Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Archimedes, A Clark / D Chalmers and Matthew Cobb

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8 ideas

6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 3. Axioms for Geometry

13007	Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Archimedes gave a sort of definition of 'straight line' when he said it is the shortest line between two points.
	From: report of Archimedes (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.13
	A reaction: Commentators observe that this reduces the purity of the original Euclidean axioms, because it involves distance and measurement, which are absent from the purest geometry.

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / a. Beliefs

19743	A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4)
	A reaction: This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role?

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 6. Anti-Individualism

6176	A mechanism can count as 'cognitive' whether it is in the brain or outside it [Clark/Chalmers, by Rowlands]
	Full Idea: If the operation of a brain implant inside the brain is a cognitive operation, why should it not count as a cognitive operation when it is outside the brain? There are many mechanisms which would count as cognitive if they were inside the subject.
	From: report of A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.9
	A reaction: This argues for externalism of the vehicle of thought, rather than its content. The idea is that there is no significant difference between remembering a phone number and writing it on a bit of paper. I find it hard to disagree.

19741	If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2)
	A reaction: In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong.

19742	Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3)
	A reaction: This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 8. Brain

23226	There is a single mouse neuron which has 862 inputs and 626 outputs [Cobb]
	Full Idea: Researchers have recently described a single inhibitory neuron in a region called the visual thalamus of the mouse - it has 862 input synapses and 626 output synapses.
	From: Matthew Cobb (The Idea of the Brain [2020], 11)
	A reaction: This is the kind of fact which philosophers of mind must be aware of when offering accounts of thought which are in danger of being simplistic.

23216	The brain is not passive, and merely processing inputs; it is active, and intervenes in the world [Cobb]
	Full Idea: A number of scientists are now realising that, by viewing the brain as a computer that passively responds ot inputs and processes data, we forget that it is an active organ, part of the body intervening in the world.
	From: Matthew Cobb (The Idea of the Brain [2020], Intro)
	A reaction: I like any idea which reminds us that nature is intrinsically active, and not merely passive. Laws are in nature, not imposed on it. My preferred ontology, based on powers as fundamental, applies to the brain, as well as to physics. No free will needed.

16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / a. Memory is Self

19744	If a person relies on their notes, those notes are parted of the extended system which is the person [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: If Otto relies on his notebook, what this comes to is that Otto himself is best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §5)
	A reaction: You start to get giddy as you read this stuff. If two people constantly share a notebook, they begin to blend into one another. It inclines me towards a more 'animalist' view of the nature of a person or a self.