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Single Idea 1710

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 1. Dualism ]

Full Idea

Most affections (like anger) seem to involve the body, but thinking seems distinctive of the soul. But if this requires imagination, it too involves the body. Only pure mental activity would prove the separation of the two.

Clarification

'Soul' is the Greek word 'psuché', which covers mind and consciousness and life

Gist of Idea

Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them

Source

Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a08-)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'De Anima (On the Soul)', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,H.C. [Penguin 1986], p.128

A Reaction

What an observant man! Modern neuroscience is bringing out the fact that emotion is central to all mental life. We can't recognise faces without it. I say imagination is essential to pure reason, and that seems emotional too. Reason is physical.

The 22 ideas with the same theme [mind and matter are two quite different substances]:

3519 Man uses his body, so must be separate from it [Anon (Plat), by Maslin]
1710 Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them [Aristotle]
13307 If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul [Seneca]
21809 Our soul has the same ideal nature as the oldest god, and is honourable above the body [Plotinus]
21825 The soul is outside of all of space, and has no connection to the bodily order [Plotinus]
18458 The soul is bound to matter by the force of its own disposition [Porphyry]
22105 The human intellectual soul is an incorporeal, subsistent principle [Aquinas]
24028 The force by which we know things is spiritual, and quite distinct from the body [Descartes]
3608 I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes]
3613 Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes]
2276 The mind is a non-extended thing which thinks [Descartes]
2298 Mind is not extended, unlike the body [Descartes]
3423 Descartes is a substance AND property dualist [Descartes, by Kim]
2303 The mind is utterly indivisible [Descartes]
5011 There are two ultimate classes of existence: thinking substance and extended substance [Descartes]
19409 Soul represents body, but soul remains unchanged, while body continuously changes [Leibniz]
5585 Soul and body connect physically, or by harmony, or by assistance [Kant]
22039 Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity [Hegel, by Pinkard]
14802 Physical and psychical laws of mind are either independent, or derived in one or other direction [Peirce]
2620 Dualism is a category mistake [Ryle]
4069 Descartes did not think of minds as made of a substance, because they are not divisible [Crane]
8289 The idea that Cartesian souls are made of some ghostly 'immaterial' stuff is quite unwarranted [Lowe]