Body and Mind: A History and a Defence of Animism |
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accept action activity Animism animistic argument Aristotle assert behaviour believe bodily body brain brain-processes causation cells century cerebral chapter complex conation conceive conception conservation of energy continuity cortex Descartes doctrine Dualism effect elements empirical energy Epiphenomenalism essential evoked evolution existence experience fact Fechner feeling-tone functions G. T. Fechner germ-cell ghost-soul human hypothesis idea immortality influence inorganic Kant kind material materialistic matter meaning mechanistic mental process metaphysical mind modern modes monads Monism movement nature nerves nervous system neural notion object organism Parallelism parallelistic perception personality phenomena philosophers physical processes physical world physiological pleasure present principle Prof psychical Psychical Monism psycho-physical interaction psycho-physical Parallelism psycho-physical problem psychology purely mechanical reality reason reflex action regarded relation sciousness seems sensation sense sense-impression sensory content Solipsism soul spatial spirit stimulus stream of consciousness substance suppose teleological things thought tion unitary unity unquestionable truth whole words
Popular passages
Page 64 - But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself.
Page 72 - The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind ; nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which it is composed.
Page 65 - It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding.
Page 71 - Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explained. For from what impression could this idea be derived?
Page 65 - Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind...
Page 66 - Hence the knowledge I have of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas; but depending on the intervention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs.
Page 72 - I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.
Page 68 - An object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it in the imagination, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other...
Page 64 - IT is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination— either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways.
Page 70 - ... that this substance which supports or perceives ideas should itself be an idea or like an idea is evidently absurd.