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2 ideas
9296 | 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? |
24027 | 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. |