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From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[046]) | |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From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[087]) | |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? |
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From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |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. |
8954 | Geometrical circles cannot identify a circular paint patch, presumably because they lack something [Szabó] |
Full Idea: The vocabulary of geometry is sufficient to identify the circle, but could not be used to identify any circular paint patch. The reason must be that the circle lacks certain properties that can distinguish paint patches from one another. | |
From: Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Nominalism [2003], 2.2) | |
A reaction: I take this to be support for the traditional view, that abstractions are created by omitting some of the properties of physical objects. I take them to be fictional creations, reified by language, and not actual hidden entities that have been observed. |
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. |