Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'What is Philosophy?' and 'Discourse on Metaphysics'

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2 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / a. Other minds
Other people completely revise our perceptions, because they are possible worlds [Deleuze/Guattari]
     Full Idea: The concept of the Other Person as expression of a possible world in a perceptual field leads us to consider the components of this field in a new way.
     From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1)
     A reaction: I like the idea that other people are possible worlds. You can give reductionist accounts of the human animal till the cows come home, but when one walk into your visual field, the mind takes off. See Crusoe and Friday.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 7. Animal Minds
Dogs show reason in decisions made by elimination [Chrysippus, by Sext.Empiricus]
     Full Idea: A dog makes use of the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism when, arriving at a spot where three ways meet, after smelling at two roads by which the quarry did not pass, he rushes off at once by the third without pausing to smell.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.69
     A reaction: As we might say: either A or B or C; not A; not B; therefore C. I wouldn't want to trust this observation without a lot of analysis of slow-motion photography of dogs as crossroads. Even so, it is a nice challenge to Descartes' view of animals.