So In Aristotle, there is passive and active intellect (which someone could easily parse as mind in a nonphysical sense) and passive and active material states (which someone could easily parse as material/physical stuff in the contemporary sense). — Terrapin Station
I wouldn't expect to "find it" anywhere. — Janus
But see that's not coherent to me. I don't think that the idea of existents with no location makes any sense really. — Terrapin Station
With ghosts, yeah, they'd need to have a location, too, and then we have to just kind of go, "Well, they're a bit like invisible people that can pass through items that normally we can't pass through" without thinking about the details of how that would work very much, where we pretend that somehow being able to see and hear and think doesn't inherently depend on having particular body parts, etc. — Terrapin Station
Aristotle's conception
Aristotle gives his most substantial account of the passive intellect (nous pathetikos) in De Anima (On the Soul), Book III, chapter 4. In Aristotle's philosophy of mind, the passive intellect "is what it is by becoming all things."[1] By this Aristotle means that the passive intellect can potentially become anything by receiving that thing's intelligible form. The active intellect (nous poietikos) is then required to illuminate the passive intellect to make the potential knowledge into knowledge in act, in the same way that light makes potential colors into actual colors. The analysis of this distinction is very brief, which has led to dispute as to what it means.
What's the reason you couldn't logically have passive or active mind, as well as passive or active matter? — Terrapin Station
One person's regulation is another person's freedom, and so it is with bullshit. — Janus
No such unambivalent definition of what constitutes doing philosophy is universally accepted; — Janus
the minimum requirement is that you provide argument or explanation for what you want to assert or even what you merely want to allow as a possibility, and that your argument or explanation not be self-contradictory. — Janus
"Sensory representations" is only a part of what's in the mind. There are also memories and anticipations. I agree that it doesn't make sense to talk about a mind existing without senses, but it also doesn't make sense to say that a "mind is composed of sensory representations".
This is most obviously wrong. Things anticipated are in your mind, and not in your past. So it is incorrect to reduce the mind to memory as you do here. And if this is really the basis of your judgement that my notion of "mind" is incorrect and incoherent, it appears like you have things reversed, because your notion of mind is obviously incorrect. — Metaphysician Undercover
And the other, crucial, ingredient, is reason. — Wayfarer
You seem happy with dualism and so you won't be too troubled that you are arguing for an epistemology that holds up a lack of interaction between the self and the world as an acceptable thing. — apokrisis
I'm a physicalist/materialist, but my view isn't a "belief in physics" per se.
Among the big problems for me with the "God" side of things is that in my view the idea of a nonphysical existent can't even be made coherent. — Terrapin Station
1. [1177a11] But if happiness [εὐδαιμονία] consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect [νοῦς], or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already* that this activity is the activity of contemplation [θεωρητική]. — Aristotle
Silly post. If the device on which this is being written depends on the existence of numbers then numbers must be in the device for which it depends, just as this same device depends on electricity and wouldn't function without it, even with the existence of numbers (a program). You also wouldn't function without electricity.I wonder where numbers are located. Silly question, of course - they have no location, as they’re abstractions. But nevertheless they’re real; the device on which this is being written depends on it. — Wayfarer
Memories and anticipations, AND the process of reasoning, are composed of colors, shapes, sounds, feelings, etc. ie sensory representations. What form does your anticipation take if not a visual of some future event? How do you know that you're reasoning at all if your reasoning doesn't take some form? What would you be reasoning about? — Harry Hindu
There is nothing about memory that restricts it to being in, or about, the past. Memory is simply information storage. There are different types of memory. Computers also have memory and are capable of making predictions/simulations/anticipations (they're the same thing) within their working memory. — Harry Hindu
Idealism however makes sense because it allows you to keep God and be scientific at the same time. — Jamesk
There is no doubt there are a lot of disputes about what Aristotle is exactly saying but the writer is being a poor reader by not putting the question in the context of what Aristotle said quite clearly elsewhere in the book: — Valentinus
Sure, but the thing is we don't know for sure that being able to see, hear and think depends inherently on having certain body parts. — Janus
just like thinking (which we can at least imagine to be independent of physicality) — Janus
All we do know is that it is not logically (which is to say "imaginatively") impossible. — Janus
In regards to De Anima, that parsing would be incorrect as the "mind" is on both sides of the intellectual perception. — Valentinus
I think we know that being able to see, hear, etc. depends inherently on having certain body parts as much as we can know anything. — Terrapin Station
If anyone can imagine that so that it's coherent, they sure aren't able to express what they're imagining to me so that it makes any sense at all. — Terrapin Station
All that tells us is that per the rules of the logic game as we've set those rules up, it doesn't entail a contradiction. But that doesn't actually tell us much at all. — Terrapin Station
The " rules of the logic game" are determined by what we can coherently imagine; what else? So that's what they tell us; what the limits of the human imagination are. — Janus
I've certainly run into people who have claimed that the notion of "obtaining contradictories" makes sense to them, and they seemed to be talking about the idea of contradictions in the standard conception of them, but I never could figure out myself how it made sense to them. — Terrapin Station
It seems contradictory to say that "obtaining contradictories" make sense; the very idea of 'contradictory' seems to mean something like 'doesn't make sense'. So maybe those people you refer to have a strange and different definition of 'contradictory'. — Janus
They didn't seem to be using "contradictory" any differently. — Terrapin Station
Memory is restricted to being about the past — Metaphysician Undercover
Nonsense; you can for example memorize formulae. — Janus
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