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Myths of the Mind and Myths of the Brain
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Kenny, Anthony |
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | In the history of philosophy there have been two recurrent contrasting conceptions of what it is to be human. One we may call Aristotelian and the other Cartesian. (Both can trace their ancestry to the polymorphous Plato). According to Aristotle, a human being is an animal of a particular kind: a rational animal. According to Descartes a human person is a spirit of a particular kind, temporarily and mysteriously united to a body. I accept the Aristotelian account and regard the Cartesian account as fundamentally mistaken. In sceptical vein, Descartes believed that he could doubt the existence of the external world and the existence of his own body. He brought his doubt to an end with the famous argument “cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.” This led to the question “What am I?” Descartes’ answer was that he was a substance whose whole essence or nature was to think, and whose being required no place and depended on no material thing. He was an immortal mind, linked to a mortal body which was a particularly elaborate machine. To Descartes’ question my own, Aristotelian, answer is that I am a human being, a living body of a certain kind. We sometimes speak as if we have bodies, rather than are bodies. But having a body, in this natural sense, is not incompatible with being a body; it does not mean that there is something other than my body that has my body. Just as my body has a head, a trunk, two arms and two legs, but is not something over and above the head, trunk, arms, and legs, so I have a body but am not something over and above the body. As well as a body, I have a mind: that is to say I have various psychological capacities, including especially an intellect and a will. The intellect is the capacity to acquire and exercise intellectual abilities of various kinds, such as the mastery of language and the possession of objective information. The will is the capacity for the free pursuit of goals formulated by the intellect. Intellect and will are not themselves independent en- |
| Starting Page | 63 |
| Ending Page | 72 |
| Page Count | 10 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.4454/philinq.v1i1.7 |
| Volume Number | 1 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.philinq.it/index.php/philinq/article/download/7/3 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v1i1.7 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
