display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
37 ideas
| 3409 | Mental substance causation makes physics incomplete [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Since Cartesian dualism implies causation from outside of the physical domain, this means there can be no complete physical theory of the physical domain. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.147) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, should be taken as a very strong argument against dualism, rather than as bad news for physics. Some exception might make the closure of physics impossible, but the claim that our brain is the exception looks highly suspect. |
| 3399 | If epiphenomenalism were true, we couldn't report consciousness [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If epiphenomenalism were true, it would be a mystery how such things could be known to us. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.130) | |
| A reaction: If a brain were asked whether it was conscious, it would presumably say 'yes', but (if epiphenomenalism were true) the cause of that would have to be brain events, and NOT information that it is conscious, which the brain could not have. Big objection. |
| 3390 | Are inverted or absent qualia coherent ideas? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers doubt the coherence of the very idea of inverted or absent qualia. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.115) | |
| A reaction: The possibility of inverted qualia with identical brain structures strikes me as nil, but it would be odd to deny that qualia could be changed by brain surgery, given that insects can see ultra-violet, and some people are colourblind. |
| 3414 | What could demonstrate that zombies and inversion are impossible? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Is there anything about the qualitative characters of mental states which, should we come to know it, would convince us that zombies and qualia inversion are not really possible? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.171) | |
| A reaction: The issue is what causes the qualitative states, not their 'characters'. This strikes me as falling into the trap of thinking that 'what it is like to be..' is a crucial issue. I think zombies are impossible, but not because I experience redness. |
| 3359 | Cartesian dualism fails because it can't explain mental causation [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Its inability to explain the possibility of "mental causation" doomed Cartesian dualism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 4) | |
| A reaction: This is a modern way of stating the interaction problem. Personally I am inclined to think that dualism was doomed by the spread of the scientific materialist view to every other corner of our knowledge except the mind. Plenty of causes baffle us. |
| 3369 | Logical behaviourism translates mental language to behavioural [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Logical behaviourism says any meaningful statement about mental phenomena can be translated without loss of content into a statement solely about behavioural and physical phenomena. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 29) | |
| A reaction: Also called analytical behaviourism. If we are supposed to infer the ontology of mental states from language, this makes me cross. Maybe we only discuss mentality in behavioural terms because we are epistemologically, and hence linguistically, limited. |
| 3428 | Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Behaviourism can be considered as an attempt to reduce the mental to the physical via definitional bridge principles (every mental expression being given a behavioural definition). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.217) | |
| A reaction: Effectively these would (if they had been discoverable) have been the elusive psycho-physical laws (which Davidson says do not exist). The objection to behaviourism is precisely that there is no fixed behaviour attached to a given mental state. |
| 3380 | Are dispositions real, or just a type of explanation? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists take a "realist" approach to dispositions whereas the behaviourist embraces an "instrumentalist" line. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 78) | |
| A reaction: A helpful distinction, which immediately shows why functionalism is superior to behaviourism. There must be some explanation of mental dispositions, and the instrumental view is essentially a refusal to think about the real problem. |
| 3371 | Behaviour depends on lots of mental states together [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Mind-to-behaviour connections are always defeasible - by the occurrence of a further mental state. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 35) | |
| A reaction: But then an object's falling under gravity is always defeasible, by someone catching it first. This popular idea is meant to show that there could, as Davidson puts it, 'no psycho-physical laws', but I suspect the laws are just complex, like weather laws. |
| 3372 | Behaviour is determined by society as well as mental states [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The factors that determine exactly what you are doing when you produce a physical gesture include the customs, habits and conventions that are in force, so it is unlikely that anyone could produce correct behavioural definitions of mental terms. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 36) | |
| A reaction: This problem can be added to the problem that it is hard to specify behaviour without reference to mentalistic terms. The point is clearly right, as what I am doing when I wave my hand in the air will depend on all sorts of conventions and expectations. |
| 3373 | Snakes have different pain behaviour from us [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If it is an analytic truth that anyone in pain has a tendency to wince or groan, what about snakes? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 37) | |
| A reaction: Snakes do, however, exhibit what looks like 'I really don't like that' behaviour, and their rapid avoidance movements are identical to ours. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure what a snake does what it has a stomach upset. I see Kim's point. |
| 3370 | What behaviour goes with mathematical beliefs? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Is there even a loosely definable range of bodily behaviour that is characteristically exhibited by people when they believe, say, that there is no largest prime number? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 32) | |
| A reaction: This is a highly persuasive argument against behaviourism. Very abstract and theoretical thoughts have no related behaviour, especially among non-mathematicians. I probably believe this idea about numbers, but I can't think what to do about it. |
| 3379 | Neurons seem to be very similar and interchangeable [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Most neurons, it has been said, are pretty much alike and largely interchangeable. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 76) | |
| A reaction: This fact, if true, is highly significant, because the correct theory of the mind must therefore be some sort of functionalism. If what a neuron is is insignificant, then what it does must be what matters. |
| 2324 | Intentionality as function seems possible [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There has been much scepticism about a functionalist account of intentionality, particularly from Putnam (recently) and Searle, but, like many others, I don't see any principled objections to such an account. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: I agree. I don't believe that intentionality is a candidate for being one of those many 'magic' qualities which are supposed to make the reduction of mind to brain impossible. |
| 3388 | Machine functionalism requires a Turing machine, causal-theoretical version doesn't [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Machine functionalism requires a mental state to be a physical realisation of a Turing machine; causal-theoretical functionalism only requires that there be appropriate "internal states". | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.112) | |
| A reaction: Searle's objection to the Turing machine version seems good - that such a machine has an implicit notion of a user/interpreter, which is absent from this theory of mind. |
| 3384 | The person couldn't run Searle's Chinese Room without understanding Chinese [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is by no means clear that any human could manage to do what Searle imagines himself to be doing in the Chinese Room - that is, short of throwing away the rule book and learning some real Chinese. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.100) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear how a rule book could contain answers to an infinity of possible questions. The Chinese Room is just a very poor analogy with what is envisaged in the project of artificial intelligence. |
| 3393 | How do functional states give rise to mental causation? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: On the functionalist account of mental properties, just where does a mental property get its causal powers? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.118) | |
| A reaction: That is the key problem. Something can only have a function if it has intrinsic powers (corkscrews are rigid and helix-shaped). It can't be irrelevant that pain hurts. |
| 3439 | Reductionism gets stuck with qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The main obstacle to mind-body reduction is qualia. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.236) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am also impressed by Leibniz's Mill (Idea 2109). No microscope could ever reveal the contents of thought. How can it be so vivid for the owner, but totally undetectable to an observer? |
| 3427 | Reductionism is impossible if there aren't any 'bridge laws' between mental and physical [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Most antireductionist arguments focus on the unavailability of bridge laws to effect the reduction of psychological theory to physical theory (as found in reducing the gas laws to theories about molecules). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.216) | |
| A reaction: Reduction can, of course, be achieved by identity rather than by bridge laws. I would say that all that prevents us from predicting mental events from physical ones is the sheer complexity involved. Cf. predicting the detailed results of an explosion. |
| 2314 | Maybe intentionality is reducible, but qualia aren't [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to hold that phenomenal properties (qualia) are irreducible, while holding intentional properties, including propositional attitudes, to be reducible (functionally, or biologically). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.017) | |
| A reaction: This is the position which Kim has settled for, but I find it baffling. If the universe is full of irreducibles that is one thing, but if everything in the universe is reducible except for one tiny item, that is implausible. |
| 3376 | We can't assess evidence about mind without acknowledging phenomenal properties [Kim] |
| Full Idea: In order to make sense of the empirical character of mind-brain identity, we must acknowledge the existence of phenomenal properties. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 66) | |
| A reaction: Mind-brain identity is, of course, an ontological theory, not an epistemological one (like empiricism). I suspect that the basis for my belief in reductive physicalism is an intuition, which I am hoping is a rational intuition. Cf. Idea 3989. |
| 3424 | Most modern physicalists are non-reductive property dualists [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The most widely accepted form of physicalism today is the nonreductive variety, ...which combines ontological physicalism with property dualism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.212) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that property dualism is actually in decline, but we will see. I have yet to find a coherent definition of property dualism. If being simultaneously red and square isn't property dualism, then what is it? Sounds like dualism to me. |
| 2313 | Emergentism says there is no explanation for a supervenient property [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The emergentism (of Searle), like ethical intuitionism, views mind-body supervenience as something that admits no explanation - it is a brute fact. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.013) | |
| A reaction: This is why 'emergence' is no sort of theory, and is really old-fashioned dualism in a dubious naturalistic disguise. If mind 'emerges', there is presumably a causal mechanism for that. |
| 2328 | The only mental property that might be emergent is that of qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If emergentism is correct about anything, it is more likely to be correct about qualia than about anything else. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.103) | |
| A reaction: I'm puzzled by a view that says that nearly all of the mind is reducible, but one tiny aspect of it is 'emergent'. What sort of ontology is envisaged by that? |
| 2309 | Non-Reductive Physicalism relies on supervenience [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers saw in mind-body supervenience a satisfying metaphysical statement of physicalism without reductionism. This widely influential position is now known as "nonreductive physicalism". | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.008) | |
| A reaction: If two things supervene on one another, then we should be asking why. Occasionalism and Parallelism are presumably not the answer. Coldness supervenes on ice. |
