Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Subjective and Objective' and 'The Logic of What Might Have Been'

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2 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / a. Mind
Inner v outer brings astonishment that we are a particular person [Nagel]
     Full Idea: The problem of reconciling the objective and subjective points of view takes its purest form in a sense of incredulity that one should be anyone in particular.
     From: Thomas Nagel (Subjective and Objective [1979], p.206)
     A reaction: Nice observation. This idea has always struck me forcibly, and seems to be one of those basic intuitions which motivates philosophy, and yet the subject has almost nothing to say about it. Of course you are you, or you wouldn't be amazed by it…
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.