Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Will to Power (notebooks)' and 'reports'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 3. Panpsychism
Wisdom and thought are shared by all things [Empedocles]
     Full Idea: Wisdom and power of thought, know thou, are shared in by all things.
     From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Logicians (two books) II.286
     A reaction: Sextus quotes this, saying that it is 'still more paradoxical', and that it explicitly includes plants. This may mean that Empedocles was not including inanimate matter.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 6. Epiphenomenalism
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.