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Single Idea 3416

[filed under theme 18. Thought / C. Content / 6. Broad Content ]

Full Idea

If content is said to be 'covariance' with something in the environment, then the belief that there are horses in the field covaries reliably with the presence of horses in the field, but also the presence of horse genes in the field.

Gist of Idea

Content may match several things in the environment

Source

Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.192)

Book Ref

Kim,Jaegwon: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Westview 1998], p.192

A Reaction

That's the end of that interesting proposal, then. Or is it? Looking at the field from a distance this is right, but down the microscope, the covariance varies. The theory lives on.

The 67 ideas from 'Philosophy of Mind'

3359 Cartesian dualism fails because it can't explain mental causation [Kim]
3360 Are pains pure qualia, or do they motivate? [Kim]
3362 Supervenience says all souls are identical, being physically indiscernible [Kim]
3363 We often can't decide what emotion, or even sensation, we are experiencing [Kim]
3366 Pain has no reference or content [Kim]
3365 Intentionality involves both reference and content [Kim]
3367 Both thought and language have intentionality [Kim]
3368 Mind is basically qualities and intentionality, but how do they connect? [Kim]
3369 Logical behaviourism translates mental language to behavioural [Kim]
3370 What behaviour goes with mathematical beliefs? [Kim]
3371 Behaviour depends on lots of mental states together [Kim]
3372 Behaviour is determined by society as well as mental states [Kim]
3373 Snakes have different pain behaviour from us [Kim]
3374 Token physicalism isn't reductive; it just says all mental events have some physical properties [Kim]
3375 If an orange image is a brain state, are some parts of the brain orange? [Kim]
3376 We can't assess evidence about mind without acknowledging phenomenal properties [Kim]
3377 Elimination can either be by translation or by causal explanation [Kim]
3379 Neurons seem to be very similar and interchangeable [Kim]
3380 Are dispositions real, or just a type of explanation? [Kim]
3382 A machine with a mind might still fail the Turing Test [Kim]
3383 The Turing Test is too specifically human in its requirements [Kim]
3384 The person couldn't run Searle's Chinese Room without understanding Chinese [Kim]
3387 A culture without our folk psychology would be quite baffling [Kim]
3386 Folk psychology has been remarkably durable [Kim]
3388 Machine functionalism requires a Turing machine, causal-theoretical version doesn't [Kim]
3389 Inverted qualia and zombies suggest experience isn't just functional [Kim]
3391 Crosswiring would show that pain and its function are separate [Kim, by PG]
3390 Are inverted or absent qualia coherent ideas? [Kim]
3392 Mind is only interesting if it has causal powers [Kim]
3393 How do functional states give rise to mental causation? [Kim]
3394 Maybe folk psychology is a simulation, not a theory [Kim]
3397 Beliefs cause other beliefs [Kim]
3396 Experiment requires mental causation [Kim]
3399 If epiphenomenalism were true, we couldn't report consciousness [Kim]
3401 A common view is that causal connections must be instances of a law [Kim]
3403 We assume people believe the obvious logical consequences of their known beliefs [Kim]
3402 If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction [Kim]
3406 Counterfactuals are either based on laws, or on nearby possible worlds [Kim, by PG]
3407 Laws are either 'strict', or they involve a 'ceteris paribus' clause [Kim]
3408 Two identical brain states could have different contents in different worlds [Kim]
3409 Mental substance causation makes physics incomplete [Kim]
3410 Folk psychology has adapted to Freudianism [Kim]
3412 How do we distinguish our anger from embarrassment? [Kim]
3411 How do we distinguish our attitudes from one another? [Kim]
3413 Zombies and inversion suggest non-reducible supervenience [Kim]
3414 What could demonstrate that zombies and inversion are impossible? [Kim]
3416 Content may match several things in the environment [Kim]
3417 Content depends on other content as well as the facts [Kim]
3418 'Arthritis in my thigh' requires a social context for its content to be meaningful [Kim]
3419 Pain, our own existence, and negative existentials, are not external [Kim]
3421 Content is best thought of as truth conditions [Kim]
3420 Two types of water are irrelevant to accounts of behaviour [Kim]
3422 Externalism about content makes introspection depend on external evidence [Kim]
3424 Most modern physicalists are non-reductive property dualists [Kim]
3426 If one theory is reduced to another, we make fewer independent assumptions about the world [Kim]
3427 Reductionism is impossible if there aren't any 'bridge laws' between mental and physical [Kim]
3428 Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles [Kim]
3430 Resemblance or similarity is the core of our concept of a property [Kim]
3431 Supervenience suggest dependence without reduction (e.g. beauty) [Kim]
3432 Is weight a 'resultant' property of water, but transparency an 'emergent' property? [Kim]
3434 Emergent properties are 'brute facts' (inexplicable), but still cause things [Kim]
3433 The core of the puzzle is the bridge laws between mind and brain [Kim]
3436 Should properties be individuated by their causal powers? [Kim]
3437 'Physical facts determine all the facts' is the physicalists' slogan [Kim]
3438 Reductionists deny new causal powers at the higher level [Kim]
3439 Reductionism gets stuck with qualia [Kim]
3440 Without reductionism, mental causation is baffling [Kim]