206 ideas
| 3811 | Entailment and validity are relations, but inference is a human activity [Searle] |
| 3822 | Theory involves accepting conclusions, and so is a special case of practical reason [Searle] |
| 3812 | Rationality is the way we coordinate our intentionality [Searle] |
| 3806 | Rationality is built into the intentionality of the mind, and its means of expression [Searle] |
| 3508 | Correspondence to the facts HAS to be the aim of enquiry [Searle] |
| 3809 | If complex logic requires rules, then so does basic logic [Searle] |
| 7746 | We don't normally think of names as having senses (e.g. we don't give definitions of them) [Searle] |
| 7747 | How can a proper name be correlated with its object if it hasn't got a sense? [Searle] |
| 7748 | 'Aristotle' means more than just 'an object that was christened "Aristotle"' [Searle] |
| 7749 | Reference for proper names presupposes a set of uniquely referring descriptions [Searle] |
| 7750 | Proper names are logically connected with their characteristics, in a loose way [Searle] |
| 3810 | In real reasoning semantics gives validity, not syntax [Searle] |
| 21382 | Things get smaller without end [Anaxagoras] |
| 481 | Nothing is created or destroyed; there is only mixing and separation [Anaxagoras] |
| 21822 | Anaxagoras's concept of supreme Mind has a simple First and a multiple One [Anaxagoras, by Plotinus] |
| 19482 | Current physics says matter and antimatter should have reduced to light at the big bang [New Sci.] |
| 19483 | CP violation shows a decay imbalance in matter and antimatter, leading to matter's dominance [New Sci.] |
| 3473 | Reduction can be of things, properties, ideas or causes [Searle] |
| 5791 | Reduction is either by elimination, or by explanation [Searle] |
| 5799 | Eliminative reduction needs a gap between appearance and reality, as in sunsets [Searle] |
| 3841 | Users of 'supervenience' blur its causal and constitutive meanings [Searle] |
| 3532 | Solidity in a piston is integral to its structure, not supervenient [Maslin on Searle] |
| 3533 | Is supervenience just causality? [Searle, by Maslin] |
| 17995 | Basic is the potentially perceptible, then comes the contrary qualities, and finally the 'elements' [Anaxagoras] |
| 3454 | Reality is entirely particles in force fields [Searle] |
| 5790 | A property is 'emergent' if it is caused by elements of a system, when the elements lack the property [Searle] |
| 3471 | Some properties depend on components, others on their relations [Searle] |
| 3472 | Fully 'emergent' properties contradict our whole theory of causation [Searle] |
| 3837 | We can't understand something as a lie if beliefs aren't commitment to truth [Searle] |
| 3816 | Our beliefs are about things, not propositions (which are the content of the belief) [Searle] |
| 3833 | A belief is a commitment to truth [Searle] |
| 3490 | Beliefs only make sense as part of a network of other beliefs [Searle] |
| 3491 | Beliefs are part of a network, and also exist against a background [Searle] |
| 3828 | Thinking must involve a self, not just an "it" [Searle] |
| 20802 | Snow is not white, and doesn't even appear white, because it is made of black water [Anaxagoras, by Cicero] |
| 3482 | Perception is a function of expectation [Searle] |
| 13257 | The senses are too feeble to determine the truth [Anaxagoras] |
| 3493 | Memory is mainly a guide for current performance [Searle] |
| 3831 | Reasons can either be facts in the world, or intentional states [Searle] |
| 3830 | In the past people had a reason not to smoke, but didn't realise it [Searle] |
| 3832 | Causes (usually events) are not the same as reasons (which are never events) [Searle] |
| 22761 | We reveal unreliability in the senses when we cannot discriminate a slow change of colour [Anaxagoras, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| 19737 | A system can infer the structure of the world by making predictions about it [New Sci.] |
| 13256 | Nous is unlimited, self-ruling and pure; it is the finest thing, with great discernment and strength [Anaxagoras] |
| 13784 | Mind is self-ruling, pure, ordering and ubiquitous [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| 3463 | We don't have a "theory" that other people have minds [Searle] |
| 3457 | Other minds are not inferred by analogy, but are our best explanation [Searle] |
| 3480 | We experience unity at an instant and across time [Searle] |
| 5792 | Explanation of how we unify our mental stimuli into a single experience is the 'binding problem' [Searle] |
| 5786 | A system is either conscious or it isn't, though the intensity varies a lot [Searle] |
| 5794 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, which only exists from a subjective viewpoint [Searle] |
