Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Menn ◽  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Organic Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
European University ◽  
Distinct Idea

Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703–after 1752) is the first modern African philosopher to study and teach in a European university and write in the European philosophical tradition. This book provides an extensive historical and philosophical introduction to Amo’s life and work, and provides Latin texts, with facing translations and explanatory notes, of Amo’s two philosophical dissertations, On the Impassivity of the Human Mind and the Philosophical Disputation containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to our Living and Organic Body, both published in 1734. The Impassivity is an extended argument that the mind cannot be acted on, that sensation is a being-acted-on by the sensed object, and therefore that sensation does not belong to the mind, and must belong instead to the body. The Distinct Idea works out the implications for the mind’s actions, and tries to show how the mind understands, wills, and effects things through the body by ‘intentions’ which direct motions in our body intentionally toward external things. Both dissertations try to show how far each type of human act belongs to the mind, how far to the body, and expose and resolve earlier philosophers’ self-contradictions on these questions.

Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of Those Things That Pertain Either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body (1734) (Latin and English)

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-226
Author(s):  
Stephen Menn ◽  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Organic Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Distinct Idea

This section presents, in Latin and English, the entirety of Anton Wilhelm Amo’s 1734 Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body. In this work Amo attempts to work out the implications of the impossibility of being-acted-upon for the mind’s actions, and tries to show how the mind understands, wills, and effects things through the body by ‘intentions’ which direct motions in our body intentionally toward external things. Amo tries to show how far each type of human act belongs to the mind, how far to the body; he argues especially against Jean Le Clerc, who had attributed a broad range of acts to the mind.

Finite Subjects in the Ethics

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Renz
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Finite Minds

This chapter suggests a new interpretation of Spinoza’s concept of mind claiming that the goal of the equation of the human mind with the idea of the body is not to solve the mind-body problem, but rather to show how we can, within the framework of Spinoza’s rationalism, conceive of finite minds as irreducibly distinguishable individuals. To support this view, the chapter discusses the passage from E2p11 to E2p13 against the background of three preliminaries, i.e. the notion of a union between mind and body as it appears in Thomas Aquinas’ refutation of Averroism, Spinoza’s views on knowledge of actually existing things in E2p8c, and the phenomenological character of E2a2-4. It argues that while this view on the human mind does not undermine radical rationalism, it does require its amendment by some irreducibly empirical concessions.

scholarly journals Extending What We Can Talk About

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-56
Author(s):  
Rod Sandle
Keyword(s):  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Scientific Context ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Donald Winnicott

Spirit has often been separated from body and mind and treated as not amenable to scientific study. A big influence in this regard was Ludwig Wittgenstein who, in 1922, came to the conclusion that the language of science was not able to talk about the mystical, saying, “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (p. 90). With the development of the science of the human mind and human relationships, spirit is perhaps becoming more amenable again to study. Alexander Lowen (1988) brought the concept of “spirit” under scientific and therapeutic observation through the concept of bio-energy, working with the body as well as the mind. Donald Winnicott (1953, 1960), through the idea of transitional phenomena, placed the language of the mystical in a psychodynamic and scientific context. Alan Schore (2012) has provided a neurophysiological way of talking about how the unconscious process contributes to human development through relationship. Patanjali’s Yogasutra, compiled 2,000 years ago, covers similar ground in a way which remains useful and relevant and which helps in understanding the distinction between mind and body and spirit. Waitara Tēnā ia anei i te nuinga o te wā wehea ai te wairua mai i te tinana me te hinengaro, ā, meatia ai kāre e whaiwāhi hai kuapapa mātai hinengaro. I te tau 1922, ka puta te whakataunga a Ludwig Wittgenstein kāre e taea e te reo pūtaiao te kōrero mō te tūāhu, arā, ko tāna, ‘Āe ra hoki! Kāre he kupu hai whakaahua. Koianei tōna tohu atua’ (w. 90). Kua whaneke ake nei te taiao o te hinengaro me te whakawhanaungatanga, kua rata haere pea te wā wānanga wairua. Nā Alexander Lowen (1998) i mau te ariā ‘wairua’ ki raro i te tirohanga mātai hinengaro mātai haumanu mā te ariā pūngao koiora, mahiatahitia nei te tinana me te hinengaro. Nā Donald Winnicott (1953, 1960), i whakauru te reo ā-wairua ki roto i te horopaki mātauranga pūtaiao, whakahihiko hinengaro. Kua homai e Alan Schore he ara kōrerohanga mātai whaiaroaro mō te hatepenga mauri moe ki te whanaketanga o te tangata puta mai i te whakawhanaungatanga. He rite tonu te papa pōtaea e tā Patanjali Yogasutra, i whakaemihia rua mano tau ki muri, ā, e hāngai tonu ana e whai hua tonu ana hoki me te āwhina i te mātauranga whai haere i te rangatiratanga o te hinengaro te tinana me te wairua.

