probably detest me for making your decisions for you, you would probably feel like a puppet on display, you would probably feel like an ant under a magnifying glass. But you see, I'm your mother.. so I don't want you to feel like that. So I let you go and I let you make decisions, good and bad, and I let you enjoy the rewards and deal with the consequences. Not alone, of course--I'll help you learn what's best to do next time or why the decision you made was wonderful, all in time. I won't overwhelm the mind of a child with explanations, but eventually you will understand. And you will be better, fuller, richer, and more able to love for it. You will be self-caused, with no cause outside/external to blame or to take the credit.

Make sense?
There are some lingering questions.. like why enact a system of rewards and punishments. Why enforce a code if the goal is to help the child grow? God, as perfection and goodness and unity, tolerates no separation from himself. There is no existence outside of God, so when a person departs from the spirit and unity of God, he chooses to separate himself from what exists--from what is real. Any separation from unity is an aberration, a choice on the side of non-existence. God does not provide that there is any existence, any goodness, outside of himself. There will be no other.

It should be clearer. Or hopefully less clear, so you'll think about it more.



So, remember.. George Jones, T-Shiv, and hot professors. Something in there about will and God. Yeah.

"I've had choices
Since the day that I was born
There were voices
That told me right from wrong
If I had listened
No I wouldn't be here today
Living and dying
With the choices I made"

XD

both

Iqbal, beauty. I'm spending all my time reading Mustansir Mir's book on Iqbal's life and poetry. Next is Secrets of the Self. The entire text is available.

My directed reading (thanks, Max) is on Goethe and Iqbal..Orientalism and Islamic theology and the simple beauty of their poetry. I've started with (many) of Annemarie Schimmel's (see) books on the topic--Mystical Dimensions of Islam is the only one I've tackled so far. All this to say, what of gnosticism?

Let me get around to it. First, there is a passage in Mir's Iqbal that discusses Intellect and Love in Iqbal's poetry. Interesting that he separates the two, isn't it? Take this passage, for instance (quoted in excerpt form from Mir's 2006 publication from Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies):

"Intellect deals with the sensible world. It serves an important function in that it guides us through the maze of life by providing answers that are amenable to logical analysis. Since it operates on the physical world and in historical time, it has certain built-in limitations: 'Intellect is a prisoner of today and tomorrow; it is a worshipper of the idols that can be seen or heard.' It can witness only a slice of reality at one point in time--it is given to 'worshipping of the part'--and that is why the sages have failed to explain fully the truth about the human being, not to speak of the truth about the angels or God. Quite understandably...the intellect lacks certitude. Being unsure of itself, it is always busy weighing up the pros and cons of a matter, and...drags its feet in a situation that calls for bold action. Not so Love, which resides in the heart and, like the heart, is free from the limitations of time. Unlike Intellect, Love has no vested interests to guard and no ulterior motives to camouflage. ... Aluding to the idolatrous king Nimrod's attempt to burn Abraham the monotheist in a fire, Iqbal cites Abraham as the paradigm of Love:
'Love jumped fearlessly into Nimrod's fire--
Intellect, on the rooftop, is still absorbed in the view below.'
...The secrets of life are revealed not through book-reading but through active engagement with the realities of existence.
... Notwithstanding the differences between the two, Intellect and Love have a deep mutual affinity. In fact, they are united in essence, purpose, and function. Both are born of arzu--the 'desire' to seek and discover--both thus being goal-directed. Intellect, while it lacks the freedom and range of Love, is...indispensible as an organizing principle of life. ...after an exchange between Knowledge and Love, in which each argues for its superiority over the other, Love settles the argument in the following words:
'Come--turn this earthly world into a garden,
And make the old world young again.
Come--take just a little of my heart's solicitude,
And build, under the heavens, an everlasting paradise.
We have been on intimite terms since the day of creation,
And are the high and low notes of the same song.' "

What to make of it...
It's hard to get around an Aristotelian reading of 'intellect' as reason, which pushes the reader against the text. It is difficult for me to accept that man's highest capacity is not reason, but love. Not to simplify too far, because Iqbal's Love here is love applied with Intellect. I want to push against the text and take offense, thinking that throwing out my oh-sacred-reason is somehow degrading. My mindset, western-educated, is hard-pressed to accept the kind of thinking required to understand eastern poetry and Islamic theology.

Schimmel's book was on Sufism, gnosticism in Islam. How does the Sufi relate the Intellect and Love? Is it an analogous 'dichotomy' to faith and reason?

