Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Prolegomena to Ethics' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74'

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3 ideas

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.
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 1. Faculties
Our primary faculty is perception of structure, as when looking in a mirror [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The primary faculty seems to me to be the perception of structure, that is, based upon the mirror.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [153])
     A reaction: The point about the mirror makes this such an intriguingly original idea. Personally I like very much the idea that structure is our prime perception. See Sider 2011 on structure.
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 9. Perceiving Causation
We experience causation between willing and acting, and thereby explain conjunctions of changes [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The only form of causality of which we are aware is that between willing and acting - we transfer this to all things, and thereby explain the relationship between two changes that always occur together.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [209])
     A reaction: This is a rather Humean view, of projecting our experience onto the world, but it may be that we really are experiencing real causation, just as it occurs between insentiate things.