9 ideas
| 2986 | Belief is the most important propositional attitude [Lyons] |
| Full Idea: Belief might be accorded the status of core or chief propositional attitude. | |
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], p.126) |
| 19508 | Contextualism needs a semantics for knowledge sentences that are partly indexical [Schiffer,S] |
| Full Idea: Contextualist semantics must capture the 'indexical' nature of knowledge claims, the fact that different utterances of a knowledge sentence with no apparent indexical terms can express different propositions. | |
| From: Stephen Schiffer (Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism [1996], p.325), quoted by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Schiffer tries to show that this is too difficult, and DeRose defends contextualism against the charge. |
| 19509 | The indexical aspect of contextual knowledge might be hidden, or it might be in what 'know' means [Schiffer,S] |
| Full Idea: One might have a 'hidden-indexical' theory of knowledge sentences: they contain constituents that are not the semantic values of any terms; ...or 'to know' itself might be indexical, as in 'I know[easy] I have hands' or 'I know[tough] I have hands'. | |
| From: Stephen Schiffer (Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism [1996], p.326-7), quoted by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.5 | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] Given the choice, I would have thought it was in 'know', since to say 'either you know p or you don't' sounds silly to me. |
| 2978 | Consciousness no longer seems essential to intentionality [Lyons] |
| Full Idea: In contrast with Brentano and Husserl, consciousness or attention are no longer seen as essential to intentionality. | |
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being correct, although there seem to be plenty of current philosophers who do not accept it (e.g. Searle). I think philosophy of mind may be stuck in the dark ages if thinkers don't accept this proposal. |
| 2984 | Perceptions could give us information without symbolic representation [Lyons] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to give an account of concept-formation without a language of thought or representation, based on perception, which in the brain seems to involve information without representation. | |
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], p.66) | |
| A reaction: This claim strikes me as being a little too confident. One might say that a concept IS a representation. However, the perception of several horses might 'blur' together to form a generalised horse. |
| 2979 | Propositional attitudes require representation [Lyons] |
| Full Idea: How else, other than via some form of representational system, could a human organism contain information as a content over which it could operate or 'attitudinise'? | |
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'representational'. In its vaguest sense, this is just a tautology - content must be held in the mind in some form or other, but that tells us nothing. |
| 2987 | Folk psychology works badly for alien cultures [Lyons] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to employ our folk psychology in the understanding of persons in a very different culture. | |
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], p.241) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a highly significant problem for the friends of folk psychology. It also breaks down in extreme situations, or with mental illness. It seems closer to culture than to brain structure. |
| 2977 | All thinking has content [Lyons] |
| Full Idea: I cannot say I am simply thinking but not thinking about anything. | |
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Hard to disagree. However, I can plausibly reply to 'What are you thinking?' with 'Nothing', if my consciousness is freewheeling. Utterly disconnected content isn't really what we call 'thinking'. |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
| From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
| A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |