86 ideas
| 13407 | All worthwhile philosophy is synthetic theorizing, evaluated by experience [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: I would say that all worthwhile philosophy consists of synthetic theorizing, evaluated against experience. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is the view that philosophy is just science at a high level of abstraction, and he explicitly rejects 'conceptual analysis' as a fruitful activity. I need to take a stance on this one, but find I am in a state of paralysis. Welcome to philosophy... |
| 9935 | Mathematical truth is always compromising between ordinary language and sensible epistemology [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Most accounts of the concept of mathematical truth can be identified with serving one or another of either semantic theory (matching it to ordinary language), or with epistemology (meshing with a reasonable view) - always at the expense of the other. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (Mathematical Truth [1973], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The gist is that language pulls you towards platonism, and epistemology pulls you towards empiricism. He argues that the semantics must give ground. He's right. |
| 13412 | Obtaining numbers by abstraction is impossible - there are too many; only a rule could give them, in order [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Not all numbers could possibly have been learned à la Frege-Russell, because we could not have performed that many distinct acts of abstraction. Somewhere along the line a rule had to come in to enable us to obtain more numbers, in the natural order. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (Logicism, Some Considerations (PhD) [1960], p.165) | |
| A reaction: Follows on from Idea 13411. I'm not sure how Russell would deal with this, though I am sure his account cannot be swept aside this easily. Nevertheless this seems powerful and convincing, approaching the problem through the epistemology. |
| 13413 | We must explain how we know so many numbers, and recognise ones we haven't met before [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Both ordinalists and cardinalists, to account for our number words, have to account for the fact that we know so many of them, and that we can 'recognize' numbers which we've neither seen nor heard. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (Logicism, Some Considerations (PhD) [1960], p.166) | |
| A reaction: This seems an important contraint on any attempt to explain numbers. Benacerraf is an incipient structuralist, and here presses the importance of rules in our grasp of number. Faced with 42,578,645, we perform an act of deconstruction to grasp it. |
| 9912 | There are no such things as numbers [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: There are no such things as numbers. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: Mill said precisely the same (Idea 9794). I think I agree. There has been a classic error of reification. An abstract pattern is not an object. If I coin a word for all the three-digit numbers in our system, I haven't created a new 'object'. |
| 9901 | Numbers can't be sets if there is no agreement on which sets they are [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The fact that Zermelo and Von Neumann disagree on which particular sets the numbers are is fatal to the view that each number is some particular set. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: I agree. A brilliantly simple argument. There is the possibility that one of the two accounts is correct (I would vote for Zermelo), but it is not actually possible to prove it. |
| 13411 | If numbers are basically the cardinals (Frege-Russell view) you could know some numbers in isolation [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: If we accept the Frege-Russell analysis of number (the natural numbers are the cardinals) as basic and correct, one thing which seems to follow is that one could know, say, three, seventeen, and eight, but no other numbers. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (Logicism, Some Considerations (PhD) [1960], p.164) | |
| A reaction: It seems possible that someone might only know those numbers, as the patterns of members of three neighbouring families (the only place where they apply number). That said, this is good support for the priority of ordinals. See Idea 13412. |
| 9151 | Benacerraf says numbers are defined by their natural ordering [Benacerraf, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Benacerraf thinks of numbers as being defined by their natural ordering. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence §5 | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that cardinality is logically prior to ordinality, since that connects better with the experienced physical world of objects. Just as the fact that people have different heights must precede them being arranged in height order. |
| 13891 | To understand finite cardinals, it is necessary and sufficient to understand progressions [Benacerraf, by Wright,C] |
| Full Idea: Benacerraf claims that the concept of a progression is in some way the fundamental arithmetical notion, essential to understanding the idea of a finite cardinal, with a grasp of progressions sufficing for grasping finite cardinals. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Crispin Wright - Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects 3.xv | |
| A reaction: He cites Dedekind (and hence the Peano Axioms) as the source of this. The interest is that progression seems to be fundamental to ordianls, but this claims it is also fundamental to cardinals. Note that in the first instance they are finite. |
| 17904 | A set has k members if it one-one corresponds with the numbers less than or equal to k [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Any set has k members if and only if it can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the set of numbers less than or equal to k. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: This is 'Ernie's' view of things in the paper. This defines the finite cardinal numbers in terms of the finite ordinal numbers. He has already said that the set of numbers is well-ordered. |
