ANTH 423 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: John Hughlings Jackson, Cartesian Theater, Phrenology

• School: McGill University
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH 423
• Professor: Allan Young

Document Summary

Part one the puzzle of thinking matter" ( the hard question") Key terms include: materialism, mechanism, empiricism, sensationism, simulation. 4th century bce: epicurus believes that thinking is a property of atoms dispersed throughout the body. Plato: in phaedo, mind is distinct from body / 13 century ce: thomas aquinas: in. Summa theological, mind is identified with christian notions of soul". Its mechanisms cannot be observed directly, but must be inferred. The solution = the ghost inside the machine" (a. koestler); an inner homunculus, seated within a cartesian theatre (d. dennett). John locke on the sources of self-identity: continuity and episodic memory, forensics, David hume, sensory percepts (impressions) are joined into concepts via resemblance, analogy, propinquity, and causality, but does not confuse causal mechanism" with metaphors, analogies, correlations, and propinquity. Immanuel kant"s objections to hume: categorical and moral imperatives. (emile durkheim"s 20th century empirical/sensationist vindication of hume)