11 ideas
| 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? |
| 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'. |
| 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. |
| 7257 | All modern social systems seem to be conspiracies of the rich [More,T] |
| Full Idea: When I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world, I can't see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organizing society. | |
| From: Thomas More (Utopia [1516], Bk 2) | |
| A reaction: I'm afraid this is my own view of most conservative politics. I don't deny that there is a good case to be made for the conservative view (by Burke and Scruton, for example), but the rich will always latch onto its coat-tails. Cf. Idea 122. |
| 7254 | If you try to get elected, you should be permanently barred from seeking office [More,T] |
| Full Idea: In Utopia, anyone who deliberately tries to get himself elected to a public office is permanently disqualified from holding one. | |
| From: Thomas More (Utopia [1516], Bk 2) | |
| A reaction: This echoes a thought found in Plato (Idea 2149). I've always liked this idea. Why can't we have elections were a group of the best people are invited to stand? Well, yes, it would lead to corruption... Still, the best should be pushed to the front. |
| 7255 | Only Utopians fail to see glory in warfare [More,T] |
| Full Idea: Utopians are practically the only people on earth who fail to see anything glorious in war. | |
| From: Thomas More (Utopia [1516], Bk 2) | |
| A reaction: A refreshing thought for such an early date. Whatever dubious behaviour is nowadays attributed to Thomas More, you have to admire someone who writes this during the reign of Henry VIII. |
| 7253 | In Utopia, legal euthanasia is considered honourable [More,T] |
| Full Idea: In Utopia, officially sanctioned euthanasia is regarded as an honourable death. | |
| From: Thomas More (Utopia [1516], Bk 2) | |
| A reaction: A bit surprising coming from a writer who is now a Catholic martyr and saint. |
| 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? |
| 7256 | In Utopia, the Supreme Being is identical with Nature [More,T] |
| Full Idea: Everyone in Utopia agrees that the Supreme Being (which they call Mythras) is identical with Nature. | |
| From: Thomas More (Utopia [1516], Bk 2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds remarkably like full-blown Spinozean pantheism, though it should be interpreted with caution. It certainly seems to show that pantheism was a possibility in the minds of late medieval religious thinkers. |