| 3362 | Supervenience says all souls are identical, being physically indiscernible [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If one accepts the supervenience of mental on physical, this logically implies that there can only be one Cartesian soul, because such souls are physically indiscernible, and hence mentally indiscernible. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 10) | |
| A reaction: Not very persuasive. Brains are certainly discernible, and so are parts of brains. Egos might be mentally discernible. I don't find my notion of personal identity collapsing just because I espouse property dualism. |
| 3413 | Zombies and inversion suggest non-reducible supervenience [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The main argument for the physical supervenience of qualia, then, is the apparent conceivability of zombies and qualia inversion in organisms physically indistinguishable from us. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.171) | |
| A reaction: Since neither zombies nor qualia inversion for identical brains seem to me to be even remotely conceivable, I won't trouble myself with the very vague concept of 'supervenience'. |
| 2311 | Maybe strong supervenience implies reduction [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe strong supervenience is inconsistent with the irreducibility of the supervenient properties to their subvenient bases. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.012) | |
| A reaction: If two things are really very very supervenient on one another (superdupervenient?), then you have to ask WHY? If there isn't identity, then there is surely a highly lawlike connection? |
| 3374 | Token physicalism isn't reductive; it just says all mental events have some physical properties [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Token physicalism (as opposed to type physicalism) is a weak doctrine which simply says that any event or occurrence with a mental property has some physical property or other. It is not committed to reductionism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 61) | |
| A reaction: Sounds nice, but it seems incoherent to me. How can something have a physical property if it isn't physical? Try 'it isn't coloured, but has colour properties', or 'not a square, but with square properties'. 'Not divine, but divine properties' maybe. |
| 3433 | The core of the puzzle is the bridge laws between mind and brain [Kim] |
| Full Idea: From the emergentist point of view, the reductionists bridge laws are precisely what need to be explained. Why do these mental-physical correlations hold? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.229) | |
| A reaction: Everyone is happy with the bridge laws from chemistry to physics, but no one knows (deep down) why those exact laws hold. We need to understand what consciousness is; its cause will then, I think, become apparent. |
| 3377 | Elimination can either be by translation or by causal explanation [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The two best know attempts to analyse away mental states are Armstrong's causal conception of such states (e.g. pain is a neural event caused by tissue damage), and Smart's 'topic-neutral translation'. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 67) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong's view certainly seems to be missing something, since his 'pain' could do the job without consciousness. I take Smart's approach to be the germ of the right answer. |
| 3438 | Reductionists deny new causal powers at the higher level [Kim] |
| Full Idea: For the reductionist, no new causal powers emerge at higher levels, which goes against the claims of the emergentist and the non-reductive physicalist. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.232) | |
| A reaction: I would say that all higher level causes are simply the sums of lower level causes, as in chemistry and physics. What could possibly produced the power at the higher level, apart from the constituents of the thing? Magic? |
| 3440 | Without reductionism, mental causation is baffling [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If reductionism goes, so does the intelligibility of mental causation. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.237) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. Substance dualism turns mental causation into a miracle, but property dualism is really no better. If no laws connect brain and mind, you have no account. I don't see how 'reasons are causes' (Davidson) helps at all. |
| 2308 | Identity theory was overthrown by multiple realisations and causal anomalies [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The two principle arguments which overthrew the mind-brain identity theory were the multiple realization argument of Hilary Putnam, and the anomalist argument of Davidson, which contained the seeds of functionalism and anomalous monism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.002) | |
| A reaction: The first argument strikes me as significant and interesting, but Davidson seems weak. It makes the unsubstantiated claim that mind is outside the laws of physics, and irreducible. |
| 2322 | Multiple realisation applies to other species, and even one individual over time [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Multiple realization goes deeper and wider than biological species, and even in the same individual the neural realizer, or correlate, of a given mental state or function may change over time through maturation and brain injuries. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.095) | |
| A reaction: The tricky question here is what you mean by 'change'. How different must a pattern of neurons be before you say it is of a different type? How do you individuate a type? |
| 2327 | Knowledge and inversion make functionalism about qualia doubtful [Kim] |
| Full Idea: My doubts about functionalist accounts of qualia are based on the much discussed arguments from qualia inversions, and from epistemic considerations. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.102) | |
| A reaction: With a colour inversion experience changes but function doesn't. But maybe function does change if you ask the right questions. 'Is this a warm colour?' It certainly strikes me that qualia contain useful (epistemic) information. |
| 3375 | If an orange image is a brain state, are some parts of the brain orange? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If an orange visual image is a brain state then, by the indiscernibility of identicals, some brain state must also be orange. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 64) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the Hardest of all Hard Questions: how can I experience orange if my neurons haven't turned orange? What on earth is orangeness? I don't believe it is a 'microproperty' of orange objects; it's in us. |