| 17906 | To explain numbers you must also explain cardinality, the counting of things [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: I would disagree with Quine. The explanation of cardinality - i.e. of the use of numbers for 'transitive counting', as I have called it - is part and parcel of the explication of number. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I n2) | |
| A reaction: Quine says numbers are just a progression, with transitive counting as a bonus. Interesting that Benacerraf identifies cardinality with transitive counting. I would have thought it was the possession of numerical quantity, not ascertaining it. |
| 9898 | We can count intransitively (reciting numbers) without understanding transitive counting of items [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Learning number words in the right order is counting 'intransitively'; using them as measures of sets is counting 'transitively'. ..It seems possible for someone to learn the former without learning the latter. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: Scruton's nice question (Idea 3907) is whether you could be said to understand numbers if you could only count intransitively. I would have thought such a state contained no understanding at all of numbers. Benacerraf agrees. |
| 17903 | Someone can recite numbers but not know how to count things; but not vice versa [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: It seems that it is possible for someone to learn to count intransitively without learning to count transitively. But not vice versa. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: Benacerraf favours the priority of the ordinals. It is doubtful whether you have grasped cardinality properly if you don't know how to count things. Could I understand 'he has 27 sheep', without understanding the system of natural numbers? |
| 9897 | The application of a system of numbers is counting and measurement [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The application of a system of numbers is counting and measurement. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: A simple point, but it needs spelling out. Counting seems prior, in experience if not in logic. Measuring is a luxury you find you can indulge in (by imagining your quantity) split into parts, once you have mastered counting. |
| 9900 | For Zermelo 3 belongs to 17, but for Von Neumann it does not [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Ernie's number progression is [φ],[φ,[φ]],[φ,[φ],[φ,[φ,[φ]]],..., whereas Johnny's is [φ],[[φ]],[[[φ]]],... For Ernie 3 belongs to 17, not for Johnny. For Ernie 17 has 17 members; for Johnny it has one. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: Benacerraf's point is that there is no proof-theoretic way to choose between them, though I am willing to offer my intuition that Ernie (Zermelo) gives the right account. Seventeen pebbles 'contains' three pebbles; you must pass 3 to count to 17. |
| 9899 | The successor of x is either x and all its members, or just the unit set of x [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: For Ernie, the successor of a number x was the set consisting of x and all the members of x, while for Johnny the successor of x was simply [x], the unit set of x - the set whose only member is x. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 9900. Benacerraf's famous point is that it doesn't seem to make any difference to arithmetic which version of set theory you choose as its basis. I take this to conclusively refute the idea that numbers ARE sets. |
| 8697 | Disputes about mathematical objects seem irrelevant, and mathematicians cannot resolve them [Benacerraf, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: If two children were brought up knowing two different set theories, they could entirely agree on how to do arithmetic, up to the point where they discuss ontology. There is no mathematical way to tell which is the true representation of numbers. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: Benacerraf ends by proposing a structuralist approach. If mathematics is consistent with conflicting set theories, then those theories are not shedding light on mathematics. |
| 8304 | No particular pair of sets can tell us what 'two' is, just by one-to-one correlation [Benacerraf, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Hume's Principle can't tell us what a cardinal number is (this is one lesson of Benacerraf's well-known problem). An infinity of pairs of sets could actually be the number two (not just the simplest sets). | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 10.3 | |
| A reaction: The drift here is for numbers to end up as being basic, axiomatic, indefinable, universal entities. Since I favour patterns as the basis of numbers, I think the basis might be in a pre-verbal experience, which even a bird might have, viewing its eggs. |
| 9906 | If ordinal numbers are 'reducible to' some set-theory, then which is which? [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: If a particular set-theory is in a strong sense 'reducible to' the theory of ordinal numbers... then we can still ask, but which is really which? | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIB) | |
| A reaction: A nice question about all reductions. If we reduce mind to brain, does that mean that brain is really just mind. To have a direction (up/down?), reduction must lead to explanation in a single direction only. Do numbers explain sets? |
| 13415 | An adequate account of a number must relate it to its series [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: No account of an individual number is adequate unless it relates that number to the series of which it is a member. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (Logicism, Some Considerations (PhD) [1960], p.169) | |
| A reaction: Thus it is not totally implausible to say that 2 is several different numbers or concepts, depending on whether you see it as a natural number, an integer, a rational, or a real. This idea is the beginning of modern structuralism. |
| 9907 | If any recursive sequence will explain ordinals, then it seems to be the structure which matters [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: If any recursive sequence whatever would do to explain ordinal numbers suggests that what is important is not the individuality of each element, but the structure which they jointly exhibit. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: This sentence launched the whole modern theory of Structuralism in mathematics. It is hard to see what properties a number-as-object could have which would entail its place in an ordinal sequence. |
