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Single Idea 1909

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / a. Physicalism critique ]

Full Idea

If Epicurus makes the end consist in pleasure and asserts that the soul, like all else, is composed of atoms, it is impossible to explain how in a heap of atoms there can come about pleasure, or judgement of the good.

Gist of Idea

How can pleasure or judgement occur in a heap of atoms?

Source

comment on Epicurus (fragments/reports [c.289 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism III.187

Book Ref

Sextus Empiricus: 'Outlines of Pyrrhonism', ed/tr. Bury,R.G. [Prometheus 1990], p.252

A Reaction

This is a nice statement of the mind-body problem. Ontologically, physics still seems to present reality as a 'heap of particles', which gives no basis for the emergence of anything as strange as consciousness. But then magnetism is pretty strange.

The 14 ideas with the same theme [attempts to prove that mind is not just physical]:

1909 How can pleasure or judgement occur in a heap of atoms? [Sext.Empiricus on Epicurus]
5885 Souls contain no properties of elements, and elements contain no properties of souls [Cicero]
5951 If atoms have no qualities, they cannot possibly produce a mind [Plutarch]
6229 Sense is fixed in the material form, and so can't grasp abstract universals [Cudworth]
6382 The 'grain problem' says physical objects are granular, where sensations appear not to be [Sellars, by Polger]
5796 If tree rings contain information about age, then age contains information about rings [Searle]
2308 Identity theory was overthrown by multiple realisations and causal anomalies [Kim]
3002 If mind is just physical, how can it follow the rules required for intelligent thought? [Fodor]
6122 No defences of physicalism can deprive psychology of the ontological authority of other sciences [Mellor/Crane]
3150 Can identity explain reason, free will, non-extension, intentionality, subjectivity, experience? [Rey]
3129 Physicalism offers something called "complexity" instead of mental substance [Rey]
4072 The completeness of physics must be an essential component of any physicalist view of mind [Crane]
4598 Functionalists emphasise that mental processes are not to be reduced to what realises them [Heil]
3448 Do new ideas increase the weight of the brain? [Dance]