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Single Idea 21800

[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 1. Faculties ]

Full Idea

Although Descartes accepted a variety of cognitive faculties like the intellect, will, power of judgement, imagination, memory, and perception, he took them all to be ultimately reducible to different operations of the will and intellect.

Gist of Idea

Descartes mentions many cognitive faculties, but reduces them to will and intellect

Source

report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 4) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 2

Book Ref

'The Faculties: a history', ed/tr. Perler,Dominic [OUP 2015], p.159

A Reaction

In Med 4, it is most clear, when he reduces 'judgement' to will and intellect, which enable his to assent to an idea. Nietzsche saw Descartes' view as simplistic.

Related Idea

Idea 2857 Since Plato all philosophers have followed the herd, except Descartes, stuck in superficial reason [Nietzsche on Descartes]

The 20 ideas with the same theme [theory that each distinct capacity has a specific source]:

24061 If we divide the mind up according to its capacities, there are a lot of them [Aristotle]
20204 Whether the mind has parts is irrelevant, since it obviously has distinct capacities [Aristotle]
23906 Courage from spirit is natural and unconquerable, as seen in the young [Aristotle]
20785 Our conceptions arise from experience, similarity, analogy, transposition, composition and opposition [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
21799 We just use the word 'faculty' when we don't know the psychological cause [Galen]
23264 Philosophers think faculties are in substances, and invent a faculty for every activity [Galen]
22107 Sensations are transmitted to 'internal senses' in the brain, chiefly to 'phantasia' and 'imagination' [Aquinas, by Kretzmann/Stump]
24026 Our four knowledge faculties are intelligence, imagination, the senses, and memory [Descartes]
21800 Descartes mentions many cognitive faculties, but reduces them to will and intellect [Descartes, by Schmid]
21804 Faculties are either fictions, or the abstract universals of ideas [Spinoza]
2869 Kant's only answer as to how synthetic a priori judgements are possible was that we have a 'faculty'! [Nietzsche on Kant]
9346 Judgements which are essentially and strictly universal reveal our faculty of a priori cognition [Kant]
5572 Reason has logical and transcendental faculties [Kant]
24145 Mind is a mechanism of abstraction and simplification, aimed at control [Nietzsche]
23191 Minds have an excluding drive to scare things off, and a selecting one to filter facts [Nietzsche]
14868 Our primary faculty is perception of structure, as when looking in a mirror [Nietzsche]
23943 Distinguishing reason from passion is based on an archaic 'faculty' theory [Solomon]
2539 Mental modules for language, social, action, theory, space, emotion [McGinn]
20657 There are 23 core brain functions, with known circuit, transmitters, genes and behaviour [Watson]
22135 Our concepts can never fully capture reality, but simplification does not falsify [Boulter]