Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'fragments/reports' and 'Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness'

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4 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
2957 Brain bisection suggests unity of mind isn't all-or-nothing [Nagel, by Lockwood]
     Full Idea: Nagel argues (because of brain bisection experiments) that we should jettison our commonsense assumption that the unity of consciousness is an all-or-nothing affair.
     From: report of Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971]) by Michael Lockwood - Mind, Brain and the Quantum p.84
     A reaction: It seems wrong to call it 'commonsense'. It is an assumption that precedes any judgement, but if you rapidly grasp that your mind is in your brain, it becomes common sense that you can cut lumps out of your mind.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 4. Presupposition of Self
3285 We may be unable to abandon personal identity, even when split-brains have undermined it [Nagel]
     Full Idea: As a result of the evidence of split-brains, it is possible that the ordinary, simple idea of a single person will come to seem quaint some day, …but we may be unable to abandon the idea, no matter what we discover.
     From: Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971], p.164)
     A reaction: I'm not sure what grounds you can have for a claim that we can't abandon our current view of selves, even when the new reality will be utterly different. Rather conservative? I would expect future concepts to roughly match future reality.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
7903 The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 3. Deism
1558 Clearly the gods ignore human affairs, or they would have given us justice [Thrasymachus]
     Full Idea: The gods pay no attention to human affairs; if they did, they would not have ignored justice, which is the greatest good for men; for we see that men do not act with justice.
     From: Thrasymachus (fragments/reports [c.426 BCE], B8), quoted by Hermias - Notes on Plato's 'Phaedrus' 239.22