display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 12760 | Something rather like souls (though not intelligent) could be found everywhere [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Nor is there any reason why souls or things analogous to souls should not be everywhere, even if dominant and consequently intelligent souls, like human souls, cannot be everywhere. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §12) | |
| A reaction: He is always flirting with panpsychism, though he doesn't seem to offer any account of how these little baby souls can be built up to create one intelligent soul, the latter being indivisible. 'Souls' are very different from things 'analous to souls'! |
| 20374 | Consciousness is a terminal phenomenon, and causes nothing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end - and causes nothing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §478) | |
| A reaction: This appears to endorse epiphenomenalism - which I take to be an incoherent concept. How can becoming fully aware of something, rather than subliminally or subconsciously aware, make no difference at all? If it exists, it has causal powers. |