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Ideas for 'Topics', 'Matters of Mind' and 'Naming and Necessity notes and addenda'

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3 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / a. Mind
I regard the mind-body problem as wide open, and extremely confusing [Kripke]
     Full Idea: I regard the mind-body problem as wide open, and extremely confusing.
     From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 77)
     A reaction: Kripke opposes reductive physicalism, but is NOT committed to dualism. He seems to be drawn to Davidson or Nagel (see his note 73). I think his discussion of contingent mind-brain identity is confused.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / e. Questions about mind
Mindless bodies are zombies, bodiless minds are ghosts [Sturgeon]
     Full Idea: When bodies are conceived without mind, Zombies are the topic; when mind is conceived without bodies, Ghosts are the topic.
     From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro)
     A reaction: Personally I am not too impressed by either possibility. I doubt whether either of them are even logically possible. Can you have a magnet without its magnetism? Can you have magnetism with no magnet?
Types are properties, and tokens are events. Are they split between mental and physical, or not? [Sturgeon]
     Full Idea: The question is whether mental and physical types (which are properties) are distinct, and whether mental and physical tokens (which are events) are distinct.
     From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro)
     A reaction: Helpful. While the first one gives us the rather dodgy notion of 'property dualism', the second one seems to imply Cartesian dualism, if the events really are distinct. It seems to me that thought is an aspect of brain events, not a distinct event.