display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 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. |
| 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. |