80 ideas
| 12249 | 'Animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The standard classification holds that 'animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: My understanding of 'difference' would take it down to the level of the individual, so the question is - which did Aristotle believe in. Not all commentators agree with Oderberg, and Wedin thinks the individual substance is paramount. |
| 12242 | Definition distinguishes one kind from another, and individuation picks out members of the kind [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: To define something just means to set forth its limits in such a way that one can distinguish it from all other things of a different kind. To distinguish it from all other things of the same kind belongs to the theory of 'individuation'. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: I take Aristotle to have included individuation as part of his understanding of definition. Are tigers a kind, or are fierce tigers a kind, and is my tiger one-of-a-kind? |
| 14713 | Truth in a scenario is the negation in that scenario being a priori incoherent [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The epistemic 1-intension for a sentence S is True at a scenario W iff (W and not-S) is a priori incoherent. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (Epistemic Two-Dimensional Semantics [2004], p.180-4), quoted by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics | |
| A reaction: See Two-Dimensional Semantics (in 'Language') and Chalmers for the background to this idea. I love the coherence view of justification, but get a bit nervous when people start defining truth in that way. |
| 12238 | The Aristotelian view is that numbers depend on (and are abstracted from) other things [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian account of numbers is that their existence depends on the existence of things that are not numbers, ..since numbers are abstractions from the existence of things. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the deeply unfashionable view to which I am attached. The problem is the status of transfinite, complex etc numbers. They look like fictions to me. |
| 12254 | Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Being is heterogeneous: there is substantial being, accidental being, complete being, incomplete being, necessary being, contingent being, possible being, absolute being, relative being, intrinsic being, extrinsic being, and so on. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Dependent being? Oderberg is giving the modern scholastic view. Personally I take 'being' to be univocal, even if it can be qualified in all sorts of ways. I don't believe we actually have any grasp at all of different ways to exist. |
| 2392 | Properties supervene if you can't have one without the other [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties supervene on A-properties if no two possible situations are identical with respect to their A-properties while differing in their B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would have thought that if this condition is achieved, then we could go on to say B-properties supervene on A because A is causing them. We shouldn't be shy about this. Personally I think the Bs are necessary. |
| 2393 | Logical supervenience is when one set of properties must be accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties logically supervene on A-properties if no two logically possible situations are identical with respect to their A-properties but distinct with respect to their B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the gap into which Chalmers wants to slip zombies. He's wrong. He thinks that because he can imagine Bs without As, that this makes their separation logically possible. No doubt he can imagine a bonfire on the moon. |
| 2394 | Natural supervenience is when one set of properties is always accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties supervene naturally on A-properties if any two naturally possible situations with the same A-properties have the same B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Since it is hard to imagine a healthy working brain failing to produce consciousness, given the current laws of nature, almost everyone (except extreme dualists) must concede that they are naturally supervenient. I wonder why they are. |
| 2398 | Reduction requires logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Reductive explanation requires a logical supervenience relation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.3) | |
| A reaction: Why can't you say that in another world there are zombies, but in this world the mind is explained by its natural supervenience on the brain (given the current natural laws)? Driving on the left in Britain is explained by current laws. |
| 16048 | Physicalism says in any two physically indiscernible worlds the positive facts are the same [Chalmers, by Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Chalmers says that physicalism is true in a world w just in case every positive fact that obtains in w also obtains in any world physically indiscernible from w. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.1) by Karen Bennett - Supervenience | |
| A reaction: [Bennett summarises Chalmers' argument on pp.39-40] Chalmers says negative facts depend on the world's limits, which aren't part of the physical facts of the world. |
| 2401 | All facts are either physical, experiential, laws of nature, second-order final facts, or indexical facts about me [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Facts about the world are exhausted by physical facts, conscious experiences, laws of nature, a second-order that's-all fact, and perhaps an indexical fact about my location. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) |
| 12253 | If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a conclusive objection to claims for any such thing to be abstract. See, for example, Dummett's claim that the Equator is an abstract object. |