| 9908 | The job is done by the whole system of numbers, so numbers are not objects [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: 'Objects' do not do the job of numbers singly; the whole system performs the job or nothing does. I therefore argue that numbers could not be objects at all. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: This thought is explored by structuralism - though it is a moot point where mere 'nodes' in a system (perhaps filled with old bits of furniture) will do the job either. No one ever explains the 'power' of numbers (felt when you do a sudoku). Causal? |
| 9909 | The number 3 defines the role of being third in a progression [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Any object can play the role of 3; that is, any object can be the third element in some progression. What is peculiar to 3 is that it defines that role, not by being a paradigm, but by representing the relation of any third member of a progression. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: An interesting early attempt to spell out the structuralist idea. I'm thinking that the role is spelled out by the intersection of patterns which involve threes. |
| 9911 | Number words no more have referents than do the parts of a ruler [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Questions of the identification of the referents of number words should be dismissed as misguided in just the way that a question about the referents of the parts of a ruler would be seen as misguided. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: What a very nice simple point. It would be very strange to insist that every single part of the continuum of a ruler should be regarded as an 'object'. |
| 8925 | Mathematical objects only have properties relating them to other 'elements' of the same structure [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical objects have no properties other than those relating them to other 'elements' of the same structure. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], p.285), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Structuralism Reconsidered §3 n13 | |
| A reaction: Suppose we only had one number - 13 - and we all cried with joy when we recognised it in a group of objects. Would that be a number, or just a pattern, or something hovering between the two? |
| 9938 | How can numbers be objects if order is their only property? [Benacerraf, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Benacerraf raises the question how numbers can be 'objects' if they have no properties except order in a particular ω-sequence. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], p.301) by Hilary Putnam - Mathematics without Foundations | |
| A reaction: Frege certainly didn't think that order was their only property (see his 'borehole' metaphor in Grundlagen). It might be better to say that they are objects which only have relational properties. |
| 9910 | Number-as-objects works wholesale, but fails utterly object by object [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The identification of numbers with objects works wholesale but fails utterly object by object. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a glaring problem for platonists. You can stare at 1728 till you are blue in the face, but it only begins to have any properties at all once you examine its place in the system. This is unusual behaviour for an object. |
| 17927 | Realists have semantics without epistemology, anti-realists epistemology but bad semantics [Benacerraf, by Colyvan] |
| Full Idea: Benacerraf argues that realists about mathematical objects have a nice normal semantic but no epistemology, and anti-realists have a good epistemology but an unorthodox semantics. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (Mathematical Truth [1973]) by Mark Colyvan - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.2 |
| 9936 | The platonist view of mathematics doesn't fit our epistemology very well [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The principle defect of the standard (platonist) account of mathematical truth is that it appears to violate the requirement that our account be susceptible to integration into our over-all account of knowledge. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (Mathematical Truth [1973], III) | |
| A reaction: Unfortunately he goes on to defend a causal theory of justification (fashionable at that time, but implausible now). Nevertheless, his general point is well made. Your theory of what mathematics is had better make it knowable. |
| 9903 | Number words are not predicates, as they function very differently from adjectives [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The unpredicative nature of number words can be seen by noting how different they are from, say, ordinary adjectives, which do function as predicates. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: He points out that 'x is seventeen' is a rare construction in English, unlike 'x is happy/green/interesting', and that numbers outrank all other adjectives (having to appear first in any string of them). |
| 9904 | The set-theory paradoxes mean that 17 can't be the class of all classes with 17 members [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: In no consistent theory is there a class of all classes with seventeen members. The existence of the paradoxes is a good reason to deny to 'seventeen' this univocal role of designating the class of all classes with seventeen members. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: This was Frege's disaster, and seems to block any attempt to achieve logicism by translating numbers into sets. It now seems unclear whether set theory is logic, or mathematics, or sui generis. |
| 3509 | Externalism may be the key idea in philosophical naturalism [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Some people view an externalist approach to epistemology as the essence of philosophical naturalism. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I suspect philosophers avoid psychology and mental events, simply because they are elusive. Externalism is a theory about justification, and independent of naturalism as a metaphysic. |
