Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, David Papineau and A.C. Grayling

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5 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
Consciousness affects bodily movement, so thoughts must be material states [Papineau]
     Full Idea: Conscious states clearly affect our bodily movements. But surely anything that so produces a material effect must itself be a material state.
     From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §6)
     A reaction: This is Papineau's simplest possible statement of what he calls the Causal Argument, which he considers to be a knock-down argument for materialism. I agree, but it is really only an intuition. You never know...
Thinking about a thing doesn't require activating it [Papineau]
     Full Idea: Thinking about something doesn't require activating some version of it.
     From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §5)
     A reaction: E.g. I can discuss 'red' without visualising it. This observation strikes me as simple and basic to what thinking is. Papineau thinks that confusion about this simple point leads to major errors in the philosophy of mind.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 5. Mental Files
There is a single file per object, memorised, reactivated, consolidated and expanded [Papineau, by Recanati]
     Full Idea: For Papineau there is just one file, which is initialised on the first encounter with the object, stored in memory, reactivated on further encounters, and consolidated with familiarity. Accumulation of information shows it is the same file.
     From: report of David Papineau (Phenomenal and Perceptual Concepts [2006]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 7.2
     A reaction: Recanati attempts to refute this view, defending a more complex taxonomy of files. I'm sympathetic to Papineau, as distinct shift in file type doesn't sound very plausible. Simplicity suggests Papineau as a better starting-point.
18. Thought / C. Content / 6. Broad Content
Most reductive accounts of representation imply broad content [Papineau]
     Full Idea: Broadness of content is sometimes defended purely on intuitive grounds, but it is also a corollary of most reductive accounts of representation, including standard teleosemantic and causal accounts.
     From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002])
     A reaction: (For Causal and Teleosemantic views, see Idea 7871, Idea 7872) Presumably a causal/purposeful relationship would only make sense if both halves of the relationship were specified. I suspect this is obscured by over-simplifications. Cf Idea 6634!
If content hinges on matters outside of you, how can it causally influence your actions? [Papineau]
     Full Idea: How can 'broad contents', which hinge on matters outside your head, exert a causal influence on your bodily movements? Surely your bodily movements are causally influenced solely by matters inside your skin, not by how matters are outside you.
     From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.4)
     A reaction: This supports my suspicion that there are some extremely simplistic interpretations of the Twin Earth case floating around. If Putnam means by 'elm' whatever experts mean, it is still his idea of what counts as an expert view.