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Single Idea 1737

[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind ]

Full Idea

There seem in a way to be an infinity of parts of the soul, and not only those that some have given, distinguishing the reasoning, spirited and desiderative parts, or with others the rational and irrational.

Clarification

'Desiderative' means 'concerning desire'. 'Soul' is the Greek word 'psuché', which covers mind and consciousness and life

Gist of Idea

The soul seems to have an infinity of parts

Source

comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) by Aristotle - De Anima 432a25

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'De Anima (On the Soul)', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,H.C. [Penguin 1986], p.212

A Reaction

This seems a nice response to Plato's proposal that the psuché has two or three parts. He could have said that the soul was a unity, and has no parts, but the proposal of infinite parts seems much closer to the modern neurological view of the mind.

The 25 ideas with the same theme [unified character of the thinking mind]:

2127 The mind has parts, because we have inner conflicts [Plato]
1737 The soul seems to have an infinity of parts [Aristotle on Plato]
24046 Understanding is impossible, if it involves the understanding having parts [Aristotle]
1717 If the soul is composed of many physical parts, it can't be a true unity [Aristotle]
24053 If a soul have parts, what unites them? [Aristotle]
1721 What unifies the soul would have to be a super-soul, which seems absurd [Aristotle]
5145 The rational and irrational parts of the soul are either truly separate, or merely described that way [Aristotle]
21387 The separate elements and capacities of a mind cannot be distinguished [Lucretius]
5884 How can one mind perceive so many dissimilar sensations? [Cicero]
5887 The soul has a single nature, so it cannot be divided, and hence it cannot perish [Cicero]
5506 If soul was like body, its parts would be separate, without communication [Plotinus]
2302 Faculties of the mind aren't parts, as one mind uses them [Descartes]
21805 Spinoza held that the mind is just a bundle of ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid]
5045 No machine or mere organised matter could have a unified self [Leibniz]
1356 A person is a unity, and doesn't come in degrees [Reid]
24090 Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity [Nietzsche]
7152 With protoplasm ½+½=2, so the soul is not an indivisible monad [Nietzsche]
7130 Unity is not in the conscious 'I', but in the organism, which uses the self as a tool [Nietzsche]
4536 It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing [Nietzsche]
7108 The eternal truth of 2+2=4 is what gives unity to the mind which regularly thinks it [Sartre]
5792 Explanation of how we unify our mental stimuli into a single experience is the 'binding problem' [Searle]
3480 We experience unity at an instant and across time [Searle]
2957 Brain bisection suggests unity of mind isn't all-or-nothing [Nagel, by Lockwood]
2426 Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained? [Chalmers]
4924 A conscious human being rapidly reunifies its mind after any damage to the brain [Edelman/Tononi]