On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 3:31 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 18 Nov 2013, at 14:41, Roger Clough wrote: > > Spinoza, Leibniz and Descartes are completely different on the relationship > between mind and matter See > > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/#DesSpiLei > > Spinoza was a monist, who believed that mind and matter were one. > > > Are you sure? It seems to me that Spinoza defended what is called today > "neutral monism": the idea that both matter and mind (which are taken as > obviously very different) are coming from one different thing. > Computationalism is neutral monist in that sense, where the "different > thing" is the arithmetical reality. > > > > Descartes believed that mind and matter are totally different > > > OK. But Descartes, imo, became aware of the depth of the rabbit hole this > entails. It is hard to say, because Descartes was limited in his prose by > the authoritarianism of his epoch. I read him in between the lines.
Interesting. I always assumed that Descartes was oblivious to the problems with dualism. But I really like his idea of starting with the cogito. > > Leibniz beleived that mind was a monad or mental aspect of matter. > > > And this makes him still a materialist, by which I mean a believer in some > ontologically independent substance. > > > > Bertrand Ruseell said that there are two forms of knowing: > > a) Knowing scientifically or objectively (knowing by description) > Example: you know who Obama is from the newspapers. > > b) Knowing by acquaintance or experience (knowing subjectively) > Example: you know who Obama is because you have met him. > > > Yes, and such a difference is made very clear in the 1p/3p distinction that > we have to take into account to understand that materialism is eventually > not compatible with mechanism. > It can be translated in arithmetic, and Bertrand Russell's distinction is > well captured by the difference between Bp & p and Bp. Note that this would > not work without the incompleteness result. > > Bruno > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
