Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Rules for the Direction of the Mind' and 'Phaedrus'

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2 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 2. Psuche
The soul is self-motion [Plato]
     Full Idea: Self-motion is of the very nature of the soul.
     From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245e)
     A reaction: This culminates a length discussion of the soul. He gives an implausible argument that the soul is immortal, because it could never cease its self-motion. Why are we so unimpressed by motion, when the Greeks were amazed by it?
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 8. Brain
Nerves and movement originate in the brain, where imagination moves them [Descartes]
     Full Idea: The motive power or the nerves themselves originate in the brain, which contains the imagination, which moves them in a thousand ways, as the common sense is moved by the external sense.
     From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12)
     A reaction: This sounds a lot more physicalist than his later explicit dualism in Meditations. Even in that work the famous passage on the ship's pilot acknowledged tight integration of mind and brain.