Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82' and 'The Moral Problem'

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2 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: How is it that we satisfy our stronger inclinations at the expense of our weaker inclinations? - In itself, if we were a unity, this split could not exist. In fact we are a multiplicity that has imagined a unity for itself.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[35])
     A reaction: Plato had the same thought, but stopped at three parts, rather than a multiplicity. What Nietzsche fails to say, I think, is that this 'imagined' unity of the mind is not optional, and obviously has a real link to the one body and the one life.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind
Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle]
     Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious.
     From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V
     A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can.