| 13409 | Our best theories may commit us to mathematical abstracta, but that doesn't justify the commitment [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Our empirically best-supported theories may commit us to certain abstract mathematical entities, but this does not necessarily mean that this is what justifies our commitment. That we are committed doesn't explain why we should be. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge [2010], §4) | |
| A reaction: A nice point. It is only a slightly gormless scientism which would say that we have to accept whatever scientists demand. Who's in charge here - scientists, mathematicians or philosophers? Don't answer that... |
| 9905 | Identity statements make sense only if there are possible individuating conditions [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Identity statements make sense only in contexts where there exist possible individuating conditions. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], III) | |
| A reaction: He is objecting to bizarre identifications involving numbers. An identity statement may be bizarre even if we can clearly individuate the two candidates. Winston Churchill is a Mars Bar. Identifying George Orwell with Eric Blair doesn't need a 'respect'. |
| 12583 | Belief truth-conditions are normal circumstances where the belief is supposed to occur [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The truth condition of the belief is the 'normal' circumstances in which, given the learning process, it is biologically supposed to be present. | |
| From: David Papineau (Reality and Representation [1987], p.67), quoted by Christopher Peacocke - A Study of Concepts 5.2 | |
| A reaction: How do we account for a belief in ghosts in this story? The notion of 'normal' circumstances and what is 'biologically supposed' to happen don't seem very appropriate. This is the 'teleological' view of belief. |
| 13406 | A priori knowledge is analytic - the structure of our concepts - and hence unimportant [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: I am a fully paid up-naturalist, but I see no reason to deny that a priori knowledge is possible. My view is that a priori knowledge is unimportant (esp to philosophy). If there is a priori knowledge, it is analytic, true by the structure of our concepts. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: It is one thing to say it is the structure of our concepts, and another to infer that it is unimportant. I take the structure of our concepts to be a shadow cast by the structure of the world. E.g. the structure of numbers reveals the world. |
| 7871 | Perceptual concepts can't just refer to what causes classification [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: We may say that a perceptual concept refers to that entity which normally causes classificatory uses of that concept...but this won't work because such deployments are often caused by things which the concept doesn't refer to. A model might cause 'bird'. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: This rejects the causal theory of perceptual concepts. I like the approach, because classifying things strikes me as absolutely basic to what brains do. To see that x is a bird is to place x in the class of birds. |
| 13408 | Intuition and thought-experiments embody substantial information about the world [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Naturalists can allow for thought-experiments in philosophy. Intuitions play an important role, but only because they embody substantial information about the world. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: In this sense, intuitions are just memories which are too complex for us to articulate. They are not the intuitions of 'pure reason'. It is hard to connect the intuitive spotting of a proof with memories of the physical world. |
| 7852 | The only serious mind-brain theories now are identity, token identity, realization and supervenience [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Anybody writing seriously about mind-brain issues nowadays needs to explain whether they think of materialism in terms of identity, token identity, realization, or supervenience. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §6) | |
| A reaction: Dualists are not invited. Functionalists are attending a different party. I wonder if his four categories collapse into two: the token/supervenience view, and the identity/realization view? |
| 7864 | Maybe mind and body do overdetermine acts, but are linked (for some reason) [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Maybe physical effects of mental causes are always overdetermined by distinct causes (the 'belt and braces' view). Defenders say the two are still counterfactually dependent - but that would raise the question of why, if they are ontologically distinct. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: [He cites D.H. Mellor as defending 'belt and braces'] This strikes me as the sort of theory that arises from desperation: traditional dualism won't work, but we MUST keep mind separate, so that we can have free will, and save morality. All very confused! |
| 7873 | Young children can see that other individuals sometimes have false beliefs [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The classic manifestation of being able to think about other individuals' mental states is success on the 'false belief test', which requires attribution of mistaken representations to other agents. Children aged three or four can do this. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.7) | |
| A reaction: There may be an other minds problem, but there is empirical evidence that we can 'read' the minds of others (from their behaviour) even if other animals can't. That seems to be clear, even if folk psychology is fiction, and we make mistakes. |
| 7874 | Do we understand other minds by simulation-theory, or by theory-theory? [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: There is debate about whether we attribute beliefs and desires to others, and predict their behaviour, by simulating the decisions we would make ourselves ('simulation-theory'), or by deducing them from some general theory ('theory-theory'). | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.7) | |
| A reaction: Could be both. If someone is hurt, empathy leads to direct mind-reading (which seems like simulation), but if someone is behaving strangely we may have to bring theories to bear, because this person seems to be different. |
