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Single Idea 1717
[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
]
Full Idea
If the soul is composed of parts of the body, or the harmony of the elements composing the body, there will be many souls, and everywhere in the body.
Clarification
'Soul' is the Greek word 'psuché', which covers mind and consciousness and life
Gist of Idea
If the soul is composed of many physical parts, it can't be a true unity
Source
Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a15)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'De Anima (On the Soul)', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,H.C. [Penguin 1986], p.145
A Reaction
We will ignore "everywhere in the body", but the rest seems to me exactly right. The idea of the unity of the soul is an understandable and convenient assumption, but it leads to all sorts of confusion. A crowd remains unified if half its members leave.
The
25 ideas
with the same theme
[unified character of the thinking mind]:
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2127
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The mind has parts, because we have inner conflicts
[Plato]
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1737
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The soul seems to have an infinity of parts
[Aristotle on Plato]
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24046
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Understanding is impossible, if it involves the understanding having parts
[Aristotle]
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1717
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If the soul is composed of many physical parts, it can't be a true unity
[Aristotle]
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24053
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If a soul have parts, what unites them?
[Aristotle]
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1721
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What unifies the soul would have to be a super-soul, which seems absurd
[Aristotle]
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5145
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The rational and irrational parts of the soul are either truly separate, or merely described that way
[Aristotle]
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21387
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The separate elements and capacities of a mind cannot be distinguished
[Lucretius]
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5884
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How can one mind perceive so many dissimilar sensations?
[Cicero]
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5887
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The soul has a single nature, so it cannot be divided, and hence it cannot perish
[Cicero]
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5506
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If soul was like body, its parts would be separate, without communication
[Plotinus]
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2302
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Faculties of the mind aren't parts, as one mind uses them
[Descartes]
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21805
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Spinoza held that the mind is just a bundle of ideas
[Spinoza, by Schmid]
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5045
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No machine or mere organised matter could have a unified self
[Leibniz]
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1356
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A person is a unity, and doesn't come in degrees
[Reid]
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24090
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Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity
[Nietzsche]
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7152
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With protoplasm ½+½=2, so the soul is not an indivisible monad
[Nietzsche]
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7130
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Unity is not in the conscious 'I', but in the organism, which uses the self as a tool
[Nietzsche]
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4536
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It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing
[Nietzsche]
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7108
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The eternal truth of 2+2=4 is what gives unity to the mind which regularly thinks it
[Sartre]
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5792
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Explanation of how we unify our mental stimuli into a single experience is the 'binding problem'
[Searle]
|
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3480
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We experience unity at an instant and across time
[Searle]
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2957
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Brain bisection suggests unity of mind isn't all-or-nothing
[Nagel, by Lockwood]
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2426
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Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained?
[Chalmers]
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4924
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A conscious human being rapidly reunifies its mind after any damage to the brain
[Edelman/Tononi]
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