Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Through the Looking Glass', 'fragments/reports' and 'The Right and the Good'

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3 ideas

17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 8. Dualism of Mind Critique
Incorporeal substances can't do anything, and can't be acted upon either [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero]
     Full Idea: Zeno held that an incorporeal substance was incapable of any activity, whereas anything capable of acting, or being acted upon in any way, could not be incorporeal.
     From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.11.39
     A reaction: This is substance dualism kicked into the long grass by Zeno, long before Descartes defended dualism, and was swiftly met with exactly the same response. The interaction problem.
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 5. Supervenience of mind
Identical objects must have identical value [Ross]
     Full Idea: If a thing possesses any kind of intrinsic value in a certain degree, anything exactly like it must in all circumstances possess it in the same degree.
     From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV)
     A reaction: This is the earlier notion of supervenience in philosophy, before it was applied to the mind. So a perfect duplication of the Mona Lisa will be worth as much as the original? A perfect clone of your partner is as good as the original?
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 5. Causal Argument
A body is required for anything to have causal relations [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero]
     Full Idea: Zeno held (contrary to Xenocrates and others) that it was impossible for anything to be effected that lacked a body, and indeed that whatever effected something or was affected by something must be body.
     From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.39
     A reaction: This seems to make stoics thoroughgoing physicalists, although they consider the mind to be made of refined fire, rather than of flesh.