| 5795 | There isn't one consciousness (information-processing) which can be investigated, and another (phenomenal) which can't [Searle] |
| 3479 | The mind experiences space, but it is not experienced as spatial [Searle] |
| 3470 | Conscious creatures seem able to discriminate better [Searle] |
| 3486 | Unconscious thoughts are those capable of causing conscious ones [Searle] |
| 3503 | Consciousness results directly from brain processes, not from some intermediary like information [Searle] |
| 3465 | Either there is intrinsic intentionality, or everything has it [Searle] |
| 3484 | Water flowing downhill can be described as if it had intentionality [Searle] |
| 3489 | Intentional phenomena only make sense within a background [Searle] |
| 3494 | Intentionality is defined in terms of representation [Searle] |
| 3481 | Consciousness is essential and basic to intentionality [Searle] |
| 5788 | The use of 'qualia' seems to imply that consciousness and qualia are separate [Searle] |
| 4088 | Pain is not intentional, because it does not represent anything beyond itself [Searle] |
| 19736 | Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.] |
| 3823 | Being held responsible for past actions makes no sense without personal identity [Searle] |
| 3821 | Giving reasons for action requires reference to a self [Searle] |
| 3824 | A 'self' must be capable of conscious reasonings about action [Searle] |
| 3834 | An intentional, acting, rational being must have a self [Searle] |
| 3825 | Action requires a self, even though perception doesn't [Searle] |
| 3826 | A self must at least be capable of consciousness [Searle] |
| 3829 | Selfs are conscious, enduring, reasonable, active, free, and responsible [Searle] |
| 3827 | The self is neither an experience nor a thing experienced [Searle] |
| 3820 | The bundle must also have agency in order to act, and a self to act rationally [Searle] |
| 3467 | Neither introspection nor privileged access makes sense [Searle] |
| 3483 | Introspection is just thinking about mental states, not a special sort of vision [Searle] |
| 3468 | I cannot observe my own subjectivity [Searle] |
| 5118 | Anaxagoras says mind remains pure, and so is not affected by what it changes [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 3817 | Free will is most obvious when we choose between several reasons for an action [Searle] |
| 3808 | Rational decision making presupposes free will [Searle] |
| 3818 | We freely decide whether to make a reason for action effective [Searle] |
| 3469 | Mind and brain don't interact if they are the same [Searle] |
| 3487 | Without internal content, a zombie's full behaviour couldn't be explained [Searle] |
| 3485 | Wanting H2O only differs from wanting water in its mental component [Searle] |
| 3458 | Mental states only relate to behaviour contingently, not necessarily [Searle] |
| 3461 | Functionalists like the externalist causal theory of reference [Searle] |
| 2427 | Maybe understanding doesn't need consciousness, despite what Searle seems to think [Searle, by Chalmers] |
| 7389 | A program won't contain understanding if it is small enough to imagine [Dennett on Searle] |
| 7390 | If bigger and bigger brain parts can't understand, how can a whole brain? [Dennett on Searle] |
| 3496 | A program for Chinese translation doesn't need to understand Chinese [Searle] |
| 5789 | I now think syntax is not in the physics, but in the eye of the beholder [Searle] |
| 3499 | Computation presupposes consciousness [Searle] |
| 3501 | If we are computers, who is the user? [Searle] |
| 5798 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, so it cannot be reduced without omitting something [Searle] |
| 3456 | Consciousness is a brain property as liquidity is a water property [Searle] |
| 3475 | Property dualism denies reductionism [Searle] |
| 3455 | Property dualists tend to find the mind-body problem baffling [Searle] |
| 3453 | Property dualism is the reappearance of Cartesianism [Searle] |
| 5787 | There is non-event causation between mind and brain, as between a table and its solidity [Searle] |
| 3476 | Mind and brain are supervenient in respect of cause and effect [Searle] |
| 3477 | If mind-brain supervenience isn't causal, this implies epiphenomenalism [Searle] |
| 3531 | Mental events can cause even though supervenient, like the solidity of a piston [Searle] |
| 3478 | Upwards mental causation makes 'supervenience' irrelevant [Searle] |
| 3466 | Consciousness seems indefinable by conditions or categories [Searle] |
| 5797 | The pattern of molecules in the sea is much more complex than the complexity of brain neurons [Searle] |
| 3500 | Can the homunculus fallacy be beaten by recursive decomposition? [Searle] |