| 7882 | Researching phenomenal consciousness is peculiar, because the concepts involved are peculiar [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: It is a mistake to suppose that research into phenomenal consciousness can proceed just like other kinds of scientific research. Phenomenal concepts are peculiar, and some of the questions they pose for empirical investigation are peculiar too. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.01) | |
| A reaction: This arises from Papineau's Conceptual Dualism, that our concepts are deeply dualist, when the underlying ontology is not. Brain researchers are wise to ignore phenomenology, and creep slowly forward from the physical end, where the concepts are clear. |
| 7854 | Whether octopuses feel pain is unclear, because our phenomenal concepts are too vague [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal concepts are irredeemably vague in certain dimensions, in ways that preclude there being any fact of the matter about whether octopuses feel phenomenal pain, or silicon-based humanoids would have any phenomenal consciousness. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §7) | |
| A reaction: It would be hard for Papineau to prove this point, but clearly our imagination finds it very hard to grasp the idea of a thing which is 'somewhat conscious'. The concept of being much more conscious than humans also bewilders us. |
| 7889 | Our concept of consciousness is crude, and lacks theoretical articulation [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal concept of consciousness-as-such is a crude tool, lacking theoretical articulation | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.13) | |
| A reaction: This is a point well made. Given that the human brain is the most complex thing (for its size) in the known universe, we shouldn't expect it to divide up into three or four clear-cut activities. Compare the precision of 'geography' as a concept. |
| 7891 | We can’t decide what 'conscious' means, so it is undecidable whether cats are conscious [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: If consciousness is availability for HOT judgements, then cats are not conscious, but if it consists in attention, then they are. I say the concept of consciousness is indefinite between the two, so there is no fact about whether cats are conscious. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.16) | |
| A reaction: Nice point. My personal view is that the question of whether cats are conscious is hopeless because philosophers insist on making consciousness all-or-nothing (e.g. Idea 5786). If I experienced cat mentality, I might say I was 'semi-conscious'. |
| 7890 | Maybe a creature is conscious if its mental states represent things in a distinct way [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The thesis of 'representational theories of consciousness' is that a creature is conscious just in case it is in a certain kind of representational state, some state which represents in a certain way. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002]) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Harman, Dretske and Tye] The immediate impediment I see to this view is the extreme difficulty of explaining what the special 'way' is that turns representations into consciousness. Some mental states are not representational, and vice versa. |
| 7885 | The 'actualist' HOT theory says consciousness comes from actual higher judgements of mental states [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The 'actualist' HOT theory says that a state is conscious if the subject is 'aware' of it, where this is understood as a matter of the subject forming some actual Higher-Order judgement about it. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.11) | |
| A reaction: As stated there seems an obvious regress problem. Is the consciousness in the mental state, or in the higher awareness of it? If the former, how does being observed make it conscious? If the latter, what gives the higher level its consciousness? |
| 7886 | Actualist HOT theories imply that a non-conscious mental event could become conscious when remembered [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Actualist HOT theories face an awkward problem with memory judgements: ...how can an earlier mental state be rendered conscious by some later act of memory? As when I see a red pillar box with no higher-order judgement, and then recall it later. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.11) | |
| A reaction: [See 7886 for 'Actualist' HOT theories] This is not altogether absurd. A red pillar box could be somewhere in my field of vision, and then I might suddenly become conscious of it (if it moved!). Police interrogation reminds me of what I only glimpsed. |
| 7887 | States are conscious if they could be the subject of higher-order mental judgements [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The 'dispositional' HOT thesis says that a state is conscious just in case it could have been the subject of an introspective Higher-Order judgement, even if it wasn't actually so subject. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.13) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Dennett and Carruthers for this view] This is designed to meet other problems, but it sounds odd. Does it really make no difference whether higher-judgement actually occurs? How can conscious events be distinguished once they've gone? |
| 7888 | Higher-order judgements may be possible where the subject denies having been conscious [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Dispositional Higher-Order judgeability will be present in some cases which the empirical methodology catalogues as not conscious (as when a subject denies having heard a sound, or seen a bird). | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.13) | |
| A reaction: (This attacks Idea 7887) This confirms my intuition, that we can be quite unconscious of things which can still be recalled at a later date. Of course, one could always challenge the reliability of the subject's report in such a case. |
| 7860 | The epiphenomenal relation of mind and brain is a 'causal dangler', unlike anything else [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: If epiphenomenalism were true, then the relation between mind and brain would be like nothing else in nature. After all, science recognises no other examples of 'causal danglers', ontologically independent states with causes but no effects. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This would be a good enough reason for me to reject the epiphenomenalist view, even if I thought it was a coherent proposal. Insofar as it proposes the existence of something (mind) with no causal powers at all, it strikes me as nonsense. |
