Combining Philosophers

Ideas for La Mettrie, Willard Quine and Martin Kusch

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these philosophers

display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers


5 ideas

17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 8. Dualism of Mind Critique
When falling asleep, the soul becomes paralysed and weak, just like the body [La Mettrie]
     Full Idea: The soul and body fall asleep together. The soul slowly becomes paralysed, together with all the body's muscles. They can no longer hold up the weight of the head, while the soul can no longer bear the burden of thought.
     From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.6)
     A reaction: A very nice observation, to place alongside other evidence such as drunkenness and blushing. Personally I find it hard to see why anyone ever believed dualism. You don't need modern brain scans and brain lesion research to see the problem.
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 2. Machine Functionalism
The soul's faculties depend on the brain, and are simply the brain's organisation [La Mettrie]
     Full Idea: All the soul's faculties depend so much on the specific organisation of the brain and of the whole body that they are clearly nothing but that organisation.
     From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.26)
     A reaction: An interesting idea because it suggests that La Mettrie is a functionalist, rather than simply a reductive physicalist.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
Man is a machine, and there exists only one substance, diversely modified [La Mettrie]
     Full Idea: Let us conclude boldly that man is a machine and that there is in the whole universe only one diversely modified substance.
     From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.39)
     A reaction: What courage it must have taken to write what now seems a perfectly acceptable and normal view. One day there should be a collective monument to Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza, La Mettrie and Hume, who thought so boldly.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism
Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 6. Conceptual Dualism
A hallucination can, like an ague, be identified with its host; the ontology is physical, the idiom mental [Quine]
     Full Idea: A physical ontology has a place for states of mind. An inspiration or a hallucination can, like the fit of ague, be identified with its host for the duration. It leaves our mentalistic idioms fairly intact, but reconciles them with a physical ontology.
     From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §VI)
     A reaction: Quine is employing the same strategy that he uses for substances and properties (Idea 8461): take the predication as basic, rather than reifying the thing being predicated. The ague analogy suggests that Quine is an incipient functionalist.