Abstract
Human thought in general, and science in particular, are products of human history. They are, therefore, dependent on many accidents: had our history been different, our present thinking and our present science (if any) would be different also.
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Notes
“Improbable” in the sense of my [1972 (a)], pp. 101-3.
Samples of the soil were analysed eight years after the discovery by a French paleobotanist, a specialist in pollen analysis, Mme Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, who made this staggering discovery.
For two further words (phrēn or phrēnes and eidōlon) see notes 5 and 8 below, and note 1 to section 47.
Onians([1954];p.48).
Op. cit., p. 94.
In Homer demas (in later writers, from Hesiod and Pindar on, often soma ) the body, the frame or stature of men, is often opposed to the mind, for which various terms are used, for example phrenes; see note 8 below, and Iliad 1, 113-115; cp. also Odyssey 5, 211-213. See further Iliad 24, 376-377, with the contrast of body (demas ) and mind (noos ); Odyssey 18, 219f., with the contrast of bodily size (megethos, here used as a synonym for demas, as can be seen from 251) and mind (phrenes ); Odyssey 17,454, where bodily shape (eidos ) is contrasted with mind (phrenes). In Odyssey 4, 796, a phantom (eidōlon, similar to the Homeric psyche ) is clad by the goddess into a body (demas ). Cp. the opposition of phantom or mind (eidōlon ) and body (sōma ) in Pindar quoted in note 1 to section 46, below; and my [1974 (z4 )], pp. 409f.
Interesting Homeric passages from the Iliad indicating dualism (of course, a materialistic dualism) are, for example, the golden girl robots (see note 1 to section 2 above) who are clearly described as conscious robots: they have understanding or mind (nous ) in their hearts (cp. Iliad 18, 419). See also Iliad 19, 302; 19, 339; and 24, 167; passages in which overt speech is contrasted with concealed thought; and also 24, 674, where Priam and the herald are going to sleep in the forecourt of Achilles’s hut, “their minds heavy with cares”. (E. V. Rieu, in the Penguin Classics edition, translates very freely but very well “with much to occupy their busy minds”.)
Cf.G. E.R.Lloyd [1966].
Here the term phrenes (according to Onians originally in Homer the lungs and the heart) is used for “mind” see Onians ([1954] chapter 2).
See Sophocles, King Oedipus, lines 64 and 643; cp. E. R. Dodds [1951], p. 159, note 17.
See also K.Meuli [1935].
S.F.Nadel[1952].
See my [1963 (a)], chapter 5.
For Homer psyche (or eidolon ) meant phantom or shade; later psyche assumes a meaning near to Homer’s thymos: the active conscious self, the living and breathing self. In this way, the psyche or the eidolon becomes the principle of life, while in Homer (and later sometimes in Pindar) it seems to have been asleep when the person was alive and awake, and awake when the person was asleep or unconscious or dead. (Not that these rules of usage were ever quite consistently adhered to by any author.) Thus we read in Pindar (Fragment 116 Bowra =131 Sandys (Loeb)): “The body of every man follows the call of mighty death; yet there is left alive a phantom or image (eidōlon ) from his time of life, which alone stems from the gods. It sleeps while his limbs are active; but while he sleeps it often announces in dreams their [the gods] decision of coming joy or sorrow.” We see that Homer’s phantom psyche, which was a projection of all the terrors of extreme old age far beyond the grave, has lost some of its ghastly and ghostlike character, although there are some traces left of the Homeric usage.
DK 1 B 11 = De anima 410b28. (DK = Diels & Kranz [1951-2].)
Cp. with this also Epicharmus, DK B12: “Only mind sees, only mind hears: all else is deaf and blind.”
Plato’s Republic 530c–531c may be taken as evidence that the discovery was made by some Pythagorean. For the discovery and its ascription to Pythagoras himself see Guthrie ([1962], pp. 221 ff.). See also Diogenes Laertius viii, 12.
For the generalization of this problem see chapter 2, section IV, of my [1963(a)].
See Plato, Phaedo 85eff., especially 88c-d; Aristotle, De anima 407b27 ”… many regard it as the most credible of all … theories”; and p. 21 of volume XII (Select Fragments ) of the Oxford edition of The Works of Aristotle edited and translated by Sir David Ross, 1952, where Themistius describes the theory as very popular.
I owe this question to Jeremy Shearmur, who also suggested that the relation might be like that of the Platonic ideas to matter.
See my [1963(a)], chapter 3, page 26 and note 15.