Variations of the Mixed Discourse

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Jaquet
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Shed Light

Lastly, on the basis of this definition, the author shows how affects shed light on the body-mind relationship and provide an opportunity to produce a mixed discourse that focuses, by turns, on the mental, physical, or psychophysical aspect of affect. The final chapter has two parts: – An analysis of the three categories of affects: mental, physical, and psychophysical – An examination of the variations of Spinoza’s discourse Some affects, such as satisfaction of the mind, are presented as mental, even though they are correlated with the body. Others, such as pain or pleasure, cheerfulness (hilaritas) or melancholy are mainly rooted in the body, even though the mind forms an idea of them. Still others are psychophysical, such as humility or pride, which are expressed at once as bodily postures and states of mind. These affects thus show us how the mind and body are united, all the while expressing themselves differently and specifically, according to their own modalities.

scholarly journals On The Verge of the Hybrid Mind

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Surjo Soekadar ◽  
Jennifer Chandler ◽  
Marcello Ienca ◽  
Christoph Bublitz
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Recent advances in neurotechnology allow for an increasingly tight integration of the human brain and mind with artificial cognitive systems, blending persons with technologies and creating an assemblage that we call a hybrid mind. In some ways the mind has always been a hybrid, emerging from the interaction of biology, culture (including technological artifacts) and the natural environment. However, with the emergence of neurotechnologies enabling bidirectional flows of information between the brain and AI-enabled devices, integrated into mutually adaptive assemblages, we have arrived at a point where the specific examination of this new instantiation of the hybrid mind is essential. Among the critical questions raised by this development are the effects of these devices on the user’s perception of the self, and on the user’s experience of their own mental contents. Questions arise related to the boundaries of the mind and body and whether the hardware and software that are functionally integrated with the body and mind are to be viewed as parts of the person or separate artifacts subject to different legal treatment. Other questions relate to how to attribute responsibility for actions taken as a result of the operations of a hybrid mind, as well as how to settle questions of the privacy and security of information generated and retained within a hybrid mind.

Threshold

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Castrucci
Keyword(s):  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Basic Material ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Biological Basis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Mind

The human mind has phased out its traditional anchorage in a natural biological basis (the «reasons of the body» which even Spinoza’s Ethics could count on) – an anchorage that had determined, for at least two millennia, historically familiar forms of culture and civilisation. Increasingly emphasising its intellectual disembodiment, it has come to the point of establishing in a completely artificial way the normative conditions of social behaviour and the very ontological collocation of human beings in general. If in the past ‘God’ was the name that mythopoietic activity had assigned to the world’s overall moral order, which was reflected onto human behaviour, now the progressive freeing of the mind – by way of the intellectualisation of life and technology – from the natural normativity which was previously its basic material reference opens up unforeseen vistas of power. Freedom of the intellect demands (or so one believes) the full artificiality of the normative human order in the form of an artificial logos, and precisely qua artificial, omnipotent. The technological icon of logos (which postmodern dispersion undermines only superficially) definitively unseats the traditional normative, sovereign ‘God’ of human history as he has been known till now. Our West has been irreversibly marked by this process, whose results are as devastating as they are inevitable. The decline predicted a century ago by old Spengler is here served on a platter....