| 7862 | Maybe minds do not cause actions, but do cause us to report our decisions [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Even if conscious decisions did not contribute causally to the actions normally attributed to them, they would still presumably be the causes of the sounds I make when I later report my earlier conscious decisions. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a good reply to my view (borrowed from Dennett - Idea 7379), that epiphenomalism proposes an absurdity (an entity with no causal powers). But if mind can cause speech, why could it not cause arm movements? |
| 3513 | How does a dualist mind represent, exist outside space, and be transparent to itself? [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Even dualists must explain how the mind represents things, but then their mind-stuff has so many special powers already (being outside space but in time, being transparent to itself etc.) that one more scarcely seems worth worrying about. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 3.1 n1) | |
| A reaction: I share the exasperation. It is hard to see how a dualist could even begin to formulate a theory about HOW the mind does so many different things. Could Descartes get a research grant for it? Would we understand God if he tried to explain it to us? |
| 3514 | Functionalism needs causation and intentionality to explain actions [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The functionalist approach to the mind needs to invoke assumptions about what desires are for and beliefs are about, in order to infer what agents will do. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Isn't the idea that you discover what desires are for and what beliefs are about by examining their function, and what the agent does? Which end should we start? |
| 7870 | Role concepts either name the realising property, or the higher property constituting the role [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Role concepts can be of two kinds: they can name whichever property realises the role, or they can name the higher property which constitutes the role. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.2 n1) | |
| A reaction: This points strikes me as being crucial to discussions of mental functions. Perhaps labels of Realising Properties and Constituting Properties would help. Analytical philosophy rules. |
| 7858 | If causes are basic particulars, this doesn't make conscious and physical properties identical [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: If causes are basic particulars, then the causal argument won't carry you to the identity of conscious and physical properties, since this only requires them to be instantiated in the same particular, not that the properties are themselves identical. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 7857; Papineau is rejecting the Davidson view] This explains how Davidson reaches a token-token identity view. Can two events occur in the same particular at the same moment? Depends what you mean by a 'particular'. |
| 3510 | Epiphenomenalism is supervenience without physicalism [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is a necessary condition for physicalism, but it is not sufficient. Epiphenomenalism rules out mental variation without physical variation, but says mental properties are quite distinct from physical properties. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: I take full epiphenomenalism about mind to be incoherent, and not worth even mentioning (see Idea 7379). Papineau seems to be thinking of so-called property dualism (which may also be incoherent!). |
| 3511 | Supervenience requires all mental events to have physical effects [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The argument for supervenience rests on the principle that any mental difference must be capable of showing itself in differential physical consequences. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: With our current knowledge of the brain, to assume anything less than this sort of correlation would be crazy. |
| 7865 | Supervenience can be replaced by identifying mind with higher-order or disjunctional properties [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: I would argue that any benefits offered by the notion of supervenience are more easily gained simply by identifying mental properties directly with higher-order properties or disjunctions of physical properties. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Those who talk of supervenience seem to me to have retreated into a mystery that is not far from substance dualism. We want the explanation of a supervenience. If you accompany me everywhere, I think you are stalking me, or are tied to my ankle. |
| 3515 | Knowing what it is like to be something only involves being (physically) that thing [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Physicalism does not deny that there are conscious experiences, nor that 'it is like something to have them'. The claim is only that this is nothing different from what it is to be a physical system of the relevant kind. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: The implication is that no physicalist is an extreme eliminativist about consciousness, which seems to be correct. We all concede that weather exists, but have a reductive view of it. The key question is whether mind is reducible to physics. |
| 7892 | The completeness of physics is needed for mind-brain identity [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Without the completeness of physics, there is no compelling reason to identify the mind with the brain. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 7) | |
| A reaction: Papineau says the completeness of physics was accepted from the 1950s. Why were Epicurus and Hobbes physicalists? Do we have a circularity here? How do you establish the completeness of physics, without asserting mind to be physical? |
| 7879 | Mind-brain reduction is less explanatory, because phenomenal concepts lack causal roles [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Mind-brain reductions are less explanatory than characteristic reductions in other areas of science, ...because phenomenal concepts have no special associations with causal roles. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This may always have some truth in it, but I would expect reductive accounts in the far future to get much closer to giving explanations of phenomenal experience. We can't work down from the phenomenal end, but we can work up from the physical/causal end. |