Reading Guthrie ([1969], vol. iii), whose book contains the best presentation of Socrates known to me, has convinced me that Socrates’s autobiographical remarks in Plato’s Phaedo, 96aff., are likely to be historical. I first accepted Guthrie’s criticism (p. 423, n. 1) of my Open Society (vol. i, p. 308) without re-reading what I had written. In preparing the present passage I looked up my Open Society vol. i, again, and I found that I did not, on p. 308, argue against the historicity of the autobiographical passage (Phaedo 96aff.), but against the historicity of the Phaedo in general, and of Phaedo 108dff. in particular, with its somewhat authoritative and dogmatic exposition of the nature of the cosmos, especially of the earth. This exposition still seems to me incompatible with the Apology.
See also the remarks on W. F. R. Hardie [1976] in section 44 above.
Cp. section 30 above, text to note 5. 11a See Diels-Kranz [1951-2] Democrit B45. Cp. also B187.
Concerning the incompatibility of certain parts of the Phaedo (especially Phaedo 108dff.) with Plato’s Apology, see note 9 to this section above, and p. 308 of my [1966(a)], volume i.
The historicity of this autobiographical passage is defended convincingly by Guthrie [1969] vol. iii, pp. 421-3; see also note 9 above.
In modern times this second passage from Plato’s Phaedo was repeatedly referred to by Leibniz in his various discussions of the mind-body problem. See section 50 below.
If one does not insist on this point — if, say, one says that the physical movements of our bodies can be in principle completely explained in World 1 terms alone, and that this explanation may merely be complemented by one in terms of meanings — then, it seems to me, one has unwittingly adopted a form of parallelism, in which human aims, purposes and freedom become merely a subjective epiphenomenon.
Also Anaxagoras: “The phenomena open our eyes for the invisible” (D-K B21a). Exceptions were some of the Sophists, especially Protagoras. Subjective empiricism became important again with Berkeley, Hume, Mach, Avenarius, the early Wittgenstein and the logical posi-tivists. It is mistaken and I shall not devote much space to it. I regard as its characteristic doctrine the saying of Otto Neurath, “Everything is surface: the world has no depth”; or the saying of Wittgenstein: “The riddle does not exist.” ([1921], 6.5.)
This method must be clearly distinguished from the theory of instrumentalism with which it was conflated by Duhem. (See my [1963 (a)], chapter 3, note 6, p. 99, where references to Aristotelian passages discussing this method can be found, e. g. De caelo 293a25.) The difference between this method and instrumentalism is that we put the truth of our tentative explanations to the test mainly because we are interested in their truth (like an essentialist, see below) though we do not think that we can establish their truth.
See my Open Society, ii, p. 16.
Newton, letter to Oldenburg, 2 June 1672. (Cp. Newton’s Opera, ed. S. Horsley, vol. IV, pp. 314f.)
Cp. also the letters to Richard Bentley, 17th January and 25th February 1692-3. See my [1963 (a)] notes 20 and 21 to chapter 3 (and text), and Newton’s Opticks, query 31, where Newton mentions the possibility that attraction “may be performed by impulse, or by some other means unknown to me”.
By “essence” Descartes means the essential or unchanging properties of a substance (for Descartes’s idea of substance, see note 1 to section 49, below) — very much like Aristotle, or like Newton (who said that gravity cannot be essential to matter because it diminishes with distance).
It is interesting that Descartes’s famous argument, “I think, therefore I am.”, was anticipated by St. Augustine, in his De libero arbitrio, as was pointed out by Arnauld to Descartes. (See Haldane & Ross [1931], vol. ii, pp. 80 and 97.) It was also (according to Bertrand Russell [1945], p. 374) anticipated in St. Augustine’s Soliloquia. On the relation of mind to body, much can be found in Augustine’s Confessions (e. g. X, 8) and his De quantitate animae.
For Descartes’s idea of substance see note 1 to section 49.
See the reference to John W. N. Watkins in note 1 to section 50.