La Forge

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-267
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Platt
Keyword(s):  
Logical Consequence ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Body Interaction ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind

Chapter 6 argues that La Forge is a “partial” occasionalist, who appeals to “body–body” occasionalism to defend Descartes’ central epistemic thesis that mind is better known than body. La Forge argues for an occasionalistic version of Descartes’ physics. However, La Forge presents a theory of the mind–body union that implies that the human mind and body causally interact. While he says bodies are the “only occasional causes” of sensations in the mind, he uses “occasional cause” to refer to a type of accidental efficient cause. La Forge’s arguments for occasionalism are limited to body–body interaction: Although he holds that God continually re-creates finite substances, he is not committed to full-blown occasionalism. La Forge does not adopt occasionalism simply because he takes it to be a logical consequence of Cartesian physics. He sees body–body occasionalism as playing a broader theoretical role: He uses it to respond to criticisms of Cartesian epistemology.

Clinical Neuropsychologist, 20 years’ experience, UK

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-232
Author(s):  
Markus Reuber ◽  
Gregg H. Rawlings ◽  
Steven C. Schachter
Keyword(s):  
Epileptic Seizures ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Body Awareness ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Epileptic Attack ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Experience Of Illness

This chapter explores how dissociation of awareness of either the mind or the body can be experienced by everyone to some degree. It has been suggested that in Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD), a protective mechanism of enabling individuals to detach from the difficult emotions they have not yet been able to make sense of has led to a detachment from the awareness of the body, thus resulting in physical symptoms that resemble epileptic seizures. Treatment therefore lies in improving both mind and body awareness. Working with individuals with NEAD or Dissociative Seizures introduces one to the multifaceted nature of humanity. Although there are common themes that emerge through psychological assessment—such as prior experience of illness, neurological insult or physical injury to a specific body part, difficulty recognizing stress in the body or mind, or a tendency to use unhelpful coping strategies during prolonged periods of stress,—no two persons with NEAD have the same seizures because each individual’s experience is unique, making the nature and clinical presentation of the seizure-like experiences idiosyncratic. Despite this, it is always possible to discover the reason that individuals with NEAD experience the symptoms they do, even if it is sometimes initially hard for the individual to accept or believe this.

On the Philosophy of Cognitive Science

1998 ◽  
pp. 32-36
Author(s):  
Henrique de Morais Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Philosophy Of Cognitive Science ◽  
Irreducible Elements ◽  
Framework Model ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Ontological Problem

Psychophysical dualism — the distinction between mind and body — is the counterposition between essentially irreducible elements: the mind and body. Such a dualism implies the main ontological problem of the philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of mind: the mind-body problem (MBP). The dualism and the referred-to problem has been insistently discussed in the philosophical tradition and several solutions have been proposed. Such solutions are properly philosophical or require a scientific approach. First, I will expound the philosophical solution to the MBP proposed by Descartes, to be followed by an exposition of Ryle's criticisms to the solution. Second, from Ryle's criticism, I will deduce a scientific solution to the MBP related to the neural framework model of mind in cognitive science by means of what I call 'the principle of the embodiment of the mind.' Finally, I shall point out the philosophical difficulties that are to be found in using such a principle.

scholarly journals The Relationship between Mind-Body Dualism and Personal Values

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Gunne Grankvist ◽  
Petri Kajonius ◽  
Bjorn Persson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Values ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Dualists view the mind and the body as two fundamental different “things”, equally real and independent of each other. Cartesian thought, or substance dualism, maintains that the mind and body are two different substances, the non-physical and the physical, and a causal relationship is assumed to exist between them. Physicalism, on the other hand, is the idea that everything that exists is either physical or totally dependent of and determined by physical items. Hence, all mental states are fundamentally physical states. In the current study we investigated to what degree Swedish university students’ beliefs in mind-body dualism is explained by the importance they attach to personal values. A self-report inventory was used to measure their beliefs and values. Students who held stronger dualistic beliefs attach less importance to the power value (i.e., the effort to achieve social status, prestige, and control or dominance over people and resources). This finding shows that the strength in laypeople’s beliefs in dualism is partially explained by the importance they attach to personal values.</p>

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