| 20971 | Weak reduction of mind is to physical causes; strong reduction is also to physical laws [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Weak reduction of mind requires only that mental causes be identified with physical causes. A strong reduction requires also that the laws by which such causes operate follow by composition from non-special laws. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 3 n8) | |
| A reaction: I'm cautious about laws, but I still vote for strong reduction. No new principles are needed to make a mind from a brain. |
| 7856 | It is absurd to think that physical effects are caused twice, so conscious causes must be physical [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Many effects that we attribute to conscious causes have full physical causes. But it would be absurd to suppose that these effects are caused twice over. So the conscious causes must be identical to some part of those physical causes. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [Papineau labelled this the Causal Argument] Of course two causes can combine to produce an effect, and there can be redundant physical overcausation, but in general I think this is a good argument. |
| 7881 | Accept ontological monism, but conceptual dualism; we think in a different way about phenomenal thought [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: We should be ontological monists, but we should be conceptual dualists. We need to recognise a special phenomenal way of thinking about conscious properties, if we are to dispel the confusions that persuade us that conscious properties cannot be material. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.01) | |
| A reaction: This idea came to me as a revelation, and strikes me as spot on. We have developed conceptual dualism simply because humans cannot directly see that their thinking is actually physical brain activity. Thought seems ungrounded, and utterly different. |
| 3512 | If a mental state is multiply realisable, why does it lead to similar behaviour? [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: If functionalism implies that there is nothing physically in common among the realisations of a given mental state, then there is no possibility of any uniform explanation of why they all give rise to a common physical result. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the well known interaction problem for dualism. The standard reply is to accept interaction as a given (with no apparent explanation). A miracle, if you like. |
| 7866 | Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: While there is indeed a before-after difference in Mary, this is just a matter of coming to think in new ways, and acquiring a new concept. There is no new experiential property. She could think about the property perfectly well, using material concepts. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I think it is better to talk of Mary encountering a new mode of experiencing something, just as experience becomes blurred when glasses are removed. No one acquires new 'knowledge' of blurred objects when they remove their glasses. |
| 7850 | 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. |
| 7851 | 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... |
| 16369 | There is a single file per object, memorised, reactivated, consolidated and expanded [Papineau, by Recanati] |
| Full Idea: For Papineau there is just one file, which is initialised on the first encounter with the object, stored in memory, reactivated on further encounters, and consolidated with familiarity. Accumulation of information shows it is the same file. | |
| From: report of David Papineau (Phenomenal and Perceptual Concepts [2006]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 7.2 | |
| A reaction: Recanati attempts to refute this view, defending a more complex taxonomy of files. I'm sympathetic to Papineau, as distinct shift in file type doesn't sound very plausible. Simplicity suggests Papineau as a better starting-point. |
| 7884 | Most reductive accounts of representation imply broad content [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Broadness of content is sometimes defended purely on intuitive grounds, but it is also a corollary of most reductive accounts of representation, including standard teleosemantic and causal accounts. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002]) | |
| A reaction: (For Causal and Teleosemantic views, see Idea 7871, Idea 7872) Presumably a causal/purposeful relationship would only make sense if both halves of the relationship were specified. I suspect this is obscured by over-simplifications. Cf Idea 6634! |
| 7863 | If content hinges on matters outside of you, how can it causally influence your actions? [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: How can 'broad contents', which hinge on matters outside your head, exert a causal influence on your bodily movements? Surely your bodily movements are causally influenced solely by matters inside your skin, not by how matters are outside you. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This supports my suspicion that there are some extremely simplistic interpretations of the Twin Earth case floating around. If Putnam means by 'elm' whatever experts mean, it is still his idea of what counts as an expert view. |
| 7883 | Verificationists tend to infer indefinite answers from undecidable questions [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The verificationist sin is to infer an indefiniteness of answers immediately from the undecidability of questions. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.02) | |
| A reaction: This remark is aimed at Dummett's anti-realism. It strikes me that what is being described really is a sort of arrogance, in believing that reality can somehow be inferred from studying the epistemic apparatus of a few miserable little mammals. |
| 13410 | Verificationism about concepts means you can't deny a theory, because you can't have the concept [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Verificationism about concepts implies that thinkers will not share concepts with adherents of theories they reject. Those who reject the phlogiston theory will not possess the same concept as adherents, so cannot say 'there is no phlogiston'. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge [2010], §6) | |
