display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 4610 | Different generations focus on either the quality of mind, or its scientific standing, or the content of thought [Heil] |
| Full Idea: One generation addresses the qualitative aspect of mentality, the next focuses on its scientific standing, its successor takes up the problem of mental content, then the cycle starts all over again… | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints the three interlinked questions. We seem to be currently obsessed with the quality of experience (the 'Hard Question'), but the biggest questions is how the three aspects fit together. If there are three necessities here, they must coexist. |
| 4618 | If minds are realised materially, it looks as if the material laws will pre-empt any causal role for mind [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If a mental property is realised by a material property, then it looks as though its material realiser pre-empts any causal contribution on the part of the realised mental property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This has a beautiful simplicity about it. I can see how some very odd phenomena might suddenly appear out of a physical combination, but not how entirely new causal laws can be created. |