Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Being and Nothingness' and 'The Morality of Happiness'

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2 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / c. Animal rationality
Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial'
     A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived.
18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content
Sartre rejects mental content, and the idea that the mind has hidden inner features [Sartre, by Rowlands]
     Full Idea: Sartre's attack on the idea that consciousness has contents is an attack on the idea that the mental possesses features that are hidden, inner and constituted or revealed by the individual's inwardly directed awareness.
     From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.5
     A reaction: This is part of the move towards 'externalism' about the mind. The notion of 'content' implies a container. It seems slightly ridiculous, though, to try to say that the mind just 'is the world'. How is reasoning possible, and the relation of ideas?