Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Classical Cosmology (frags)', 'Quaestiones de Potentia Dei' and 'Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness'

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4 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / b. Unifying aggregates

17555	'One' can mean undivided and not a multitude, or it can add measurement, giving number [Aquinas]
	Full Idea: There are two sorts of one. There is the one which is convertible with being, which adds nothing to being except being undivided; and this deprives of multitude. Then there is the principle of number, which to the notion of being adds measurement.
	From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones de Potentia Dei [1269], q3 a16 ad 3-um)
	A reaction: [From a lecture handout] I'm not sure I understand this. We might say, I suppose, that insofar as water is water, it is all one, but you can't count it. Perhaps being 'unified' and being a 'unity' are different?

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.

27. Natural Reality / E. Cosmology / 1. Cosmology

5994	Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG]
	Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning.
	From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas)
	A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out.