|
1737
|
The soul seems to have an infinity of parts
[Aristotle on Plato]
|
|
Full Idea:
There seem in a way to be an infinity of parts of the soul, and not only those that some have given, distinguishing the reasoning, spirited and desiderative parts, or with others the rational and irrational.
|
|
From:
comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) by Aristotle - De Anima 432a25
|
|
A reaction:
This seems a nice response to Plato's proposal that the psuché has two or three parts. He could have said that the soul was a unity, and has no parts, but the proposal of infinite parts seems much closer to the modern neurological view of the mind.
|
|
1717
|
If the soul is composed of many physical parts, it can't be a true unity
[Aristotle]
|
|
Full Idea:
If the soul is composed of parts of the body, or the harmony of the elements composing the body, there will be many souls, and everywhere in the body.
|
|
From:
Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a15)
|
|
A reaction:
We will ignore "everywhere in the body", but the rest seems to me exactly right. The idea of the unity of the soul is an understandable and convenient assumption, but it leads to all sorts of confusion. A crowd remains unified if half its members leave.
|
|
1721
|
What unifies the soul would have to be a super-soul, which seems absurd
[Aristotle]
|
|
Full Idea:
If soul has parts, what holds them together? Not body, because that is united by soul. If a thing unifies the soul, then THAT is the soul (unless it too has parts, which would lead to an infinite regress). Best to say the soul is a unity.
|
|
From:
Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411b10)
|
|
A reaction:
You don't need a 'thing' to unify something (like a crowd). I say the body holds the soul together, not physically, but because the body's value permeates thought. The body is the focused interest of the soul, like parents kept together by their child.
|
|
5884
|
How can one mind perceive so many dissimilar sensations?
[Cicero]
|
|
Full Idea:
Why is it that, using the same mind, we have perception of things so utterly unlike as colour, taste, heat, smell and sound?
|
|
From:
M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xx.47)
|
|
A reaction:
This leaves us with the 'binding problem', of how the dissimilar sensations are pulled together into one field of experience. It is a nice simple objection, though, to anyone who simplistically claims that the mind is self-evidently unified.
|
|
5887
|
The soul has a single nature, so it cannot be divided, and hence it cannot perish
[Cicero]
|
|
Full Idea:
In souls there is no mingling of ingredients, nothing of two-fold nature, so it is impossible for the soul to be divided; impossible, therefore, for it to perish either; for perishing is like the separation of parts which were maintained in union.
|
|
From:
M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xxix.71)
|
|
A reaction:
Cicero knows he is pushing his luck in asserting that perishing is a sort of division. Why can't something be there one moment and gone the next? He appears to be in close agreement with Descartes about being a 'thinking thing'.
|
|
5506
|
If soul was like body, its parts would be separate, without communication
[Plotinus]
|
|
Full Idea:
If the soul had the nature of the body, it would have isolated members each unaware of the condition of the other;..there would be a particular soul as a distinct entity to each local experience, so a multiplicity of souls would administer an individual.
|
|
From:
Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 4.2.2), quoted by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.15
|
|
A reaction:
Of course, the modern 'modularity of mind' theory does suggest that we are run by a team, but a central co-ordinator is required, with a full communication network across the modules.
|
|
2302
|
Faculties of the mind aren't parts, as one mind uses them
[Descartes]
|
|
Full Idea:
The faculties of willing, sensing, understanding and so on cannot be called "parts" of the mind, since it is one and the same mind that wills, senses and understands.
|
|
From:
René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.86)
|
|
A reaction:
It is best here to say that Descartes has confused the 'mind' with the 'person'. These faculties make (I think) no sense without a person to perform them, but the 'mind' surely includes these conscious activities, and many fringe events as well.
|
|
1356
|
A person is a unity, and doesn't come in degrees
[Reid]
|
|
Full Idea:
The identity of a person is a perfect identity: wherever it is real, it admits of no degrees; and it is impossible that a person should be in part the same, and in part different; because a person is a 'monad', and is not divisible into parts.
|
|
From:
Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)
|
|
A reaction:
I don't accept this, because I don't accept the metaphysics needed to underpin it. To watch a person with Alzheimer's disease fade out of existence before they die seems sufficient counter-evidence. I believe in personal identity, but it isn't 'perfect'.
|
|
24090
|
Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity
[Nietzsche]
|
|
Full Idea:
How is it that we satisfy our stronger inclinations at the expense of our weaker inclinations? - In itself, if we were a unity, this split could not exist. In fact we are a multiplicity that has imagined a unity for itself.
|
|
From:
Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[35])
|
|
A reaction:
Plato had the same thought, but stopped at three parts, rather than a multiplicity. What Nietzsche fails to say, I think, is that this 'imagined' unity of the mind is not optional, and obviously has a real link to the one body and the one life.
|
|
7130
|
Unity is not in the conscious 'I', but in the organism, which uses the self as a tool
[Nietzsche]
|
|
Full Idea:
If I have anything of a unity within me, it certainly doesn't lie in the conscious 'I' and in feeling, willing, thinking, but somewhere else: in the ... prudence of my whole organism, of which my conscious self is only a tool.
|
|
From:
Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[46])
|
|
A reaction:
What an interesting thinker Nietzsche was! I think I agree with this. I think the self is built on the necessary internalised body-map all animals must have. The body requires the map, not the map needing the body.
|
|
4536
|
It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing
[Nietzsche]
|
|
Full Idea:
There is a tremendous blunder in absurdly overestimating consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity - 'spirit', 'soul', something that feels, thinks, wills.
|
|
From:
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §529)
|
|
A reaction:
This is a wonderfully modern and scientific view. Even strong materialists still make claims about mental unity, behind which an extravagent and contradictory metaphysics can be hidden. Was Nietzsche, then, an 'eliminativist' about mind?
|
|
7108
|
The eternal truth of 2+2=4 is what gives unity to the mind which regularly thinks it
[Sartre]
|
|
Full Idea:
The unity of the thousand active consciousnesses through which I have added two and two to make four, is the transcendent object '2+2=4'. Without the permanence of this eternal truth, it would be impossible to conceive of a real unity of mind.
|
|
From:
Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A))
|
|
A reaction:
This is the germ of externalism, here presented as a Platonic attitude to arithmetic, rather than being about water or gold. He claims that internalist attitudes to unity are fictions. I am inclined to think he is wrong, and that unity is biological.
|
|
2426
|
Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained?
[Chalmers]
|
|
Full Idea:
The 'grain problem' for materialism was raised by Sellars: how could an experience be identical with a vast collection of physiological events, given the homogeneity of the former, and the fine-grainedness of the latter?
|
|
From:
David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.5)
|
|
A reaction:
An interesting question, but it doesn't sound like a huge problem, given the number of connections in the brain. If the brain were expanded (as Leibniz suggested), the 'grains' might start to appear. We can't propose a 'deceived homunculus' to solve it.
|