| 12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: We need a theory of essence to help us distinguish between the powers that do and do not belong to the essence of a thing. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a very good reason for searching for the essence of things, though the need to distinguish does not guarantee that there really is something to distinguish. Maybe powers just come and go. A power is essential in you but not in me? |
| 12252 | Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The demise of 'substance' was wholly due to mistaken notions, mainly from the empiricists, by which it was conceived either as an unknowable featureless substratum, or as dispensable in favour of some or other bundle theory. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a view that the notion of substance is essential to explaining how we understand the world. I am inclined to think that if we accept the notion of essence we can totally dispense with the notion of substance. |
| 12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Real essences are objectively real, they concern being, they are knowable, they are definable, and they are classifiable. | |
| From: report of David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is a lovely summary (spread over two pages) of what essentialism is all about. It might be added that they are about unity and identity. The fact that they are intrinsically classifiable seems to mislead some people into a confused view. |
| 12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Nominalism is consistent with belief in individual essences, but real essentialism postulates essences as universals (quiddities). Nominalists are nearly always empiricists, though the converse may not be the case. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is where I part company with Oderberg. I want to argue that the nominalist/individualist view is more in tune with what Aristotle believed (though he spotted a dilemma here). Only individual essences explain individual behaviour. |
| 12240 | Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Real essentialism, more than any other ontological theory, stresses and seeks to explain the unity of objects. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: A key piece in the jigsaw I am beginning to assemble. If explanation is the aim, and essence the key to explanation, then explaining unity is the part of it that connects with other metaphysics, about identity and so on. 'Units' breed numbers. |
| 12247 | Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Essence is not reducible to explanatory relations, ...and fundamentally the role of essence is not explanatory but constitutive. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Effectively, this asserts essence as part of 'pure' metaphysics, but I like impure metaphysics, as the best explanation of the things we can know. Hence we can speculate about constitution only by means of explanation. Constitution is active. |
| 12258 | Properties are not part of an essence, but they flow from it [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: A substance is constituted by its essence, and properties are a species of accident. No property of a thing is part of a thing's essence, though properties flow from the essence. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this. How can you know of something which has no properties? I'm wondering if the whole notion of a 'property' should be eliminated from good metaphysics. |
| 12257 | Could we replace essence with collections of powers? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Why not do away with talk of essences and replace it with talk of powers pure and simple, or reduce essences to collections of powers? But then what unites the powers, and could a power be lost, and is there entailment between the powers? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bennett and Hacker 2003 for this view] The point would seem to be that in addition to the powers, there are also identity and unity and kind-membership to be explained. Oderberg says the powers flow from the essence. |
| 12236 | Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, if two things must have identical properties because they are the same thing, this is because those properties are essential to the thing. Otherwise two things could be the same, even though one of them lacked a non-identifying property. |
| 16424 | Strong metaphysical necessity allows fewer possible worlds than logical necessity [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The hypothesized modality of 'strong' metaphysical necessity says there are fewer metaphysically possible worlds than there are logically possible worlds, and the a posteriori necessities can stem from factors independent of the semantics of terms. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers sets this up in order to reject it. He notes that it involves a big gap between conceivability and possibility. If a world is logically possible but metaphysically impossible, then it is impossible, surely? |
| 16425 | Metaphysical necessity is a bizarre, brute and inexplicable constraint on possibilities [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Strong metaphysical necessities will put constraints on the space of possible worlds that are brute and inexplicable. That's fine for our world, but bizarre for possible worlds. The realm of the possible has no room for such arbitrary constraint. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: He would say this, given that he wants zombies to be possible, just because he thinks he can conceive of them. Presumably he thinks a raging bonfire with no flames is also possible. His objection here is weak. |
| 16426 | How can we know the metaphysical impossibilities; the a posteriori only concerns this world [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If some worlds are metaphysically impossible, it seems that we could never know it. By assumption the information is not available a priori, and a posteriori information only tells us about our world. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: You need essentialism to reply to this. If you discover the essence of something, you can predict its possibilities. You discover the natures of the powers and dispositions of actuality. |