| A reaction: The point seems to be more general - that it is hard to see how you can have a concept of anything which doesn't actually exist, if the concept is meant to rest on some sort of empirical verification. |
| 7872 | Teleosemantics equates meaning with the item the concept is intended to track [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The teleosemantic view of perceptual concepts is that the referential value of the concept can be equated with those items which it is the biological function of the concept to track. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to work quite nicely for 'bird', which is concept which is used to track birds. It might even work for complex entities, or abstract entities, or even negative entities. Imagination must play a role in that last one. |
| 7869 | Truth conditions in possible worlds can't handle statements about impossibilities [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Basing content on possible worlds that result in truth leaves no room for thoughts about genuine impossibilities, since there are not possible worlds whose actuality would make an 'impossible thought' true. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: Negative existentials like 'no rabbits in this room' and 'no snakes in this room' seem to have the same truth conditions as well. I suppose the sentences must be translated into a logical form which suits the theory, with negation stuck on the end. |
| 7868 | Thought content is possible worlds that make the thought true; if that includes the actual world, it's true [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The content of our thoughts can be equated with those possible worlds whose actuality would make the thought true. On this model, a true thought is one whose content includes the actual world, while a false thought is one whose content does not. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the possible worlds semantics version of truth conditions theories of meaning. Papineau offers a nice difficulty for the theory (Idea 7869). Dummett says the whole approach is circular, because content precedes truth. |
| 3516 | The Private Language argument only means people may misjudge their experiences [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: I take the moral of the Private Language argument to be that there must be room for error in people's judgements about their experiences, not that those judgements must necessarily be expressed in a language used by a community. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 4.4 n10) | |
| A reaction: These two readings don't seem to be in conflict, and the argument must have something to say about the communal nature of thought expressed in language. Language imposes introspection on us? |
| 7853 | Causation is based on either events, or facts, or states of affairs [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Any serious theory of the mind-brain must explain whether it thinks of causation in terms of events, facts, or states of affairs. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §6) | |
| A reaction: I instantly prefer events, simply because they can be specified a little more precisely than the other two. Since cause has a direction in time, it would be nice to specify the times of its components, and events have times. |
| 7857 | Causes are instantiations of properties by particulars, or they are themselves basic particulars [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: One view of causes is that they are facts, or instantiations of properties (maybe by particulars, making them 'Kim-events'); the alternative view is that causes themselves are basic particulars ('Davidson-events'). | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Like Papineau, I incline to the Kim view. It is too easy for philosophers to treat key ideas as unanalysable axioms of thought. An event typically has components and features. It is a contingent matter whether there are any events. |
| 20976 | The completeness of physics cannot be proved [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: There is no knock down argument for the completeness of physics. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 7) | |
| A reaction: This is commendably honest, given that he pins his view of the mind on it. He makes the case sound overwhelming, though. The thing which would breach the completeness is like the Loch Ness monster - you can't prove it isn't there, if it hides. |
| 20970 | Determinism is possible without a complete physics, if mental forces play a role [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: We can accept determinism without accepting physical determinism, and so without accepting the completeness of physics. ...We can have a deterministic model in which sui generis mental forces play an essential role. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 3) | |
| A reaction: Papineau cites (on p.241) the 18th century biologist Robert Whytt as an example of this view. |
| 20974 | Modern biological research, especially into the cell, has revealed no special new natural forces [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: In the 1950s a great deal became known about biochemical and neurophysiological processes, especially at the level of the cell, and none of it gave any evidence for the existence of special forces not found elsewhere in nature. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], A 6) | |
| A reaction: Papineau says that this plus the conservation of energy makes the closure of physics faily conclusive. I would think the similar failure of modern research into the brain to find evidence of weird forces strengthens the case. |
| 20975 | Quantum 'wave collapses' seem to violate conservation of energy [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The conservation of energy is apparently violated by 'wave collapses' in quantum systems. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], A 7 n15) | |
| A reaction: One could imagine it being a little harder to verify the conservation of energy at the quantum levels, where particles and anti-particles pop in and out of existence. I've been wondering why there is some suspicion of collapses. |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |