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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Seventeen: The Role of the Intellect and Sensation in Ideas The Fundamentality of the Intellect or Sensation for Ideas As we have mentioned, Western philosophers may be divided into two groups with regard to the explanation of the appearance of ideas.

One group believes that the intellect perceives a series of concepts without need for sensation, like Descartes believed with regard to the concepts of God and soul, from among the immaterial things, and length and shape from among the material things. He call these kinds of qualities of materials which are not perceived directly from sensation ‘primary qualities’. To the contrary, he called qualities such as color, smell and taste, which are perceived by sensation ‘secondary qualities’.

In this way he believed in a kind of priority of the intellect. He considered the perception of secondary qualities which are obtained by means of the senses to be fallible and unreliable. In this way, he proved another kind of priority of the intellect, which is related to the discussion of the value of knowledge. Likewise, Kant related a series of concepts called ‘ a priori ’ to the mind.

From among them he related the concepts of space and time to the levels of sensation, and he related the twelve categories to the level of understanding. He considered the understanding of these concepts to be essential innate qualities of the mind. The other group believes that the mind of man is created like a blank slate, with no engraving on it, and that contact with external existents by means of the sense organs causes the appearance of images and engravings on it.

In this way various perceptions occur. Epicures is reported to have said, “There is nothing in the intellect unless it has previously been in sensation.” The very same phrase was repeated by John Locke, the English empiricist. However, their statements about the appearance of intellectual concepts differ.

The apparent meaning of some of them is that sensory perceptions are changed in shape and transformed to intellectual perceptions by the intellect, just as a carpenter cuts pieces of wood to make them into various shapes and build a table, chair, door or window. So, intellectual concepts are the very sensory forms whose shapes have been changed.