Like Pato's theory of forms? Can it not be explained in a simple sentence? — Tom Storm
But this is as pernicious a question as ‘What sort of entity is a number?’
— Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections - Peter M.S. Hacker, 2007
A number is simply a concept. There's no difficulty that I can see here. — Olivier5
The mind/body problem is insoluble.
— Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections - Peter M.S. Hacker, 2007
That sounds both defeatist and strangely preposterous. — Olivier5
Talk of the mind is concerned with the distinctive rational powers of human beings and their exercise.
Once this is clear, it becomes evident that the domain of the idiom of ‘mind’ coincides roughly not with that of the Cartesian mind – the domain of consciousness, but with that of the Aristotelian rational psuche. The Aristotelian psuche is not a kind of entity, and the question of whether the organism and its mind are one thing or two is, according to Aristotle, as absurd as the question of whether the wax and the impression on it are one thing or two. The possessor of a mind is an animal of a certain kind, namely a human being. To have a mind is not to be in possession of a kind of entity. It is rather to possess a distinctive range of powers. — Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections - Peter M.S. Hacker, 2007
The mind is not an entity that could stand in a relationship to anything. All talk of the mind that a human being has and of its characteristics is talk of the intellectual and volitional powers that he has, and of their exercise.
— Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections - Peter M.S. Hacker, 2007
That is true, but so what? 'The mind is not an object'. Nevertheless we all possess one, or are one. So, 'the mind', which is not an object, is the ground of everything we know, including objects. — Wayfarer
'I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy' — Tom Storm
:100: — god must be atheist
A problem can be insoluble if it is badly formulated or has false assumptions. In this case, the mind/body problem has Cartesian assumptions which can be questioned and potentially rejected. — Andrew M
But the body that a human being is said to have, when we speak of human beings as having beautiful or athletic bodies, is not the kind of thing that could be said to possess intellectual and volitional abilities. For we speak of a human being’s body thus when we focus upon corporeal characteristics that the human being in question has. These characteristics, the very distinctive range of corporeal features of a human being that we assign to the body he has, are not the kinds of thing that could make up their minds, call things to mind or change their minds. — Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections PETER M.S. HACKER, OXFORD
The mind a human being has and the body he has are not the kinds of things that could stand in any relationship to each other in the sense in which Jack and Jill (or London and Paris, or a man and his property) may stand in a relationship to each other. The apparent relationship is comparable to the ‘relationship’ between the meaning of a word and the phonemes Into which the word can be analysed – both being abstractions from the meaningful word in use. The English word ‘cat’ has a meaning (it means the carnivorous quadruped Felix domesticus), but does not stand in a relationship to its meaning, any more than I stand in a relationship to my mind.
Similarly, my body does not have a mind and does not stand in a relationship to my mind. (I have a mind – and a body; what would my body do with a mind?) One might compare the question of how my mind is related to my body with the question of how the value of five pounds is related to the colour of the paper on which the note is printed. For here too one might explain that the five pound note has a value of five pounds, but the colour of the paper on which the note is printed does not stand in any relationship to the value of five pounds. So the mind-body problem as traditionally conceived simply evaporates.
No, not in the least. It's a conceptual paradigm (i.e. methodological coarse-graining filter), btw, and is N O T itself a scientific model (i.e. explanatory hypothesis). Yeah, materialism is also the least adequate paradigm ... except for all of the others (i.e. 'immaterialisms' ...) ever tried.Is this lack of explanation a detriment to materialism? — RogueAI
the existence of mind and ideas can't be doubted. — RogueAI
This guy is err... brilliant."The greatest enemy of Truth and Wisdom (philosophy) is the Tooth of Wisdom. If it aches, you can't think straight." - Ashleigh Brilliant — god must be atheist
This guy is brilliant. — Olivier5
"Mind"? "Body"? "Subject/Object"? "Physical"? ... Will you please study Spinoza — 180 Proof
They are just words as well, yes. But I’m not claiming they’re beyond question. As I went on to explain.
Before we decide if we’re mindless, tell us what mind means. Otherwise it’s like discussing God. Are you Godless?
But first, what do you mean by "means"? I don't care to go down this rabbit hole. — RogueAI
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