Five Functions

 

 

Bacon's Five Functions illustrate the five functions of the mind. The Five Functions are as follows:

 

• Understanding

• Reason

• Imagination

• Appetites

• Will

 

Each of these functions, according to Bacon, coincides with each different function of the brain. In forming the Five Functions, Bacon looked to thinkers of the past, including Plato, Augustine, and Ramus. Plato's influence on Bacon lives in the function of Will, which Bacon defines through an expansion of Plato's idea that Will is the "charioteer of the soul." Using Augustine's linguistic theory, Bacon refined these functions so as to represent them in an understandable and useful way. Finally, Bacon brought his theory together using the dialectical approach of Ramus. For Ramus, dialectic concerned two of the five canons of rhetoric: invention and judgment. This way, one could focus more on the elocutio, or the effective use of language, and, in turn, focusing on style as well. Bacon's synthesis of these three thinkers' ideas lead his Five Functions to be the fundamentals of faculty psychology.