Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Intrinsic Quality of Experience' and 'Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations)'

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3 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / c. Features of mind
8648 Ideas are not spatial, and don't have distances between them [Frege]
     Full Idea: Spatial predicates are not applicable to ideas; an idea is neither to the right nor to the left of another idea; we cannot give the distances between ideas in millimetres.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §61)
     A reaction: This Fregean thought should be music to the ears of Cartesians, though it does not seem intended as support for dualism. This is the logicians' view of reality, where true inferences are what matter, and brains and souls are irrelevant.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 7. Animal Minds
1875 Dogs show reason in decisions made by elimination [Chrysippus, by Sext.Empiricus]
     Full Idea: A dog makes use of the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism when, arriving at a spot where three ways meet, after smelling at two roads by which the quarry did not pass, he rushes off at once by the third without pausing to smell.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.69
     A reaction: As we might say: either A or B or C; not A; not B; therefore C. I wouldn't want to trust this observation without a lot of analysis of slow-motion photography of dogs as crossroads. Even so, it is a nice challenge to Descartes' view of animals.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / b. Qualia and intentionality
8130 Qualities of experience are just representational aspects of experience ('Representationalism') [Harman, by Burge]
     Full Idea: Harman defended what came to be known as 'representationalism' - the view that qualitative aspects of experience are nothing other than representational aspects.
     From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Intrinsic Quality of Experience [1990]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.459
     A reaction: Functionalists like Harman have a fairly intractable problem with the qualities of experience, and this may be clutching at straws. What does 'represent' mean? How is the representation achieved? Why that particular quale?