29 ideas
| 18241 | Sufficient reason is implied by contradiction, of an insufficient possible which exists [Wolff, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Wolff believed that the principle of sufficient reason could be derived from the principle of contradiction, for there would be a contradiction in the insufficiently determined existence of a merely possible thing. | |
| From: report of Christian Wolff (works [1730]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Intro to Ethics, Politics, Religion in Kant 'A child' | |
| A reaction: Sounds as if he might be begging to question. You would only protest against the insufficient determination of something if you already believed in the principle of sufficient reason. Nice try. |
| 2584 | Lobotomised patients can cease to care about a pain [Block] |
| Full Idea: After frontal lobotomies, patients typically report that they still have pains, though the pains no longer bother them. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 83) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an endorsement of reductive physicalism, because what matters about pains is that they bother us, not how they feel, so frog pain could do the job, if it felt different from ours, but was disliked by the frog. |
| 6172 | The Inverted Earth example shows that phenomenal properties are not representational [Block, by Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Block's Inverted Earth example (with matching inversion of both colours and colour-language) tries to show a variation of representational properties without a variation of phenomenal properties, so that the latter are not constituted by the former. | |
| From: report of Ned Block (Inverted Earth [1990]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: (The example is actually quite complex). This type of argument - a thought experiment in which qualia are held steady while everything else varies, or vice versa - seems to be the only way that we can possibly get at an assessment of the role of qualia. |
| 2582 | A brain looks no more likely than anything else to cause qualia [Block] |
| Full Idea: NO physical mechanism seems very intuitively plausible as a seat of qualia, least of all a brain. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 78) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about "least of all", given the mind-boggling complexity of the brain's connections. Certainly, though, nothing in either folk physics or academic physics suggests that any physical object is likely to be aware of anything. |
| 2574 | Behaviour requires knowledge as well as dispositions [Block] |
| Full Idea: A desire cannot be identified with a disposition to act, since the agent might not know that a particular act leads to the thing desired, and thus might not be disposed to do it. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
| A reaction: One might have a disposition to act, but not in a particular way. "Something must be done". To get to the particular act, it seems that indeed a belief must be added to the desire. |
| 2576 | In functionalism, desires are internal states with causal relations [Block] |
| Full Idea: According to functionalism, a system might have the behaviouristic input-output relations, yet not desire something, as this requires internal states with certain causal relations. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
| A reaction: Such a system might be Putnam's 'superactor', who only behaves as if he desires something. Of course, the internal states might need more than just 'causal relations'. |
| 2575 | Functionalism is behaviourism, but with mental states as intermediaries [Block] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism is a new incarnation of behaviourism, replacing sensory inputs with sensory inputs plus mental states, and replacing dispositions to act with dispositions plus certain mental states. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
| A reaction: I think of functionalism as behaviourism which extends inside the 'black box' between stimulus and response. It proposes internal stimuli and responses. Consequently functionalism inherits some behaviourist problems. |
| 2583 | You might invert colours, but you can't invert beliefs [Block] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see how to make sense of the analog of color spectrum inversion with respect to non-qualitative states such a beliefs (where they are functionally equivalent but have different beliefs). | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 81) | |
| A reaction: I would suggest that beliefs can be 'inverted', because there are all sorts of ways to implement a belief, but colour can't be inverted, because that depends on a particular brain state. It makes good sense to me... |
| 2578 | Could a creature without a brain be in the right functional state for pain? [Block] |
| Full Idea: If pain is a functional state, it cannot be a brain state, because creatures without brains could realise the same Turing machine as creatures with brains. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 70) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a poorly grounded claim. There may be some hypothetical world where brainless creatures implement all our functions, but from here brains look the only plausible option. |
| 2585 | Not just any old functional network will have mental states [Block] |
| Full Idea: If there are any fixed points in the mind-body problem, one of them is that the economy of Bolivia could not have mental states, no matter how it is distorted. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 86) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree with this, but then it can hardly be a serious suggestion that anyone could see how to reconfigure an economy so that it mapped the functional state of the human brain. This is not a crucial problem. |
| 2586 | In functionalism, what are the special inputs and outputs of conscious creatures? [Block] |
| Full Idea: In functionalism, it is very hard to see how there could be a single physical characterization of the inputs and outputs of all and only creatures with mentality. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 87) | |
| A reaction: It would be theoretically possible if the only way to achieve mentality was to have a particular pattern of inputs and outputs. I don't think, though, that 'mentality' is an all-or-nothing concept. |
| 2579 | Physicalism is prejudiced in favour of our neurology, when other systems might have minds [Block] |
| Full Idea: Physicalism is a chauvinist theory: it withholds mental properties from systems that in fact have them. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 71) | |
| A reaction: This criticism interprets physicalism too rigidly. There may be several ways to implement a state. My own view is that other systems might implement our functions, but they won't experience them in a human way. |
| 2577 | Simple machine-functionalism says mind just is a Turing machine [Block] |
| Full Idea: In the simplest Turing-machine version of functionalism (Putnam 1967), mental states are identified with the total Turing-machine state, involving a machine table and its inputs and outputs. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 70) | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the question of why mental states would be conscious and phenomenal, given that modern computers are devoid of same, despite being classy Turing machines. |
| 2580 | A Turing machine, given a state and input, specifies an output and the next state [Block] |
| Full Idea: In a Turing machine, given any state and input, the machine table specifies an output and the next state. …To have full power the tape must be infinite in at least one direction, and be movable in both directions. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 71) | |
| A reaction: In retrospect, the proposal that this feeble item should be taken as a model for the glorious complexity and richness of human consciousness doesn't look too plausible. |
