Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Oliver,A/Smiley,T, Damon and David Papineau

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2 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.