Tag: Principles
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To understand minds, look at actions and goals
Summary of ‘The Principles’ — Chapter 1, part 2. James barters a truce between the associationists and spiritualists and essentially says: hey, I think we can all agree that the brain has something to do with mental life, regardless of what our philosophical commitments are. Whatever other sort of ‘ists’ we are, we are all…
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Mental Darwinism
James starts his first chapter by giving us a clearer picture of his enemies. He first takes aim at the “spiritualists”, who hold the view of “scholasticism, and of common sense” that we’re something like ideal rational souls endowed with diverse mental faculties. Today we’re quite accustomed to speaking about “the faculty of memory”, or…
The Excitable Membrane 