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Single Idea 24026

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

Full Idea

There are four faculties in us which we can use to know: intelligence, imagination, the senses, and memory.

Gist of Idea

Our four knowledge faculties are intelligence, imagination, the senses, and memory

Source

René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12)

Book Ref

Descartes,René: 'Rules for the Direction of the Mind' [Newcomb Library 2023], p.34

A Reaction

Philosophers have to attribute faculties to the mind, even if the psychologists and neuroscientists won't accept them. We must infer the sources of our modes of understanding. He is cautious about imagination.

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]