The third category of inherent feature includes any capacity or faculty possessed by the mind that allows it to “access” whatever is taken to be the knowable (or the intelligible). Such a feature is a principle of truth-preservation. Truth-preservation in this context serves as a necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge. In terms of truth, and in light of the present example, the link is revealed when understanding that in every conceivable case in which “A is shaped” is true “A is extended” is true. One discovers this sort of link to hold between the thought of body A’s being shaped, for example, and the thought of body A’s being extended (in length, breadth, and depth), by understanding that it would be impossible to conceive the former without also conceiving the latter. Logical entailment is an example of such a feature (but other examples would be what are today called “logical operators,” such as conjunction, disjunction, and so on). The second category includes any inherent feature that serves as a link between thoughts, a link that specifically preserves truth, such that if one thought (or proposition) is true, another thought (or proposition), distinct from the first, is true (i.e., it cannot be false if the first is true). Such a feature is a principle of intelligibility. It is by way of this structure that the mind makes objects intelligible, where intelligibility in this context serves as a necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge. This structure, the emergence of which is “triggered” by instances of sensory data, is nevertheless thought to be prior to all instances of sensory experience in that its origin is in the mind, existing independently of the origin of sensations (or occurring sensory data). Such features account for what might be cast as the template or structure of experience. The first includes any feature that serves as an organizing principle, specifically organizing sensations or sensory data (e.g., colors, sounds, tastes, and so on), the result of which is a unified sensory experience. These features fall into at least three distinct though related categories. Many of the views have in common the idea that the possibility of knowledge is rooted in certain inherent features of the mind. “Rationalism” denotes a family of philosophical views that have emerged over the past two millennia.
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