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Ideas for 'works', 'On 'Generation and Corruption'' and 'fragments/reports'

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2 ideas

16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes.
     From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396
     A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 1. Nature of Free Will
Anaxagoras says mind remains pure, and so is not affected by what it changes [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Anaxagoras says that intellect (which is a cause of change) is not affected by or mixed in with anything else; for this is the only way in which it can cause change, while being itself changeless, and control things without mixing with them.
     From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 256b24
     A reaction: I suggest that this is the germ of the original concept of freewill - of the mind as somehow outside the causal processes of the world, so that it can initiate change without itself being affected by other causes. Aristotle says he's right; I disagree.