Single Idea 5884

[catalogued under 15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind]

Full Idea

Why is it that, using the same mind, we have perception of things so utterly unlike as colour, taste, heat, smell and sound?

Gist of Idea

How can one mind perceive so many dissimilar sensations?

Source

M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xx.47)

Book Reference

Cicero: 'Tusculan Disputations', ed/tr. King,J.E. [Harvard Loeb 1927], p.57


A Reaction

This leaves us with the 'binding problem', of how the dissimilar sensations are pulled together into one field of experience. It is a nice simple objection, though, to anyone who simplistically claims that the mind is self-evidently unified.