| 12250 | Bodies have act and potency, the latter explaining new kinds of existence [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental thesis of real essentialism is that every finite material body has a twofold composition, being a compound of act and potency. ...Reality can take on new kinds of existence because there is a principle of potentiality inherent in reality. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: I take from this remark that the 'powers' discussed by Molnar and other scientific essentialists is roughly the same as 'potentiality' identified by Aristotle. |
| 13956 | Kripke is often taken to be challenging a priori insights into necessity [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: At various points in this book, I use a priori methods to gain insight into necessity; this is the sort of thing that Kripke's account is often taken to challenge. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers uses his 2-D approach to split off an a priori part from Kripke's a posterior part of our insight into necessity. |
| 13963 | Maybe logical possibility does imply conceivability - by an ideal mind [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If we understand conceivability as conceivability-in-principle (by a superbeing?) then it is plausible that logical possibility of a world implies conceivability of the world, so logical possibility of a statement implies its conceivability. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: I see nothing incoherent in the possibility that there might be aspects of existence which are utterly inconceivable to any conscious mind. Infinity might be a start, if an 'infinite' mind were impossible. |
| 16473 | Modal Rationalism: conceivability gives a priori access to modal truths [Chalmers, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Chalmers' 'modal rationalist' is one who identifies what is possible with what is conceivable; the central claim of the doctrine is that we have a priori access to modal truth. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? [2002]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 5 | |
| A reaction: A helpful clarification, as I can now see how hopelessly and utterly wrong Chalmers is (about almost everything), and I find my confidence in any sort of genuine a priori knowledge (except of conceptual relations) dwindling by the minute. |
| 19258 | Evaluate primary possibility from some world, and secondary possibility from this world [Chalmers, by Vaidya] |
| Full Idea: For Chalmers, that water is XYZ is 'primary possible' (a priori, or conceptually), because it is true in some world considered as actual. It is 'secondary impossible', when it is evaluated from the Earth as actual. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? [2002]) by Anand Vaidya - Understanding and Essence Intro | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is Chalmers' account of how we can know possibility from conceivability, via his two-dimensional semantics (see alphabetical themes). |
| 2407 | One can wrongly imagine two things being non-identical even though they are the same (morning/evening star) [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Just because one can imagine that A and B are not identical, it does not follow that A and B are not identical (think of the morning star and the evening star). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) |
| 12234 | Realism about possible worlds is circular, since it needs a criterion of 'possible' [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Any realist theory of possible worlds will be circular in its attempt to illuminate modality, for there has to be some criterion of what counts as a possible world. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Seems right. At the very least, if we are going to rule out contradictory worlds as impossible (and is there a more obvious criterion?), we already need to understand 'impossible' in order to state that rule. |
| 12235 | Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The necessity of identity carries the appearance of triviality, because it is the eviscerated contemporary essentialist form of a foundational real essentialist truth to the effect that every object has its own nature. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this. Writers like Mackie and Forbes have to put the 'trivial' aspects of essence to one side, without ever seeing why there is such a problem. Real substantial essences have necessity of identity as a side-effect. |
| 12237 | Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The rigid designator approach to essentialism has essentialist assumptions. ..The necessity of identity is built into the very conception of a rigid designator,..and Leibniz's Law is presupposed...and necessity of origin presupposes sufficiency of origin. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. He cites Salmon 1981:196 for the last point] This sounds right. You feel happy to 'rigidly designate' something precisely because you think there is something definite and stable which can be designated. |
| 2390 | We attribute beliefs to people in order to explain their behaviour [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Belief is something of an explanatory construct: we attribute beliefs to others largely in order to explain their behaviour. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.3) |
| 14712 | A sentence is a priori if no possible way the world might actually be could make it false [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The Core Thesis for rationalist 2D semantics is that for any sentence S, S is apriori iff S has a necessary 1-intension. (That is, there is no possible way the world might be that, if it actually obtained, would make S false). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (Epistemic Two-Dimensional Semantics [2004], p.165), quoted by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 2.3.2 | |
