Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'What is an Idea?' and 'The Material Mind'

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2 ideas

18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 1. Psychology
In no important way can psychology be reduced to the physical sciences [Davidson]
     Full Idea: There is no important sense in which psychology can be reduced to the physical sciences.
     From: Donald Davidson (The Material Mind [1973], p.259)
     A reaction: In no 'important' way can the beauty of the Lake District be reduced to geology - but it is geology. 'Important' to whom? To a metaphysician, I would say psychology does reduce to physics, and that is important, but it is not important to a psychologist.
18. Thought / C. Content / 2. Ideas
By an 'idea' I mean not an actual thought, but the resources we can draw on to think [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: What I mean by an idea is not a certain act of thinking, but a power or faculty such that we have an idea of a thing even if we are not thinking about it but know that we can think it when the occasion arises.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (What is an Idea? [1676], p.281)
     A reaction: 'Idea' tends to be used in the seventeenth century to mean an actual mental event. It is because Leibniz believes in the unconscious mind that he can offer this rather different, and probably superior, notion of an 'idea'.