5880
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Xenocrates held that the soul had no form or substance, but was number [Xenocrates, by Cicero]
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Full Idea:
Xenocrates denied that the soul had form or any substance, but said that it was number, and the power of number, as had been held by Pythagoras long before, was the highest in nature.
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From:
report of Xenocrates (fragments/reports [c.327 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations I.x.20
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A reaction:
This shows how strong the Pythagorean influence was in the Academy. This is not totally stupid. Dawkins holds that the essence of DNA is information, which can be expressed mathematically. Xenocrates was a functionalist.
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3285
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We may be unable to abandon personal identity, even when split-brains have undermined it [Nagel]
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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.
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From:
Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971], p.164)
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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.
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