Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Perceptual Content and Monadic Truth' and 'De Anima'

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6 ideas

17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 1. Dualism
1710 Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Most affections (like anger) seem to involve the body, but thinking seems distinctive of the soul. But if this requires imagination, it too involves the body. Only pure mental activity would prove the separation of the two.
     From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a08-)
     A reaction: What an observant man! Modern neuroscience is bringing out the fact that emotion is central to all mental life. We can't recognise faces without it. I say imagination is essential to pure reason, and that seems emotional too. Reason is physical.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 2. Interactionism
24039 All the emotions seem to involve the body, simultaneously with the feeling [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The affections of the soul - spiritedness, fear, pity, confidence, joy, loving, hating - would all seem to involve the body, since at the same time as these the body is affected in a certain way.
     From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a16)
     A reaction: Aristotle was not a physicalist, but this resembles the pilot-in-the-ship passage in Descartes, accepting the very close links.
24056 The soul (or parts of it) is not separable from the body [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: That the soul is not separable from the body - or that certain parts of it are not, if it naturally has parts - is quite clear.
     From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 413a04)
     A reaction: This doesn't make him a physicalist. I've seen him described in modern terms as a functionalist, but that makes the mind abstract and the body concrete. Perhaps he is an 'Integrationist' (as Descartes might be in his 'pilot' passage).
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 8. Dualism of Mind Critique
24050 If soul is separate from body, why does it die when the body dies? [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: If the soul is something distinct from the mixture, why then are the being for flesh and for the other parts of the animal destroyed at the same time?
     From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a25)
     A reaction: An obvious response to this reasonable question is to say that we see the body die, but not the soul, so the soul doesn't die. The problem is then to find some evidence for the soul's continued existence.
24049 Thinkers place the soul within the body, but never explain how they are attached [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: There is another absurdity which follows, …since they attach the soul to a body, and place it in the body, without further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about. …Yet this seems necessary, because this association produces action.
     From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b14)
     A reaction: A clear statement of the interaction objection to full substance dualism. Critics say that dualists have to invoke a 'miracle' at this point.
1514 Early thinkers concentrate on the soul but ignore the body, as if it didn't matter what body received the soul [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Early thinkers try only to describe the soul, but they fail to go into any kind of detail about the body which is to receive the soul, as if it were possible (as it is in the Pythagorean tales) for just any old soul to be clothed in just any old body.
     From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b20)
     A reaction: Precisely. Anyone who seriously believes that a human mind can be reincarnated in a flea needs their mind examined. Actually they need their brain examined, but that probably wouldn't impress them. I can, of course, imagine moving into a flea.