| A reaction: [The parenthesis is by Schroeter] A '1-intension' is defined by a diagonal on a 2D semantic matrix. Chalmers defends conceivability as the guide to possibility. This is a very traditional view of the a priori, expressed in modern terms. |
| 2397 | 'Perception' means either an action or a mental state [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: 'Perception' can be used to refer either to the act of perceiving, or the internal state that arises as a result. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.2) |
| 2422 | The structure of the retina has already simplified the colour information which hits it [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: In vision three varieties of cones abstract out information according to the amount of light present in various overlapping wavelength ranges. Immediately, many distinctions present in the original light wave are lost. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.3) |
| 2396 | Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.2) |
| 2426 | Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'grain problem' for materialism was raised by Sellars: how could an experience be identical with a vast collection of physiological events, given the homogeneity of the former, and the fine-grainedness of the latter? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.5) | |
| A reaction: An interesting question, but it doesn't sound like a huge problem, given the number of connections in the brain. If the brain were expanded (as Leibniz suggested), the 'grains' might start to appear. We can't propose a 'deceived homunculus' to solve it. |
| 2391 | Can we be aware but not conscious? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is always accompanied by awareness, but awareness as I have described it need not be accompanied by consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.5) | |
| A reaction: One should consult Chalmers, but he is stretching the English word 'awareness' rather far. This road leads to saying that thermostats are 'aware', and information is aware of its content, which is probably very wrong indeed. Compare Idea 2415. |
| 2412 | Can we explain behaviour without consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: However the metaphysics of causation turns out, it seems relatively straightforward that a physical explanation of behaviour can be given that neither appeals to nor implies the existence of consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers needs this to support his idea that zombies are possible, but it strikes me as implausible. I find it inconceivable that our behaviour would be unchanged if we retained 'awareness' but lost consciousness. Try visiting an art gallery. |
| 2386 | Hard Problem: why brains experience things [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The Hard Problem is: why is all this brain processing accompanied by an experienced inner life? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The word 'accompanied' is interesting. A very epiphenomenal word! The answer to this neo-dualist question may be: if you do enough complex representational brain processing at high speed, it adds up to some which we call 'experience'. |
| 2416 | What turns awareness into consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Given the necessity of awareness, any candidate for an underlying law will have the form "Awareness plus something gives rise to consciousness" (…but simplicity suggests leaving out the 'something'). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.6.5) | |
| A reaction: You can't leave out the 'something' if you think awareness without consciousness is possible. The phenomenon of blindsight suggests that a whole extra brain area must come into play to produce the consciousness. It may not have a distinct ontology. |
| 2423 | Going down the scale, where would consciousness vanish? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Moving down the scale from lizards to slugs, there doesn't seem much reason to suppose that phenomenology should wink out while a reasonably complex perceptual psychology persists….and if you move on down to thermostats, where would it wink out? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.4) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem much of an argument, particularly if its conclusion is that there is phenomenology in thermostats. When day changes into night, where does it 'wink out'? Are we to conclude that night doesn't exist, or that day doesn't exist? |
| 2403 | Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Even if we knew every last detail about the physics of the universe, that information would not lead us to postulate the existence of conscious experience. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.3) | |
| A reaction: I find this a very strange claim. Given that the biggest gap in our physical knowledge is that concerning the brain and consciousness, Chalmer is no position to say this. Why shouldn't a physical revelation suddenly make consciousness inevitable? |
| 2400 | Is intentionality just causal connections? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Intentional properties should be analyzable in terms of causal connections to behaviour and the environment….so there is no separate ontological problem of intentionality. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) | |
| A reaction: There could only be no ontological problem if intentional states were purely physical. Everything is made of something (I presume). |
| 2389 | Sometimes we don't notice our pains [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: What of the fact that we speak of pains that last for a day, even though there are times that they are not conscious? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This is hardly proof that there are non-conscious pains. Otherwise we might say we have a pain even after it has left us for good (because it might return), which seems daft. Not a crucial issue. The word 'pain' has two uses… |
