Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative', 'The Human Body is a sort of Machine' and 'Letters to Varignon'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act

7861	Libet says the processes initiated in the cortex can still be consciously changed [Libet, by Papineau]
	Full Idea: Libet himself points out that the conscious decisions still have the power to 'endorse' or 'cancel', so to speak, the processes initiated by the earlier cortical activity: no action will result if the action's execution is consciously countermanded.
	From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.4
	A reaction: This is why Libet's findings do not imply 'epiphenomenalism'. It seems that part of a decisive action is non-conscious, undermining the all-or-nothing view of consciousness. Searle tries to smuggle in free will at this point (Idea 3817).

6660	Libet found conscious choice 0.2 secs before movement, well after unconscious 'readiness potential' [Libet, by Lowe]
	Full Idea: Libet found that a subject's conscious choice to move was about a fifth of a second before movement, and thus later than the onset of the brain's so-called 'readiness potential', which seems to imply that unconscious processes initiates action.
	From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.9
	A reaction: Of great interest to philosophers! It seems to make conscious choices epiphenomenal. The key move, I think, is to give up the idea of consciousness as being all-or-nothing. My actions are still initiated by 'me', but 'me' shades off into unconsciousness.

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 2. Natural Purpose / b. Limited purposes

19376	A machine is best defined by its final cause, which explains the roles of the parts [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Any machine ...is best defined in terms of its final cause, so that in the description of the parts it is therefore apparent in what way each of them is coordinated with the others for the intended us.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Human Body is a sort of Machine [1683], p.290), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 3 'Machines'
	A reaction: We would use the 'function', an inherently teleological concept, and a concept which is almost indispensable for giving an illuminating description of the world. If nature is dispositional, it points towards things. Leibniz views persons as machines.

27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution

19414	Men are related to animals, which are related to plants, then to fossils, and then to the apparently inert [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Men are related to animals, these to plants, and the latter directly to fossils which will be linked in their turn to bodies which the senses and the imagination represent to us as perfectly dead and formless.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Varignon [1702], 1702)
	A reaction: Leibniz would be a bit surprised to find the way in which this has turned out to be largely true, since he is basing it on his picture of a hierarchy of monads. Nevertheless, the idea that we are all related wasn't invented in 1859.