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23266
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The spirit in the soul wants freedom, power and honour [Galen]
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Full Idea:
The spirited part of the soul is desiderative of freedom, victory, power, authority, reputation, and honour.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772)
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A reaction:
This is the concept of 'thumos' [spirit], taken straight from Plato's tripartite account of the soul, in 'Republic'. Note that it includes a desire for freedom (in an age of slavery).
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23220
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The brain contains memory and reason, and is the source of sensation and decision [Galen]
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Full Idea:
The brain is the principal organ of the psychical members. For within the brain is seated memory, reason and intellect, and from the brain is distributed the power, sensation and voluntary motion.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170]), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 1
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A reaction:
[not sure of ref] Interesting that he assigns the whole of mind to the brain, and not just some aspect of it. He had done experiments. Understanding the role of the brain was amazingly slow. Impeded by religion, I guess.
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23265
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The rational part of the soul is the desire for truth, understanding and recollection [Galen]
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Full Idea:
That part of the soul which we call rational is desiderative: …it desires truth, knowledge, learning, understanding, and recollection - in short, all the good things.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772)
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A reaction:
Truth is no surprise, but recollection is. Note the separation of knowledge from understanding. This is a very good characterisation of rationality. For the Greeks it has a moral dimension, of wanting what is good.
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23268
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We execute irredeemable people, to protect ourselves, as a deterrent, and ending a bad life [Galen]
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Full Idea:
We kill the irredeemably wicked, for three reasons: that they may no longer harm us; as a deterrent to others like them; and because it is actually better from their own point of view to die, when their souls are so damaged they cannot be improved.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.11.816)
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A reaction:
The third one sounds like a dubious rationalisation, given that the prisoner probably disagrees. Nowadays we are not so quick to judge someone as irredeemable. The first one works when they run wild, but not after their capture.
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8430
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Causal statements are used to explain, to predict, to control, to attribute responsibility, and in theories [Kim]
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Full Idea:
The function of causal statements is 1) to explain events, 2) for predictive usefulness, 3) to help control events, 4) with agents, to attribute moral responsibility, 5) in physical theory. We should judge causal theories by how they account for these.
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From:
Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973], p.207)
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A reaction:
He suggests that Lewis's counterfactual theory won't do well on this test. I think the first one is what matters. Philosophy aims to understand, and that is achieved through explanation. Regularity and counterfactual theories explain very little.
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8429
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Counterfactuals can express four other relations between events, apart from causation [Kim]
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Full Idea:
Counterfactuals can express 'analytical' dependency, or the fact that one event is part of another, or an action done by doing another, or (most interestingly) an event can determine another without causally determining it.
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From:
Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973], p.205)
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A reaction:
[Kim gives example of each case] Counterfactuals can even express a relation that involves no dependency. Or they might just involve redescription, as in 'If Scott were still alive, then the author of "Waverley" would be too'.
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4781
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Many counterfactual truths do not imply causation ('if yesterday wasn't Monday, it isn't Tuesday') [Kim, by Psillos]
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Full Idea:
Kim gives a range of examples of counterfactual dependence without causation, as: 'if yesterday wasn't Monday, today wouldn't be Tuesday', and 'if my sister had not given birth, I would not be an uncle'.
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From:
report of Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §3.3
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A reaction:
This is aimed at David Lewis. The objection seems like commonsense. "If you blink, the cat gets it". Causal claims involve counterfactuals, but they are not definitive of what causation is.
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