Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Anaxarchus, Quassim Cassam and John Stuart Mill

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3 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / d. Other minds by analogy

3537	I judge others' feeling by analogy with my body and behaviour [Mill]
	Full Idea: I conclude other humans have feelings like me because they have bodies like mine (which I know in my case to be antecedent to feelings), and because they exhibit acts and outwards signs which I know in my own case to be caused by feelings.
	From: John Stuart Mill (Examination of Sir Wm Hamilton's Philosophy [1865], p.243), quoted by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 8.2
	A reaction: It is hard to see anything further that can be added to the 'other minds' question. Behaviour is highly relevant (imagine meeting a human who talked like a robot), but so are bodies (imagine a tin box that talked like Marilyn Monroe).

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 3. Abstraction by mind

9079	We can focus our minds on what is common to a whole class, neglecting other aspects [Mill]
	Full Idea: The voluntary power which the mind has, of attending to one part of what is present at any moment, and neglecting another part, enables us to be unaffected by anything in the idea which is not really common to the whole class.
	From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.1)
	A reaction: There is a question for empiricists of whether abstraction is a 'voluntary' power or a mechanical one. Associationism presents it as more mechanical. I would say, with Mill, that it is a least partly voluntary, and even rational.

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 7. Seeing Resemblance

9081	We don't recognise comparisons by something in our minds; the concepts result from the comparisons [Mill]
	Full Idea: It is not a law of our intellect that in comparing things and noting their agreements we recognise as realized in the outward world something we already had in our minds. The conception found its way to us as the result of such a comparison.
	From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.2)
	A reaction: He recognises, of course, that this gradually becomes a two-way process. In the physicalist view of things, it is not really of great importance which concepts are hard-wired, and which constructed culturally or through perception.