more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
All the soul's faculties depend so much on the specific organisation of the brain and of the whole body that they are clearly nothing but that organisation.
Gist of Idea
The soul's faculties depend on the brain, and are simply the brain's organisation
Source
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.26)
Book Ref
La Mettrie,Julien Offray de: 'Machine Man and Other Writings', ed/tr. Thomson,Ann [CUP 1996], p.26
A Reaction
An interesting idea because it suggests that La Mettrie is a functionalist, rather than simply a reductive physicalist.
| 23225 | The soul's faculties depend on the brain, and are simply the brain's organisation [La Mettrie] |
| 3192 | Basic logic can be done by syntax, with no semantics [Gödel, by Rey] |
| 5495 | Instances of pain are physical tokens, but the nature of pain is more abstract [Putnam, by Lycan] |
| 2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
| 5804 | A representational theory of the mind is an externalist theory of the mind [Dretske] |
| 12632 | In the Representational view, concepts play the key linking role [Fodor] |
| 2993 | Any piece of software can always be hard-wired [Fodor] |
| 6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
| 5496 | Functionalism has three linked levels: physical, functional, and mental [Lycan] |