| 9317 | Searle argues that biology explains consciousness, but physics won't explain biology [Searle, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| 3474 | If mind is caused by brain, does this mean mind IS brain? [Searle] |
| 5796 | If tree rings contain information about age, then age contains information about rings [Searle] |
| 3497 | If mind is multiply realisable, it is possible that anything could realise it [Searle] |
| 3462 | We don't postulate folk psychology, we experience it [Searle] |
| 16419 | No one has yet devised a rationality test [New Sci.] |
| 16418 | People can be highly intelligent, yet very stupid [New Sci.] |
| 16417 | About a third of variation in human intelligence is environmental [New Sci.] |
| 19484 | Psychologists measure personality along five dimensions [New Sci.] |
| 3498 | Computation isn't a natural phenomenon, it is a way of seeing phenomena [Searle] |
| 3492 | Content is much more than just sentence meaning [Searle] |
| 3464 | There is no such thing as 'wide content' [Searle] |
| 3506 | We explain behaviour in terms of actual internal representations in the agent [Searle] |
| 3451 | Meaning is derived intentionality [Searle] |
| 3450 | Philosophy of language is a branch of philosophy of mind [Searle] |
| 3507 | Universal grammar doesn't help us explain anything [Searle] |
| 3495 | Shared Background makes translation possible, though variation makes it hard [Searle] |
| 3814 | Preferences can result from deliberation, not just precede it [Searle] |
| 3840 | We don't accept practical reasoning if the conclusion is unpalatable [Searle] |
| 3815 | The essence of humanity is desire-independent reasons for action [Searle] |
| 3839 | Only an internal reason can actually motivate the agent to act [Searle] |
| 3835 | If it is true, you ought to believe it [Searle] |
| 3836 | If this is a man, you ought to accept similar things as men [Searle] |
| 3505 | The function of a heart depends on what we want it to do [Searle] |
| 3838 | Promises hold because I give myself a reason, not because it is an institution [Searle] |
| 18231 | Anaxagoras said a person would choose to be born to contemplate the ordered heavens [Anaxagoras] |
| 3813 | 'Ought' implies that there is a reason to do something [Searle] |
| 631 | For Anaxagoras the Good Mind has no opposite, and causes all movement, for a higher reason [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 3504 | Chemistry entirely explains plant behaviour [Searle] |
| 22727 | Mind creates the world from a mixture of pure substances [Anaxagoras, by ] |
| 550 | Anaxagoras said that the number of principles was infinite [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 21383 | The ultimate constituents of reality are the homoeomeries [Anaxagoras, by Vlastos] |
| 13208 | Anaxagoreans regard the homoeomeries as elements, which compose earth, air, fire and water [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 367 | Anaxagoras says mind produces order and causes everything [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| 21167 | Gravity is unusual, in that it always attracts and never repels [New Sci.] |
| 19950 | Entropy is the only time-asymmetric law, so time may be linked to entropy [New Sci.] |
| 21176 | In the Big Bang general relativity fails, because gravity is too powerful [New Sci.] |
| 21147 | Quantum electrodynamics incorporates special relativity and quantum mechanics [New Sci.] |
| 19478 | Light moves at a constant space-time speed, but its direction is in neither space nor time [New Sci.] |
| 21155 | Photons have zero rest mass, so virtual photons have infinite range [New Sci.] |
| 21161 | In the standard model all the fundamental force fields merge at extremely high energies [New Sci.] |
| 21146 | Electrons move fast, so are subject to special relativity [New Sci.] |
| 19474 | Quantum states are measured by external time, of unknown origin [New Sci.] |
| 19473 | The Schrödinger equation describes the evolution of an object's wave function in Hilbert space [New Sci.] |
| 21148 | The strong force is repulsive at short distances, strong at medium, and fades at long [New Sci.] |
| 21152 | The strong force binds quarks tight, and the nucleus more weakly [New Sci.] |
| 21151 | Gluons, the particles carrying the strong force, interact because of their colour charge [New Sci.] |
| 21143 | Quarks in threes can build hadrons with spin ½ or with spin 3/2 [New Sci.] |
| 21150 | Three different colours of quark (as in the proton) can cancel out to give no colour [New Sci.] |
| 21142 | Classifying hadrons revealed two symmetry patterns, produced by three basic elements [New Sci.] |
| 21154 | Three particles enable the weak force: W+ and W- are charged, and Z° is not [New Sci.] |