| 2419 | Why should qualia fade during silicon replacement? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If parts of the brain are gradually replaced, perhaps by silicon chips, ...the most reasonable hypothesis is that qualia do not fade at all. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.3) | |
| A reaction: As it stands this could either assert dualism or functionalism. Personally I think the most reasonable hypothesis is that qualia would fade. Chalmers needs more imagination (or less?). What is it like to experience Alzheimer's Disease? |
| 2402 | It seems possible to invert qualia [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It seems entirely coherent that experiences could be inverted while physical structure is duplicated exactly. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: Strange how what seems 'entirely coherent' to a leading philosopher strikes me as totally incoherent. I would have thought it was only coherent to a dualist. I don't believe God makes the physics on Thursday, and adds experiences on Friday. |
| 2415 | In blindsight both qualia and intentionality are missing [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: In blindsight, the information does not qualify as directly available for global control, and subjects are not truly aware of the information. The lack of experience corresponds directly to a lack of awareness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.6.3) | |
| A reaction: Blindsight patients give correct answers about objects in their visual field, and you need 'global control' to speak the truth, even if you lack confidence in what you are saying. Philosophers should not be frightened of blindsight. Cf Idea 2391. |
| 2414 | When distracted we can totally misjudge our own experiences [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If one is distracted one may make judgements about one's experiences that are quite false. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.5) | |
| A reaction: Of course, when one is distracted one can make mistakes about anything. This does imply that if there is indeed infallible knowledge to be had from introspection, it will at least require full concentration to achieve it. Cf Idea 8883. |
| 2409 | Maybe dualist interaction is possible at the quantum level? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The only form of interactionist dualism that has seemed even remotely tenable in the contemporary picture is one that exploits certain properties of quantum mechanics. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.4) | |
| A reaction: I think he is bluffing. No doubt quantum mechanics offers many intriguing possibilities, such as the interaction of many worlds within the mind, but I am not aware that anything non-physical is ever postulated. Physicists don't deal in the non-physical. |
| 2411 | Supervenience makes interaction laws possible [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: There is an objection to dualism that it cannot explain how the physical and the nonphysical interact, but the answer is simple on a natural supervenience framework - they interact by virtue of psychophysical laws (…which are as eternal as physics). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.6) | |
| A reaction: There are different sorts of laws. What Chalmers is hoping for would be a mere regularity, like the connection of cancer to smoking, but the objection is that the discovery of causal mechanisms, to give truly explanatory laws, is simply impossible. |
| 2424 | It is odd if experience is a very recent development [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It would be odd for a fundamental property like experience to be instantiated for the first time only relatively late in the history of the universe, and even then only in occasional complex systems. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.4) | |
| A reaction: The assumption of this remark is that experience is 'fundamental', which seems to claim that it is a separate ontological category. Maybe, but experience doesn't seem to be a thing. 'Process' seems a better term, and that is not a novelty in the universe. |
| 2413 | If I can have a zombie twin, my own behaviour doesn't need consciousness [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of my zombie twin's claims does not depend on consciousness, as there is none in his world. It follows that the explanation of my claims is also independent of the existence of consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Epiphenomenalism says my accounts of my consciousness are NOT because of my consciousness (which seems daft). Chalmers here gives a very good reason why we should not be a friend of philosophical zombies. |
| 2417 | Does consciousness arise from fine-grained non-reductive functional organisation? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: I claim that conscious experience arises from fine-grained functional organisation….. we might call it 'non-reductive functionalism'. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Chalmers' final position. If consciousness is 'emergent' and cannot be reduced, what has fine-grained got to do with it? I take 'fine-grained' to be a hint at why the brain becomes conscious. Fine-grained functions cause something. |
| 2428 | Maybe the whole Chinese Room understands Chinese, though the person doesn't [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Opponents typically reply to Searle's argument by conceding that the person in the room does not understand Chinese, and arguing that the understanding should instead be attributed to the system consisting of the person and the pieces of paper. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 4.9.4) | |
| A reaction: Searle himself spotted this reply. It seems plausible to say that a book contains 'understanding', so the translation dictionary may have it. A good Room would cope with surprise questions. |
