2017 - Franco Angeli
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Thomas Reid on Consciousness and the Constitution of the Mental
585-596 p.
- This paper tackles the issue of consciousness as it features in Thomas Reid's philosophy of mind. Section 1 shows that consciousness plays a pivotal role within what the Author calls a "faculty psychology", namely, Reid's project of elaborating an empirical description of different mental operations. Section 2 highlights a conceptual difficulty which arises when some of Reid's claims are taken together: if consciousness is a mental faculty standing on its own footing, but, at the same time, all mental operations are conscious, then a logical regress looms. Section 3 presents Reid's account of natural powers, especially those relating to life phenomena. By advocating an animistic doctrine of vital functions, he seems to leave open the possibility that some mental activity is unconscious. Section 4 concludes by stressing that Reid's problem with the regress reveals a deeper tension - a kind of failed synthesis - between a religious and a naturalistic conception of mind. [Publishers' text].
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Information
ISSN: 1972-5558
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In this issue
- History of failed synthesis
- The Unity of Science and the Search for a Unity of Understanding in the Modern Era.
- The Magic Mountain
- Thomas Reid on Consciousness and the Constitution of the Mental
- There's no Success like Failure : on the early Reception of Kant's most famous Synthesis
- Tycho's System and the Decline of the Traditional Cosmos
- Self-Preservation and Exchange : Two Ways of Historicizing Kant's Concept of Synthesis and their Epistemological Implications
- Systematic Thought and the Early French Enlightenment
- Philosophies cartésiennes à l'usage des étrangers : les traductions latines du Traité de physique de Rohault et de la Recherche de la vérité de Malebranche
- Genovesi e la Metafisica
- Ludwig Feuerbach, L'uomo è ciò che mangia
- Il dominio di una tradizione : separazione dei saperi nei programmi e nella prassi didattica italiana
- L'attualità dei dialoghi sull'Idiota di Nicola Cusano
- Heidegger, lector de la tradición
- Recensioni
- Schede
- Indice dell'annata 2017