See Haldane and Ross [1931], vol. ii, p. 132. The prehistory of the concept of substance goes far back to the early Ionian “principles”: water, or the indefinite (apeiron ), or air, or fire. It may be said to denote whatever remains identical with itself when a thing changes; or to denote the thing that it the carrier of its properties (which may change). In the Meditations, Descartes uses “substance” frequently as a synonym of “thing”. But in the Principles, he says first (i, 51), as he also does in Meditation III, that a substance is a thing that depends upon nothing else for its existence, adding that only God is truly a substance (the view later adopted by Spinoza); yet immediately afterwards (i, 52–54) he says that we may also call soul and body substances, namely created substances: having been created by God they can be destroyed only by God. Locke obviously had Descartes in mind when complaining about the confused idea of substance (Essay ii, xxiii). By and large, the popular usage of “substance” is at least as clear as the Cartesian usage. (See also Quinton [1973], Pt. i.)
Cp. John Passmore [1961], p. 55.
J. O. Wisdom [1952] discussed electromagnetism, and suggested that the interdependence between electrical and magnetic forces may serve as a model of mind-body interaction. See also Watkins ([1974], pp. 394-5). Jeremy Shearmur has also drawn my attention to a report in Beloff ([1962], p. 231) that Sir Cyril Burt has argued “that physicists ought to be more tolerant … towards … dualism inasmuch as physics itself, as currently understood, is pluralistic.” On causality, see also my [1972(a)], Appendix; [1959(a)], section 12; [1972(a)], chapter 5; [1967(k)]; and [1974(c)], pp. 1125-39.
See Watkins ([1974], p. 395).
Leibniz’s dependence upon Hobbes and his theory of conatus (= endeavour or appetite or striving or will) has been generally noticed, though its full significance has, to my knowledge, been observed only by John W.N. Watkins [1965], [1973].
See Leibniz’s letter to Thomasius, April 20/30, 1669. (Gerhardt IV [1880], pp. 162ff., especially pp. 171, 173; Loemker i [1956], pp. 144ff., especially pp. 148-160.)
In “A New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances”,1695. (Gerhardt IV, 477ff.;Loemker ii,740ff.)
See A Collection of Papers which passed between the Late Learned Mr. Leibniz and Dr. Clarke in the Years 1715 and 1716 (London 1717); Loemker ii, pp. 1095ff.
For this position see chapters 6 (on Berkeley) and 3 of my [1963(a)].
Kant published his Monadologica Physica in 1756, two years before the first edition of Boscovich’s great book Theoria PhilosophiaeNaturalis, Vienna, 1758. But Boscovich had earlier published some of his main ideas in a dissertation, De Viribus Vivis, in 1745, and in De Lege Virium in Natura existentiwn in 1755.
Additional remarks on these developments can be found in the text following note 3 to section 3, above.
See also my [1963(a)], chapter 3, pp. 114-17,and[1972(a)],chapter5, pp. 196-204.
Descartes himself tried to explain memory and association physiologically (see section 41 above). Spinoza has no such theory. In his Ethics II, prop. 7, he establishes the parallelist principle “The order and connection of the ideas is the same as the order and connection of the [physical] things” and in II, prop. 18, he formulates the principle of association by the coincidence of events.
As I have mentioned in dialogue VIII, the adoption of causation by push in the physical world, and causation by association in the mental world, reinforced the theory of psychophysical parallelism.
Schopenhauer, in section 18 of volume 1 of The World as Willand Representation not only proposed an identity theory (“The act of will and the action of the body… are one and the same thing, though given [to us] in two totally different ways”), but he used the term “identity”: he speaks of “the identity of body and will”.
See Haldane and Ross [1931], vol. ii, p. 85. (Descartes’s reply is on pp. 103f.) It is interesting that in the Port-Royal Logic (Pt iii, end of chapter xiii) Arnauld gives a syllogism (in Celarent ) establishing that the soul of an animal does not think. Thus he did not commit himself to the soulless animal, but only to an unthinking animal soul, making perhaps allowance for perception. (See Leonora C. Rosenfield [1941], p. 281.)
One can well interpret La Mettrie as an interactionist (in contradistinction, for example, to Malebranche) and as a vitalist with respect to animal physiology (in contradistinction to Descartes). La Mettrie himself refers to Claude Perrault and Thomas Willis as his predecessors. (See the [1960] edition of L’Homme Machine, p. 188.) But these two were animists, in different ways.
The “reason” that the programmer and the artificial intelligence worker discern in the computer was put there by us; that the computer can do more than we can is due to the fact that we put into the computer powerful operating principles; in fact, autonomous World 3 principles. (See section 21 above and also my [1953(a)].)
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© 1977 Sir Karl Popper and Sir John Eccles
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Popper, K.R., Eccles, J.C. (1977). Historical Comments on the Mind-Body Problem. In: The Self and Its Brain. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61891-8_5
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