Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, E.J. Lowe and JC Beall / G Restall

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4 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
Some behaviourists believe thought is just suppressed speech [Lowe]
     Full Idea: Some behaviourists have held the view that thinking just is, in effect, suppressed speech.
     From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 7)
     A reaction: He cites J.B.Watson. This would imply that infants and animals can't think. Introspecting my own case, I don't believe it. When I am navigating through a town, for example, I directly relate to my mental map; I see little sign of anything verbal.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / b. Human rationality
People are wildly inaccurate in estimating probabilities about an observed event [Lowe]
     Full Idea: In the 'cab problem' (what colour was the cab in the accident?) most people estimate an 80% probability of it being a blue cab, but Bayes' Theorem calculates the probability at 41%, suggesting people put too much faith in eyewitness testimony.
     From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8)
     A reaction: For details of the 'cab problem', see Lowe p.200. My suspicion is that people get into a tangle when confronted with numbers in a theoretical situation, but are much better at it when faced with a real life problem, like 'who ate my chocolate?'
'Base rate neglect' makes people favour the evidence over its background [Lowe]
     Full Idea: 'Base rate neglect' (attending to the witness or evidence, and ignoring background information) is responsible for doctors exaggerating the significance of positive results in diagnosis of relatively rare medical conditions.
     From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8)
     A reaction: This seems to be one of the clearest cases where people's behaviour is irrational, though I suspect that people are much more rational about things if the case is simple and non-numerical. However, people are very credulous about wonderful events.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 6. Judgement / a. Nature of Judgement
Judgement is always predicating a property of a subject [Beall/Restall]
     Full Idea: All judgement, for Kant, is essentially the predication of some property to some subject.
     From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5)
     A reaction: Presumably the denial of a predicate could be a judgement, or the affirmation of ambiguous predicates?