| 2418 | The Chinese Mind doesn't seem conscious, but then nor do brains from outside [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: While it may be intuitively implausible that Block's 'mind' made of the population of China would give rise to conscious experience, it is equally intuitively implausible that a brain should give rise to experience. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like good support for functionalism, but I am more inclined to see it as a critique of 'intuition' as a route to truth where minds are concerned. Intuition isn't designed for that sort of work. |
| 2406 | H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about that [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Searle argues that H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about liquidity. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Good! |
| 2405 | Perhaps consciousness is physically based, but not logically required by that base [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It remains plausible that consciousness arises from a physical basis, even though it is not entailed by that basis. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find this totally implausible. Since every other property or process in the known universe seems to be entailed by its physical basis, I don't expect the mind to be an exception. |
| 2395 | Zombies imply natural but not logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It seems logically possible that a creature physically identical to a conscious creature might have no conscious experiences (a zombie)…so conscious experience supervenes naturally but not logically on the physical. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: "It seems possible" isn't much of an argument. This claim by Chalmers has been a great incentive to reassess what is or isn't possible. Can a brain lack consciousness? Can a tree fall over silently? Can cyanide stop poisoning us? |
| 9318 | Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Chalmers, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| Full Idea: In Chalmers's non-reductive theory, phenomenal consciousness is treated as a fundamental feature of the world, that cannot be explained in nonphenomenal terms. Theory is still possible, in the regularities of interaction. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996]) by U Kriegel / K Williford - Intro to 'Self-Representational Consciousness' n2 | |
| A reaction: I can't make much sense of this view without a backing of panpsychism. How could a 'fundamental' feature of reality only begin to appear when life evolves on one particular planet? But 'panpsychism' is a warning of big misunderstandings. See Idea 2424. |
| 2404 | Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It is consistent with the physical facts about a mouse that it has conscious experiences, and it is consistent with the physical facts that it does not. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.4) | |
| A reaction: No. It is consistent with our KNOWLEDGE of a mouse that it may or may not be conscious. I take this to be the key error of Chalmers, which led him to the mistaken idea that zombies are possible. The usual confusion of ontology and epistemology…. |
| 2429 | Temperature (etc.) is agreed to be reducible, but it is multiply realisable [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Many physical phenomena that are often taken to be paradigms of reducibility (e.g. temperature) are in fact multiply realizable. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], n 2.20) | |
| A reaction: So multiple realisability isn't such a big problem for physicalism. I take it, though, that all hot things have some physical type of event in common (a level of molecular energy). Finding the level of commonality is the challenge. |
| 18403 | Indexicals may not be objective, but they are a fact about the world as I see it [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Even if the indexical is not an objective fact about the world, it is a fact about the world as I find it, and it is the world as I find it that needs explanation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers treats them as important, whereas the way he expresses it could make them eliminable, if the world seen by him is eliminable. |
| 14708 | Rationalist 2D semantics posits necessary relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility [Chalmers, by Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Chalmers seeks a rationalist interpretation of the 2D framework, situated in the tradition which posits a golden triangle of necessary constitutive relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 2.3.1 | |
| A reaction: The first prize of the project is to get some sort of apriori knowledge about these crucial relations. I suppose the superduper prize is to get apriori knowledge of the possibilities of the world, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that. |
| 13958 | The 'primary intension' is non-empirical, and fixes extensions based on the actual-world reference [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'primary intension' of a concept is a function from worlds to extensions reflecting the way the actual-world reference is fixed, ...which is independent of empirical factors. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This bit is a priori because the concept picks out something, no matter what its essence turns out to be. I take it to be a priori because it is stipulative. |
| 2399 | Meaning has split into primary ("watery stuff"), and secondary counterfactual meaning ("H2O") [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The single Fregean intension has fragmented into two: a primary intension ("watery stuff") that fixes reference in the actual world, and a secondary intension ("H2O") that picks out reference in counterfactual possible worlds. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: No one actually performs this schizoid double operation, so this is theory disconnected from life. What is the role of 'H2O' in the actual world, and 'watery stuff' in the others? |
