Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Presupposition' and 'Cartesian Meditations'

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2 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / c. Knowing other minds
Husserl's monads (egos) communicate, through acts of empathy. [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol]
     Full Idea: For Husserl monads have windows because they communicate with each other. The windows of the monads are the acts of empathy.
     From: report of Edmund Husserl (Cartesian Meditations [1931]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.7.5
     A reaction: Leibniz said his monads (which include minds) have 'no windows'. The mere existence of empathy (or mirror neurons, as we would say) is hardly sufficient to defeat solipsism.
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.