| 1995 | Approaches to Intentionality |
| Intro | p.2 | 2977 | All thinking has content |
| Full Idea: I cannot say I am simply thinking but not thinking about anything. | |||
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], Intro) | |||
| A reaction: Hard to disagree. However, I can plausibly reply to 'What are you thinking?' with 'Nothing', if my consciousness is freewheeling. Utterly disconnected content isn't really what we call 'thinking'. |
| Intro | p.4 | 2978 | Consciousness no longer seems essential to intentionality |
| Full Idea: In contrast with Brentano and Husserl, consciousness or attention are no longer seen as essential to intentionality. | |||
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], Intro) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as being correct, although there seem to be plenty of current philosophers who do not accept it (e.g. Searle). I think philosophy of mind may be stuck in the dark ages if thinkers don't accept this proposal. |
| Intro | p.4 | 2979 | Propositional attitudes require representation |
| Full Idea: How else, other than via some form of representational system, could a human organism contain information as a content over which it could operate or 'attitudinise'? | |||
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], Intro) | |||
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'representational'. In its vaguest sense, this is just a tautology - content must be held in the mind in some form or other, but that tells us nothing. |
| p.126 | p.126 | 2986 | Belief is the most important propositional attitude |
| Full Idea: Belief might be accorded the status of core or chief propositional attitude. | |||
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], p.126) |
| p.241 | p.241 | 2987 | Folk psychology works badly for alien cultures |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to employ our folk psychology in the understanding of persons in a very different culture. | |||
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], p.241) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as a highly significant problem for the friends of folk psychology. It also breaks down in extreme situations, or with mental illness. It seems closer to culture than to brain structure. |
| p.66 | p.66 | 2984 | Perceptions could give us information without symbolic representation |
| Full Idea: It is possible to give an account of concept-formation without a language of thought or representation, based on perception, which in the brain seems to involve information without representation. | |||
| From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], p.66) | |||
| A reaction: This claim strikes me as being a little too confident. One might say that a concept IS a representation. However, the perception of several horses might 'blur' together to form a generalised horse. |