Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

Jonathan Haidt uses the illustration of the elephant and its rider. In both cases, the rider (that’s who is considered to be our clear-minded, rational selves) has a tough job steering! But, even with the vast array of different experiences covered here, there’s a sense in which the word ‘mind’ seems to be subtly reductionist. Use of the word mind seems to be suggesting that even the most vivid of human psychological experiences is just the workings of the brain and that the brain is doing nothing more than going about its functions, much like the liver or the kidneys!

The so-called ‘bundle theory of the mind’ is perhaps more familiar from Buddhism. In Buddhist thought, freedom from the illusion of having a self is one aspect of enlightenment. We will return to this in Chapter 23. David Hume also alluded to bundle theory, where there is no ‘thing’ called mind, just a stream of thoughts. People are all just a collection of experiences and there is no reason to postulate a separate self at all. As we’ve noted in examples in previous chapters however, all such theories very much have to assume mind and consciousness to begin with, before they can start to prove that mind and consciousness don’t exist! Something like a bundle theory however is still very much in vogue. It ties in well with that notion of the brain just being another internal organ.

Consciousness seems to suggest something more than just mind. Just asking the question — what is consciousness — feels a little like a trick question! Leibniz said that if the brain were big enough to walk through, the workings

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