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Single Idea 2568
[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 4. Behaviourism Critique
]
Full Idea
Is there any behaviour characteristic of a given belief?
Gist of Idea
Beliefs aren't tied to particular behaviours
Source
Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §4)
Book Ref
Geach,Peter: 'Mental Acts: Their content and their objects' [RKP 1971], p.8
A Reaction
Well, yes. Belief that a dog is about to bite you. Belief that this nice food is yours, and you are hungry. But he has a good point. He is pointing out that the mental state is a very different thing from the 'disposition' to behave in a certain way.
The
27 ideas
from Peter Geach
10731
|
For abstractionists, concepts are capacities to recognise recurrent features of the world
[Geach]
|
10732
|
If concepts are just recognitional, then general judgements would be impossible
[Geach]
|
10733
|
The abstractionist cannot explain 'some' and 'not'
[Geach]
|
10734
|
Only a judgement can distinguish 'striking' from 'being struck'
[Geach]
|
10735
|
Abstraction from objects won't reveal an operation's being performed 'so many times'
[Geach]
|
22489
|
'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red'
[Geach, by Foot]
|
2567
|
You can't define real mental states in terms of behaviour that never happens
[Geach]
|
2568
|
Beliefs aren't tied to particular behaviours
[Geach]
|
8769
|
If someone has aphasia but can still play chess, they clearly have concepts
[Geach]
|
8770
|
'Abstractionism' is acquiring a concept by picking out one experience amongst a group
[Geach]
|
8771
|
'Or' and 'not' are not to be found in the sensible world, or even in the world of inner experience
[Geach]
|
8772
|
We can't acquire number-concepts by extracting the number from the things being counted
[Geach]
|
8773
|
Abstractionists can't explain counting, because it must precede experience of objects
[Geach]
|
8774
|
The numbers don't exist in nature, so they cannot have been abstracted from there into our languages
[Geach]
|
8775
|
A big flea is a small animal, so 'big' and 'small' cannot be acquired by abstraction
[Geach]
|
8776
|
We cannot learn relations by abstraction, because their converse must be learned too
[Geach]
|
8778
|
Blind people can use colour words like 'red' perfectly intelligently
[Geach]
|
8777
|
If 'black' and 'cat' can be used in the absence of such objects, how can such usage be abstracted?
[Geach]
|
8779
|
We can form two different abstract concepts that apply to a single unified experience
[Geach]
|
8780
|
Attributes are functions, not objects; this distinguishes 'square of 2' from 'double of 2'
[Geach]
|
8781
|
The mind does not lift concepts from experience; it creates them, and then applies them
[Geach]
|
11910
|
Being 'the same' is meaningless, unless we specify 'the same X'
[Geach]
|
8969
|
We should abandon absolute identity, confining it to within some category
[Geach, by Hawthorne]
|
16075
|
Denial of absolute identity has drastic implications for logic, semantics and set theory
[Wasserman on Geach]
|
12154
|
Are 'word token' and 'word type' different sorts of countable objects, or two ways of counting?
[Geach, by Perry]
|
16073
|
Leibniz's Law is incomplete, since it includes a non-relativized identity predicate
[Geach, by Wasserman]
|
12152
|
Identity is relative. One must not say things are 'the same', but 'the same A as'
[Geach]
|