| 21145 | The four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong) are the effects of particles [New Sci.] |
| 21153 | The weak force explains beta decay, and the change of type by quarks and leptons [New Sci.] |
| 21156 | The weak force particles are heavy, so the force has a short range [New Sci.] |
| 21164 | Why do the charges of the very different proton and electron perfectly match up? [New Sci.] |
| 21170 | The Standard Model cannot explain dark energy, survival of matter, gravity, or force strength [New Sci.] |
| 21158 | Fermions, with spin ½, are antisocial, and cannot share quantum states [New Sci.] |
| 21165 | Spin is akin to rotation, and is easily measured in a magnetic field [New Sci.] |
| 21140 | Spin is a built-in ration of angular momentum [New Sci.] |
| 21157 | Particles are spread out, with wave-like properties, and higher energy shortens the wavelength [New Sci.] |
| 21149 | Quarks have red, green or blue colour charge (akin to electric charge) [New Sci.] |
| 21163 | The mass of protons and neutrinos is mostly binding energy, not the quarks [New Sci.] |
| 21168 | Gravitional mass turns out to be the same as inertial mass [New Sci.] |
| 21144 | Top, bottom, charm and strange quarks quickly decay into up and down [New Sci.] |
| 21138 | Neutrons are slightly heavier than protons, and decay into them by emitting an electron [New Sci.] |
| 21141 | Neutrinos were proposed as the missing energy in neutron beta decay [New Sci.] |
| 21169 | Only neutrinos spin anticlockwise [New Sci.] |
| 21166 | Standard antineutrinos have opposite spin and opposite lepton number [New Sci.] |
| 21171 | The symmetry of unified electromagnetic and weak forces was broken by the Higgs field [New Sci.] |
| 19953 | In string theory space-time has a grainy indivisible substructure [New Sci.] |
| 19954 | It is impossible for find a model of actuality among the innumerable models in string theory [New Sci.] |
| 19476 | String theory needs at least 10 space-time dimensions [New Sci.] |
| 21175 | String theory might be tested by colliding strings to make bigger 'stringballs' [New Sci.] |
| 21177 | String theory offers a quantum theory of gravity, by describing the graviton [New Sci.] |
| 21178 | String theory is now part of 11-dimensional M-Theory, involving p-branes [New Sci.] |
| 21179 | Supersymmetric string theory can be expressed using loop quantum gravity [New Sci.] |
| 21159 | Supersymmetry has extra heavy bosons and heavy fermions [New Sci.] |
| 21162 | Only supersymmetry offers to incorporate gravity into the scheme [New Sci.] |
| 21172 | The evidence for supersymmetry keeps failing to appear [New Sci.] |
| 21173 | Supersymmetry says particles and superpartners were unities, but then split [New Sci.] |
| 19947 | Hilbert Space is an abstraction representing all possible states of a quantum system [New Sci.] |
| 21160 | The Higgs field means even low energy space is not empty [New Sci.] |
| 19955 | Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.] |
| 19948 | Einstein's merging of time with space has left us confused about the nature of time [New Sci.] |
| 19475 | Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [New Sci.] |
| 19949 | Quantum theory relies on a clock outside the system - but where is it located? [New Sci.] |
| 19951 | Entropy is puzzling, so we may need to build new laws which include time directionality [New Sci.] |
| 19952 | Black holes have entropy, but general relativity says they are unstructured, and lack entropy [New Sci.] |
| 19477 | General relativity predicts black holes, as former massive stars, and as galaxy centres [New Sci.] |
| 21174 | Dark matter must have mass, to produce gravity, and no electric charge, to not reflect light [New Sci.] |
| 16420 | 84.5 percent of the universe is made of dark matter [New Sci.] |
| 17604 | We are halfway to synthesising any molecule we want [New Sci.] |
| 17603 | Chemistry just needs the periodic table, and protons, electrons and neutrinos [New Sci.] |
| 21381 | Germs contain microscopic organs, which become visible as they grow [Anaxagoras] |
| 3502 | Mind involves fighting, fleeing, feeding and fornicating [Searle] |
| 22726 | When things were unified, Mind set them in order [Anaxagoras] |
| 2629 | Anaxagoras was the first to say that the universe is directed by an intelligence [Anaxagoras, by Cicero] |
| 3459 | You can only know the limits of knowledge if you know the other side of the limit [Searle] |
| 480 | Past, present and future, and the movements of the heavens, were arranged by Mind [Anaxagoras] |
| 7488 | Anaxagoras was the first recorded atheist [Anaxagoras, by Watson] |
| 5956 | Anaxagoras was charged with impiety for calling the sun a lump of stone [Anaxagoras, by Plutarch] |