| 3178 | A fast machine could pass all behavioural tests with a vast lookup table [Block, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Ned Block proposes a machine (a 'blockhead') which could pass the Turing Test just by looking up responses in a vast look-up table. | |
| From: report of Ned Block (works [1984]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 5.3 | |
| A reaction: Once you suspected you were talking to a blockhead, I think you could catch it out in a Turing Test. How can the lookup table keep up to date with immediate experience? Ask it about your new poem. |
| 18033 | The meaning of a representation is its role in thought, perception or decisions [Block] |
| Full Idea: According to conceptual role semantics, the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, for example, in perception, thought and decision-making. | |
| From: Ned Block (Semantics, Conceptual Role [1998]) | |
| A reaction: I never believe theories of this kind, because I always find myself asking 'what is the nature of this representation which enables it to play this role?'. |
| 2581 | Intuition may say that a complex sentence is ungrammatical, but linguistics can show that it is not [Block] |
| Full Idea: Linguistics rejects (on theoretical grounds) the intuition that the sentence "the boy the girl the cat bit scratched died" is ungrammatical. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 78) | |
| A reaction: Once we have disentangled it, we practical speakers have no right to say it is ungrammatical. It isn't only theory. The sentence is just stylistically infelicitous. |
| 8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The main approaches to causation I shall refer to as direct realism, Humean reductionism, non-Humean reductionism, and indirect or theoretical realism. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: The first simply observes causation (Anscombe), the second reduces it to regularity (Hume), the third reduces it to other natural features (Fair, Salmon, Dowe), the fourth takes an instrumental approach (Armstrong, Tooley). I favour the third approach. |
| 8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The three main distinctions concerning causation are between reductionism and realism; between Humean and non-Humean states of affairs; and between states that are immediately observable and those that are not. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: I favour reductionism over realism, because I like the question 'If x is real, what is it made of?' I favour non-Humean states of affairs, because I think constant conjunction is very superficial. I presume the existence of non-observable components. |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Reductionist accounts of causation cannot distinguish laws from accidental uniformities, cannot allow for basic uninstantiated laws, can't explain probabilistic laws, and cannot even demonstrate the existence of laws. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 2) | |
| A reaction: I am tempted to say that this is so much the worse for the idea of laws. Extensive regularities only occur for a reason. Probabilities aren't laws. Hypothetical facts will cover uninstantiated laws. Laws are just patterns. |
| 8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: A reductionist can hold that the direction of causation is to be defined in terms of the direction of time; but this response is only available if one is prepared to adopt a realist view of the direction of time. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.2.1.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice illustration of the problems that arise if we try to be reductionist about everything. Personally I prefer my realism to be about time rather than about causation. Time, I would say, makes causation possible, not the other way around. |
| 8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The arguments in favour of causation being observable appeal especially to the impression of pressure upon one's body, and to one's introspective awareness of willing, together with the perception of the event which one willed. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Evan Fagels] Anscombe also cites words which have causality built into their meaning. This would approach would give priority to mental causation, and would need to demonstrate that similar things happen out in the world. |
| 8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Quantum physics seems to lend strong support to the idea that the basic laws of nature may well be probabilistic. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Groan. Quantum physics should be outlawed from all philosophical discussions. The scientists don't understand it themselves. I'm certainly not going to build my worldview on it. I don't accept that these probabilities could count as 'laws'. |
| 8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: If laws of causation are probabilistic then the law does not entail any restrictions upon the proportion of events that follow a cause: ...it can have absolutely any value from zero to one. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This objection applies to an account of laws of nature, and also to definitions of causes as events which increase probabilities. One needn't be fully committed to natural necessity, but it must form some part of the account. |
| 8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: A given type of state may be causally efficacious, but not as efficacious as an alternative states, so it is not true that even a direct cause need raise the probability of its effect. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 6.2.4) | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that explaining causation in terms of probabilities entirely misses the point, which mainly concerns explaining the sense of necessitation in a cause. This idea give me a good reason for my intuition. |
| 8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: If a counterfactual holds in a possible world, that is presumably because a law holds in that world, which means there could be basic causal laws that lack all instances. But then causal laws cannot be totally supervenient on the history of the universe. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.1.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice argument, which sounds like trouble for Lewis. One could deny that the laws have to hold in the counterfactual worlds, but then we wouldn't be able to conceive them. |
| 8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The most serious objection to any account of causation in terms of nomological relations alone is that it can't provide any account of the direction of causation. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 8393. I am not convinced that there could be an 'account' of the direction of causation, so I am inclined to take it as given. If we take 'powers' (active properties) as basic, they would have a direction built into them. |
| 8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Against the view that causation is a particular physical process, might it not be argued that the concept of causation is the concept of a relation that possesses a certain intrinsic nature, so that causation must be the same in all possible worlds? | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This makes the Humean assumption that laws of nature might be wildly different. I think it is perfectly possible that physical processes are the only way that causation could occur. Alternatively, the generic definition of 'cause' is just very vague. |
| 18242 | Confucius shows that ethics can rest on reason, rather than on revelation [Wolff, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Wolff claimed that the moral philosophy of Confucius shows that ethics is accessible to natural reason and independent of revelation. | |
| From: report of Christian Wolff (works [1730]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Intro to Ethics, Politics, Religion in Kant 'A child' | |
| A reaction: Wolff was banished for proposing this idea. |