Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Michael Faraday, George Dickie and Steven Pinker

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14 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
7508 Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker]
     Full Idea: Good reductionism (also called 'hierarchical reductionism') consists not of replacing one field of knowledge with another, but of connecting or unifying them.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.4)
     A reaction: A nice simple clarification. In this sense I am definitely a reductionist about mind (indeed, about everything). There is nothing threatening to even 'spiritual' understanding by saying that it is connected to the brain.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 2. Associationism
7510 Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker]
     Full Idea: Connectionists do not, of course, believe that the mind is a blank slate, but they do believe in the closest mechanistic equivalent, a general purpose learning device.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: This shows the closeness of connectionism to Hume's associationism (Idea 2189), which was just a minimal step away from Locke's mind as 'white paper' (Idea 7507). Pinker is defending 'human nature', but connectionism has a point.
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 4. Memory
7513 Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker]
     Full Idea: Are memories stored in protein sequences, in new neurons or synapses, or in changes in the strength of existing synapses?
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: This seems to be a neat summary of current neuroscientific thinking about memory. If you are thinking that memory couldn't possibly be so physical, don't forget the mind-boggling number of events involved in each tiny memory. See Idea 6668.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
7509 Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The roundworm only has 959 cells, and 302 neurons in a fixed wiring diagram; it eats, mates, approaches and avoids certain smells, and that's about it. This makes it obvious that human 'free' behaviour comes from our complex biological makeup.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: I find this a persuasive example. Three hundred trillion neurons cannot possibly produce behaviour which is more than broadly predictable, and then it is the environment and culture that make it predictable, not the biology.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
7511 Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The appeal of neural networks is that they automatically generalize their training to similar new items. If one has been trained to think tigers eat frosted flakes, it will generalise that lions do too, because it knows tigers as sets of features.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: This certainly is appealing, because it offers a mechanistic account of abstraction and universals, which everyone agrees are central to proper thinking.
7512 There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG]
     Full Idea: Connectionist networks have difficulty with the kind/individual distinction (ducks/this duck), with compositionality (relations), with quantification (reference of 'all'), with recursion (embedded thoughts), and the categorical reasoning (exceptions).
     From: report of Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) by PG - Db (ideas)
     A reaction: [Read Pinker p.80!] These are essentially all the more sophisticated aspects of logical reasoning that Pinker can think of. Personally I would be reluctant to say a priori that connectionism couldn't cope with these things, just because they seem tough.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
20443 The aesthetic attitude is nothing more than paying close attention [Dickie, by Giovannelli]
     Full Idea: Once analysed, Dickie claimed, the so-called aesthetic attitude is not special at all, but is rather just a matter of close attention and focus on the subject.
     From: report of George Dickie (The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude [1964]) by Alessandro Giovannelli - Some contemporary developments (aesthetics) 1
     A reaction: Sounds wrong. If a paint specialist gives close attention to a painting, they do not necessarily have an aesthetic view of it. You need to know the aim of the activity, just as when you watch a game.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 6. Art as Institution
20329 A work of art is an artifact created for the artworld [Dickie]
     Full Idea: A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.
     From: George Dickie (The New Institutional Theory of Art [1983], p.53)
     A reaction: This is the culminating definition in his paper, deriving originally from Danto, and an improvement of his earlier more complex definition. Since this definition amounts to 'this is art if I say it is art', it doesn't seem to reveal much.
8114 The institutional theory says only a competent expert can decree something to be an art work [Dickie, by Gardner]
     Full Idea: Dickie's institutional theory of art says that something is a work of art if and only if it has had that status conferred on it by a competent member of the artworld.
     From: report of George Dickie (Introduction to Aesthetics [1997], Ch.8) by Sebastian Gardner - Aesthetics 3.1
     A reaction: The idea that a single 'competent' person can do this sounds daft, and probably circular. A consensus in the artworld sounds more plausible, but this still leaves the revolutionary genius, who - in retrospect - produced unrecognised 'art'.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
7505 Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker]
     Full Idea: To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Pref)
     A reaction: The point is that modern liberal thinking says everything is nurture (which can be changed), not nature (which can't). Virtue theory, of which I am a fan, requires a concept of human nature, as the thing which can attain excellence in its function.
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 2. Electrodynamics / b. Fields
15314 Faraday's single field of variable forces introduces a criterion of Unity into what is ultimate [Faraday, by Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: In Faraday lines of force picture the directional structure of powers,...so the fundamental entity is a single, unified field. ...A new criterion of the ultimate has stepped in: Unity. The universal field is still the final explanation, but not invariant.
     From: report of Michael Faraday (Experimental Researches in Electricity [1859]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 9.II.B
     A reaction: Almost Parmenides, except that the field is not invariant. But that was always the ancient objection to the One - that it offered no explanation of change.
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 2. Life
7516 In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker]
     Full Idea: In 1828 Friedrich Wöhler showed [by synthesising urea in the laboratory] that the stuff of life is not a magical, pulsating gel, but ordinary compounds following the laws of chemistry.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.3)
     A reaction: Wöhler synthesised urea in the laboratory.
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
7515 All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The overwhelming evidence is that the process of evolution, far from being intelligent and purposeful, is wasteful and cruel.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.7)
     A reaction: This is why opponents should reject evolution totally, rather than compromise with it. Stick to a 6000-year-old world, fossils sent to test our faith, and species created in a flash (with no pain or waste).
7514 Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The originator of 'intelligent design' (the biochemist Michael Behe) takes every phenomenon whose evolutionary history has not yet been figured out, and chalks it up to design by default.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.7)
     A reaction: This seems to summarise the strategy very nicely. The theory essentially exploits the 'wow!' factor. The bigger the wow! the more likely it is that it was created by God. But research has been eroding our wows steadily for four hundred years.