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19743
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A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4)
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A reaction:
This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role?
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13165
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Geometrical proofs do not show causes, as when we prove a triangle contains two right angles [Proclus]
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Full Idea:
Geometry does not ask 'why?' ..When from the exterior angle equalling two opposite interior angles it is shown that the interior angles make two right angles, this is not a causal demonstration. With no exterior angle they still equal two right angles.
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From:
Proclus (Commentary on Euclid's 'Elements' [c.452], p.161-2), quoted by Paolo Mancosu - Explanation in Mathematics §5
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A reaction:
A very nice example. It is hard to imagine how one might demonstrate the cause of the angles making two right angles. If you walk, turn left x°, then turn left y°, then turn left z°, and x+y+z=180°, you end up going in the original direction.
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19741
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If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2)
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A reaction:
In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong.
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19742
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Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3)
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A reaction:
This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'.
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9569
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The origin of geometry started in sensation, then moved to calculation, and then to reason [Proclus]
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Full Idea:
It is unsurprising that geometry was discovered in the necessity of Nile land measurement, since everything in the world of generation goes from imperfection to perfection. They would naturally pass from sense-perception to calculation, and so to reason.
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From:
Proclus (Commentary on Euclid's 'Elements' [c.452]), quoted by Charles Chihara - A Structural Account of Mathematics 9.12 n55
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A reaction:
The last sentence is the core of my view on abstraction, that it proceeds by moving through levels of abstraction, approaching more and more general truths.
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