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Questions and Answers
What was Telesio's conception of the soul?
What was Telesio's conception of the soul?
The soul is a part of the body, which he calls a spirit.
What is the main difference between Telesio's and Hobbes' views on the soul?
What is the main difference between Telesio's and Hobbes' views on the soul?
Telesio saw the soul as a part of the body, while Hobbes reduced all mental phenomena to mechanist corporeal movements.
What is the central claim of Descartes' Second Meditation?
What is the central claim of Descartes' Second Meditation?
The mind or soul is a thinking substance, a mind or an intellect, which can be aware of sense-perception taking place through the body.
What is the name of the philosophical tradition that influenced Descartes' views on the mind and body?
What is the name of the philosophical tradition that influenced Descartes' views on the mind and body?
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What is the term used to describe Descartes' view of the mind and body as separate substances?
What is the term used to describe Descartes' view of the mind and body as separate substances?
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What is the central claim of Spinoza's parallelism?
What is the central claim of Spinoza's parallelism?
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What is the term used to describe Leibniz's view of the fundamental substances of reality?
What is the term used to describe Leibniz's view of the fundamental substances of reality?
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What is the key similarity between Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche?
What is the key similarity between Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche?
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What is the name of the university where Telesio did not have to live by the decision of the Lateran council?
What is the name of the university where Telesio did not have to live by the decision of the Lateran council?
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What is the term used to describe the view that the mind is a thinking thing and the body is an extended thing?
What is the term used to describe the view that the mind is a thinking thing and the body is an extended thing?
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Study Notes
Historical Development of Philosophy of Mind
- The philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology are characterized by a wide variety of objects of interest and connections with recent developments in cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and computation.
- Late ancient philosophers focused on arguing for the harmony between Plato and Aristotle from a Neoplatonist point of view.
Ancient and Medieval Sources
- The surviving late ancient works on Aristotle's De Anima include a paraphrase by Themistius and two longer commentaries traditionally attributed to Simplicius and Philoponus.
- Nemesius of Emesa's De Natura Hominis (c. 400) reports on the psychological views of various ancient schools.
- Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae and his commentaries on Aristotle's De Interpretatione were widely used in the Middle Ages.
- Augustine's works combined Neoplatonist psychological ideas and Christian philosophical theology.
Arabic Translations and Influence
- In the ninth century, many ancient sources of psychology were translated into Arabic, including Plato's Timaeus and Republic, Aristotle's De Anima and Parva Naturalia, and Alexander of Aphrodisias' commentaries.
- Avicenna's Shifa' (often called Avicenna's De Anima) combined Aristotelian and Neoplatonic motifs and was extensively studied in medieval Latin philosophy.
- Averroes' commentary on Aristotle's De Anima was also influential in medieval Latin philosophy.
Renaissance and Early Modern Period
- Telesio's late sixteenth-century materialist panpsychism had some influence on Gassendi and other adherents of the new science.
- Renaissance physiognomic literature and Paracelsus's occultist psychology were also influential.
- Neo-Stoicism continued into the seventeenth century.
- The early modern conception of the science of the mind was embedded in the European tradition of natural philosophy.
Modern Developments
- In the eighteenth century, psychology was increasingly associated with empirical and observational approaches and separated from philosophical and metaphysical concerns.
- The mind-body dualism of René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, and others became a dominant problem of philosophy of mind.
Medieval Discussions of the Soul
- John Buridan's De Anima commentary outlined three positions: Averroes' view, Alexander of Aphrodisias' view, and the position of faith, which Buridan defended.
- Pietro Pomponazzi famously defended the position attributed to Alexander, which was seen as philosophically sound but in tension with the decree of the Fifth Lateran Council (1513).
- Bernardino Telesio developed a materialist conception of the soul, which was similar to Thomas Hobbes' view, except that Hobbes reduced all mental phenomena to mechanist corporeal movements.
Cartesian and Post-Cartesian Developments
- René Descartes' Second Meditation claimed to prove that he was a thinking substance, a mind or an intellect, which could be aware of sense-perception taking place through the body.
- The distinction between two incompatible substances expresses the famous mind-body dualism.
- Nicolas Malebranche, Henry More, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz developed their own solutions to the mind-body problem, including parallelism and monadology.
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Description
This quiz is about identifying faculty members from various universities in Finland and Belgium. It includes philosophers from University of Leuven, University of Helsinki, and University of Eastern Finland.