| 13959 | The 'secondary intension' is determined by rigidifying (as H2O) the 'water' picked out in the actual world [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'secondary intension' of 'water' picks out the water (H2O) in all worlds. ..It is determined by first evaluating the primary intension at the actual world, and then rigidifying it so that the same sort of thing is picked out in all possible worlds. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: No wonder Soames calls 2-D semantics 'Byzantine'. If we don't actually do this psychologically, what exactly is Chalmers describing? Is this revisionary semantics - i.e. how we ought to do it if we want to talk about the world properly? |
| 13957 | Primary and secondary intensions are the a priori (actual) and a posteriori (counterfactual) aspects of meaning [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Primary intension picks out a referent in a world considered as actual; secondary considers it as counterfactual. ...(62) We can think of the primary and secondary intensions as the a priori and a posteriori aspects of meaning, respectively. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: Primary intension is a priori because, it seems, it is stipulative ('water' means 'the watery stuff'), whereas the secondary intension (in counterfactual worlds) is empirical ('water' is used to refer to H2O/XYZ). We get internalism and externalism. |
| 13961 | We have 'primary' truth-conditions for the actual world, and derived 'secondary' ones for counterfactual worlds [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: 'Primary' truth-conditions tell us how the actual world has to be for an utterance of the statement to be true in that world; ....'secondary' truth-conditions give the truth-value in counterfactual worlds, given that the actual world turned out some way. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the reinterpretation of the truth-conditions account in terms of two-dimensional semantics. My first reaction is not very positive. Why can't we fix our references in counterfactual worlds, and then apply them to the actual (like inventions)? |
| 14739 | 'Water' is two-dimensionally inconstant, with different intensions in different worlds [Chalmers, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: For Chalmers, 'water' is two-dimensionally inconstant, in that it has different secondary intensions relative to different worlds of utterance. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics [2006]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 7.2 | |
| A reaction: In this way 'water' is regarded as being like an indexical (such as 'I'), which has a fixed meaning component, and a second component which varies with different utterances. Maybe. |
| 13962 | Two-dimensional semantics gives a 'primary' and 'secondary' proposition for each statement [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If we see a proposition as a function from possible worlds to truth-values, then the two sets of truth-conditions yield two propositions associated with any statement. A 'primary' for those which express a truth, and 'secondary' for counterfactual truth. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is where 2-D semantics becomes increasingly 'Byzantine'. Intuition and introspection don't seem to offer me two different propositions for every sentence I utter. I can't see this theory catching on, even if it is technically beautiful. |
| 13960 | In two-dimensional semantics we have two aspects to truth in virtue of meaning [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Both the 'primary' and 'secondary' intension qualify as truths in virtue of meaning; they are simply true in virtue of different aspects of meaning. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of two-dimensional semantics, which has split Fregean sense into an a priori and an a posterior part. Chalmers is trying to hang onto the idea that we might see necessity as largely analytic. |
| 12245 | Essence is the source of a thing's characteristic behaviour [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: In the traditional terminology, function follows essence. Essence just is the principle from which flows the characteristic behaviour of a thing. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence essence must be identified if the behaviour is to be explained, and a successful identification of essence is the terminus of our explanations. But the essences must go down to the micro-level. Explain non-characteristic behaviour? |
| 12246 | What makes Parmenidean reality a One rather than a Many? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Even if there were no multiplicity in unity - only a Parmenidean 'block' - still the question would arise as to what gave the amorphous lump its unity; by virtue of what would it be one rather than many? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Which is prior, division or unification? If it was divided, he would ask what divided it. One of them must be primitive, so why not unity? If one big Unity is primitive, why could not lots of unities be primitive? Etc. |
| 12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: It is incorrect to hold that the job of the real essentialist just is the job of the scientist. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably scientific essentialism, while being firmly a branch of metaphysics, is meant to clarify the activities of science, and thereby be of some practical use. You can't beat knowing what it is you are trying to do. |
| 12243 | The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Oderberg's point is that essence doesn't just occur at the bottom of the hierarchy of kinds, but can exist on a macro-level, and need not be a concealed structure, as we see in the essence of a pile of stones. |
| 16427 | Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Presumably it is in God's powers, when creating the world, to do anything that is logically possible. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't really understand why anyone would say that the only constraint on God is logic. Presumably no logic is breached if God places in object simultaneously in two spacetime locations, but it would be an impressive achievement. |
| 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) |