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Single Idea 18458

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

Full Idea

The individual soul, which declines towards matter, is bound to the matter by the form which her disposition has made her choose.

Gist of Idea

The soul is bound to matter by the force of its own disposition

Source

Porphyry (Launching Points to the Realm of the Mind [c.280], 6Enn4 39)

Book Ref

Porphyry: 'Launching Points to the Realm of the Mind', ed/tr. Guthrie,Kenneth [Phanes 1988], p.62


A Reaction

This sounds like the soul is boss over the matter, and yet the soul is 'made' to choose union with matter. The Universal Soul is seen by Porphyr as the controller of the situation.


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

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