Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Anaxarchus, Jonathan Dancy and New Scientist writers

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3 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / d. Other minds by analogy
The argument from analogy rests on one instance alone [Dancy,J]
     Full Idea: As an inductive argument Mill's argument from analogy (other people have inputs and outputs like mine, so the intermediate explanation must be the same) is weak because it is based on a single instance.
     From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 5.3)
     A reaction: The argument may be 'weak' as a piece of pure logic, but when faced with a strange situation, one's own case seems like crucial evidence, like a single eye-witness to a crime.
You can't separate mind and behaviour, as the analogy argument attempts [Dancy,J]
     Full Idea: The analogy argument makes the error (as Wittgenstein showed) of assuming that mind is quite separate from behaviour, and yet I can understand what it is for others to have mental states, which is contradictory.
     From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 5.3)
     A reaction: It has always seemed to me that Wittgenstein is excessively behaviourist, and he always seems to be flirting with eliminative views of mind, so he was never bothered about other minds. Minds aren't separate from behaviour, but they are distinct.
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 3. Abstraction by mind
Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.]
     Full Idea: Early neural nets were really good at recognising general categories, such as a car or a chair. Those networks are good at extracting the 'chair-ness' or the 'car-ness' of the object.
     From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.12.12)
     A reaction: [Interview with Yann LeCun, Facebook AI director] Fregean philosophers such as Geach think that extracting features is a ridiculous idea, but if even a machine can do it then I suspect that human beings can (and do) manage it too.