Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Nietzsche's System' and 'Problems of Philosophy'

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3 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / c. Knowing other minds
5364 It is hard not to believe that speaking humans are expressing thoughts, just as we do ourselves [Russell]
     Full Idea: When human beings speak, it is very difficult to suppose that what we hear is not the expression of a thought, as we know it would be if we emitted the same sounds.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 2)
     A reaction: This is partly the 'argument from analogy', which seems a bit suspect (induction from a single instance), but it is also the rather undeniable Humean idea that we have a 'natural belief' in other minds, which we could never disbelieve.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / d. Other minds by analogy
5379 If we didn't know our own minds by introspection, we couldn't know that other people have minds [Russell]
     Full Idea: But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to imagine the minds of others, and therefore we could never arrive at the knowledge that they have minds.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 5)
     A reaction: Not only does this depend on the notorious 'argument from analogy', but it actually strikes me as false. If a robot observed a human to be writhing in pain, it would be mystified, until it inferred that we have minds in which we actually 'feel' damage.
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.