I am also enjoying God and the Philosophers right now. The authors deal with how strange it is to think of faith and reason in opposition to one another. At first glance, they do have separate realms and separate reaches. But does forsaking one for the other lead to gain or loss of understanding? I can only be convinced that choosing one side--Intellect or Love, reason or faith--limits the thinker. Intellect, reason.. what is intelligible to it is limited: material (perhaps?), within my limits as a finite being, incomplete (imperfect). Is the order and connection (thanks Spinoza) of things totally within my grasp as a material, finite, incomplete being?

I think not. In which case, the exploration of existence via Love--faith--seems the logical (sigh) choice. If reason can lead me to truth about this world, why can't faith lead me to truth about its order? About what makes this world the way it is? About metaphysics and God? Should I rule it out?

Yes, I have made it obvious that I'm still operating under reason. Maybe it's a flaw. Am I capable of thinking with both capacities? Would I even have both if I weren't?

And so here we are, gnosticism. What does one give up by choosing faith (gift of faith, revelation) over reason? Clearly my Intellect is limited--otherwise I'd know all this already. Maybe I do. Would I be aware of it?

What is there to gain by utilizing both? Do gnostics engage with God only through faith? How close can one get to God through reason? What can be taught, and what is left that must be experienced? Why doesn't God give the gift of faith to everyone? Besides that it's a *gift*. Why do people so often feel like rats in mazes where the crazy scientist forgot to throw in the cheese?

Thoughts for the day. Feel free to (please) answer my questions. Do it.

God exists

I have an assignment which entails me taking an argument from Descartes, explaining it, finding a fault, criticizing the argument effectively via my own argument, and then defending the text. Oh, and determining whether Descartes, that gimpy old fool, withstands my gale-force critique. Pish posh, it's all rigged. But I have to try. So here is the explanatory section. It's meant to be very easy and straightforward.

The following argument may be found on marginal pages 41-46 of Meditation Three in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. Hyphens indicate sub-conclusions.

1. A cause must have at least as much reality as its effect.
2. An idea can only be caused by something that has as much reality formally as the idea has objectively.
3. I have an idea of the infinite, which has infinite objective reality.
4. I am aware that I am finite, so have limited formal reality.
—The objective reality of the infinite is greater than my formal reality.
—I am not the cause of my idea of the infinite.
/:. There must be a being with infinite formal reality that could have caused my idea.

This causal argument is one way Descartes attempts to show the existence of God. He takes the first premise, that a cause must have at least as much reality as its effect, to be evident. He develops the account on the basis of a causal relationship between an infinite being (God) and the idea of the infinite.

The first premise is relevant because Descartes makes a distinction between formal and objective reality. The term ‘formal reality’ is used to refer to a usual notion of reality; that is, an existence external to the mind. Objective reality is the reality of the content of an idea. This distinction becomes essential when bridging the gap between existence as an idea and existence outside of the mind—the difference between the idea of the infinite and an infinite being.

Descartes argues that a person has an idea of the infinite. A key element of this concept is that a person does not simply have an idea that is a negative of the finite, but an actual notion of infinity. In this way, the idea does not hinge on purely negating the finite. An idea of infinity has infinite objective reality.

A person is a finite being, and he is aware of this lack. A thinking thing is The finite nature of a person has limited formal reality. Here, Descartes shows that a person who is a finite being has less formal reality than his idea of the infinite, which has unlimited objective reality; a sub-conclusion to this effect is noted. Descartes demonstrates that there is clear contradiction with premise 2, and therefore draws the second sub-conclusion: that a person, as a finite being, cannot be the cause of his own idea of God, or the infinite. awareness, and part of this awareness is recognizing that a person is finite.

Descartes has thus far only proved the existence of the mind by Meditation Three; by showing that the mind cannot have caused an idea of the infinite, he shifts the source of the idea to an external being. Because of premise two, the cause of the idea must have at least as much formal reality—it must be an infinite being. Descartes then concludes that there must be an infinite being that caused the idea of the infinite. Thus, he claims that God exists.

What do you say to that? Haha, oh dear. It's called the causal argument.. for obvious reasons.

We started Spinoza today. Having only reading through Proposition 12 or so of his Ethics, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. If I understand his definition of substance correctly (which is highly debatable), I think he must be a bundle theorist, as far as his ontology. Hm. I'll be very interested in finding out.

