That Silly Commercial Holiday Is Upon Us

 

Philosophy of Mind: Ancient and Medieval

The mind is a modern notion. But like many modern notions, it did not emerge from nowhere. What contemporary philosophers mean when they talk about the mind is part of a long tradition, stretching back through the Middle Ages to Greek and Roman antiquity....etc....

Ancient Greek and Roman Views

The main precursor of the modern concept of mind is the ancient Greek notion of soul (psyche ), which was originally used to mark the difference between things that are alive and things that are dead. Conceptually, it was related to breath (pneuma ), and was thought to come in degrees corresponding to different states of consciousness. Thus, a dead man was said to have lost his psyche entirely, whereas a sleeping or fainting man has lost enough of it to lose consciousness, though that too would bring him a step closer to death. The soul is composed of extremely light and tenuous matter, variously identified with pure and "breathable" elements such as air (as by the philosophers Thales [c. 625–c. 547 b.c.e.] and Anaximenes [570?–500? b.c.e.]) or fire (by Heraclitus [c. 540–480 b.c.e.]). Most pre-Socratic thinkers would have understood the expression "he breathed his last" literally, and seen the dying gasps of a Homeric warrior, say, as the exhalation of his soul. If psyche could exist in a disembodied state—and it is doubtful whether most early Greek philosophers thought that it could—it would have been as a shadowy or ephemeral form, like the denizens of Hades.

And lots and lots more of that.

Medieval Views

Two main factors shaped medieval thinking about the mind or soul. The first is religious doctrine. The idea that God freely created the world from nothing is absent from ancient Greek philosophy, but more or less definitive of medieval philosophy in all three monotheistic traditions: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish. In the Western or Christian tradition, it was expressed in terms of providence, the idea that creation is a product of God's wisdom and goodness, and that this is manifested in the orderly structure of the universe all the way down to its smallest details. Needless to say, it would have struck an ancient Greek philosopher as absurd that something could be made from nothing, or that a divinity—especially an omnipotent divinity—would care what happens to beings less powerful than it. But such doctrines changed the way the mind was understood, granting pride of place to the human soul and human modes of cognition. Since humans are made in God's image (Gen. 1:26), their own nature must in some way reflect the divine.

Etc, etc.

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More or Less, Depending!

All of this is in aid of asking where does love live?  Does it live in my belly as some ancients thought?  Does it live in the pump that moves blood through my body?

Does love live with where we think our minds live, in our brains?

Another question for you.  Are the song writers righter?  

Are they closer to the heart of the matter?

Does anyone feel like telling love stories?  

With love from my silly heart to yours!

Even if the thought processes are tenuous, they are there.