display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
23184 | The mind is a simplifying apparatus [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The intellect and the senses are above all a simplifying apparatus. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[046]) | |
A reaction: Very plausible, and not an idea I have met elsewhere. There's a PhD here for someone. It fits with my view as universals in language (which is most of language), which capture diverse things by ironing out their differences. |
23190 | Consciousness is our awareness of our own mental life [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: We have a double brain: our capacity to will, to feel and to think of our willing, feeling, thinking ourselves is what we summarise with the word 'consciousness'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[087]) | |
A reaction: Pretty much the modern HOT (higher order thought) theory of consciousness. Higher order thought distinguishes us from the other animals, but I think they too are probably conscious, so I don't agree. Why is level 2 conscious of level 1? |
5210 | We could know what a lion thinks by mapping both its brain patterns and its experiences [Douglas,A] |
Full Idea: In principle, it seems possible to monitor both the brain activity and the external experiences of a lion cub from birth, and by extensive mapping of one against the other to work out fairly accurately what a lion is thinking. | |
From: Andy Douglas (talk [2003]) | |
A reaction: This has limitations (e.g. we could monitor the external events, but not the way the lion experiences them), but it seems to me to offer a real theoretical possibility of breaching the mental privacy of an inarticulate creature. |
23191 | Minds have an excluding drive to scare things off, and a selecting one to filter facts [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: In our conscious intellect there must be an excluding drive that scares things away, a selecting one, which only permits certain facts to present themselves. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |
A reaction: I like this because he is endorsing the idea that philosophy needs faculties, which may not match the views of psychologists and neuroscientists. Quite nice to think of faculties as drives. |
23213 | The greatest drive of life is to discharge strength, rather than preservation [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Something that lives wants above all to discharge its strength: 'preservation' is only one of the consequences of this. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 2[063]) | |
A reaction: This seems to fit a dynamic man like Nietzsche, rather than someone who opts for a quiet and comfortable life. |