I love this artwork. Disregard all political and social ramifications.

descartes and dirty dishes

I am (of course) in a number of philosophy classes this semester. Two of them focus solely on the mind, so.. the mind-body problem. In short, how the mind--an immaterial.. whatever it is--relates to or interacts with the physical world.

But there is so much to accomplish before the question can even be asked. Like determining what the mind actually is.. and, moreover, whether it is. At first, it seems as though 'proving' that the mind exists is far more difficult than convincing someone that the physical world does. But that isn't so.

Descartes' Meditations (clearer translation) offer arguments that simultaneously show the certainty of the mind and its states and the unsure nature of the physical world. Here is an overview:
"Surely whatever I had admitted until now as most true I received either from the senses or through the senses. However, I have noticed that the senses are sometimes deceptive; and it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once." (meditation 1)

This is a tiny argument that posits doubt in the senses and their ability to convey knowledge. He gives two examples of senses deceiving: madmen and dreaming. He then gives an argument to show that an omnipotent God or an "evil genius" could be constantly deceiving us (evil genius thrown in because he does not accept that God's goodness would provide for that. however, he must question why God allows deception at all and chooses to ignore it.) through both our mind and our senses. These arguments and examples show the uncertain nature of the physical.

The fourth example that he gives is a thought experiment used to illustrate the reality of the mind versus physical reality (this morphs later into objective and formal reality). A thought experiment is just like a real one; it takes an assumption and uses an example to determine its truth value. Descartes' assumption is this: the physical has more reality than the mental.

"Let us consider those things which are commonly believed to be the most distinctly grasped of all: namely the bodies we touch and see." (all following quotes from med. 2)

He doesn't mean to prove this, of course--the experiment is a reductio ad absurdum. So Descartes allegedly picks up a piece of wax and examines it. He describes it (physically): "...it is quite fresh, having been but recently taken from the beehive; it has not yet lost the sweetness of the honey it contained; it still retains somewhat of the odor of the flowers from which it was gathered; its color, figure, size, are apparent (to the sight); it is hard, cold, easily handled; and sounds when struck upon with the finger. In fine, all that contributes to make a body as distinctly known as possible, is found in the one before us."

He has shown, then, that everything--haha--to be known about the wax can be known via the senses. He then demolishes every piece of perception that was just established--
"But...let it be placed near the fire--what remained of the taste exhales, the smell evaporates, the color changes, its figure is destroyed, its size increases, it becomes liquid, it grows hot, it can hardly be handled, and, although struck upon, it emits no sound. Does the same wax still remain after this change? It must be admitted that it does remain; no one doubts it, or judges otherwise. What, then, was it I knew with so much distinctness in the piece of wax? Assuredly, it could be nothing of all that I observed by means of the senses, since all the things that fell under taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing are changed, and yet the same wax remains."

And so we have a problem. What is it, if not all these things? By asking what it IS, he is asking what kind of reality it has, what kind of existence. Physical reality seems to be fleeting and evasive and uncertain.

"Perhaps the wax was what I now think it is: namely that the wax itself never really was the sweetness of the honey, nor the fragrance of the flowers, nor the whiteness, nor the shape, nor the sound, but instead was a body that a short time ago manifested itself to me in these ways, and now does so in other ways. But just what precisely is this thing that I this imagine?"

Did you see the shift? He shows that it can't possibly BE any of the qualities.. so he 'imagines' it. He just shifted the reality of the thing to something mental instead of something physical. I thought it was pretty smooth (pun intended.)

"..see what remains after after we have removed everything that does not belong to the wax: only that it is something extended, flexible, and mutable."

These are the only things left that he can perceive about the wax. He shows, at slight length, that he cannot imagine these qualities, so they must be perceived by the mind. Read the text for the connective arguments.

"It remains for me then to concede that I do not grasp what this wax is through the imagination: I perceive it through the mind alone."

And so the mental has more reality than the physical. And we know that clearly and distinctly. Lesson of the day, eh? I like it.

In any case, my interest is more in the reflexive nature of mental states (ie doubting, understanding, affirming, denying...) and how that shows the certainty of the mind. Digression: And what of belief and its object? Descartes shows the existence of God.






Unfortunately, I do have an idea of my dirty dishes... and cannot deny that they have objective reality. But how much reality can the mind give an idea? Tune in to the link above to Meditation III, which uses this question to its advantage re: the infinite. That is, God.