display all the ideas for this combination of texts
8 ideas
| 4862 | Can the pineal gland be moved more slowly or quickly by the mind than by animal spirits? [Spinoza on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I am in ignorance whether the pineal gland can be agitated more slowly or more quickly by the mind than by the animal spirits. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.82) by Baruch de Spinoza - The Ethics V Pref | |
| A reaction: Is this the earliest statement of the problem of double causation? It is a classic difficulty for dualists, highlighted by Ryle, among others. Avoidance of double causation is a classic reason for moving to monism about mind. |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century the dominant idea that causation is collisionlike made mental causation almost impossible to envision. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.136) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This makes Descartes' interaction theory look rather bold, and Leibniz's and Malebranche's rejection of it understandable. Personally I still think of causation as collisionlike, except that the collisions are of very very tiny objects. |
| 3850 | We discovers others as well as ourselves in the Cogito [Sartre on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It is not only oneself that one discovers in the Cogito, but those of others too. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2) by Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism and Humanism p.45 | |
| A reaction: The analytical tradition requires a bit more than an instant perception of others in oneself. The problem of 'other minds' must at least be mentioned. However, the way to get to know a universal is to fully study a single instance. |
| 2302 | Faculties of the mind aren't parts, as one mind uses them [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The faculties of willing, sensing, understanding and so on cannot be called "parts" of the mind, since it is one and the same mind that wills, senses and understands. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.86) | |
| A reaction: It is best here to say that Descartes has confused the 'mind' with the 'person'. These faculties make (I think) no sense without a person to perform them, but the 'mind' surely includes these conscious activities, and many fringe events as well. |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to explain why certain brain events are uniquely experienced by you subjectively: only you are properly hooked up to your own nervous system to have your own experiences. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 87) | |
| A reaction: This is in reply to Nagel's oft quoted claim that mind can only be understood as "what it is like to be" that mind. I agree with Flanagan, and it is nice illustration of how philosophers can confuse themselves with high-sounding questions. |
| 3151 | Descartes put thought at the centre of the mind problem, but we put sensation [Rey on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Descartes confined his dualism to problems of reason and language. Sensation and even imagination seemed to him physically unproblematic. Nowadays it is the reverse: thinking seems easy - but feeling? | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 2 n16 | |
| A reaction: Thinking only 'seems easy' if it can be done without consciousness, and that is beginning to look like a dubious assumption. The most interesting and promising area is the borderline between a chess-playing machine and a human chess player. |
| 21800 | Descartes mentions many cognitive faculties, but reduces them to will and intellect [Descartes, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Although Descartes accepted a variety of cognitive faculties like the intellect, will, power of judgement, imagination, memory, and perception, he took them all to be ultimately reducible to different operations of the will and intellect. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 4) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 2 | |
| A reaction: In Med 4, it is most clear, when he reduces 'judgement' to will and intellect, which enable his to assent to an idea. Nietzsche saw Descartes' view as simplistic. |
| 1399 | Imagination and sensation are non-essential to mind [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: This power of imagination which is in me, in so far as it differs from the power of conceiving, is in no way necessary to my nature or essence. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.73) | |
| A reaction: This is my candidate for the biggest blunder ever made by a great philosopher. But it was thanks to his mistake that I began to realise how totally central imagination is to the very act of thinking. Thank you, René. |