display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 6416 | Other minds seem to exist, because their testimony supports realism about the world [Russell, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Russell gives an argument that other minds exist, because if one is entitled to believe this, then one can rely on the testimony of others, which, jointly with one's own experience, will give powerful support to the view that there a real spatial world. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I rather like this argument. It is quite close to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument, which also seems to refute scepticism about other minds. I think Russell's line, using testimony, knowledge and realism, may be better than Wittgenstein's. |
| 7010 | Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a view with which I am sympathetic, though I am not sure if it explains anything. It would be necessary to identify a disposition of basic matter that could be built up into the disposition of a brain to think about things. |
| 7054 | Intentionality now has internalist (intrinsic to thinkers) and externalist (environment or community) views [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays philosophers concerned with intentionality divide into two camps. Internalists epitomise a traditional approach to thought, as intrinsic features of thinkers; externalists say it depends on contextual factors (environment or community). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: This is basic to understanding modern debates (those that grow out of Putnam's Twin Earth). Externalism is fashionable, but I am reluctant to shake off my quaint internalism. Start by separating strict and literal meaning from speaker's meaning. |
| 7011 | Qualia are not extra appendages, but intrinsic ingredients of material states and processes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Properties of conscious experience, the so-called qualia, are not dangling appendages to material states and processes but intrinsic ingredients of those states and processes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to the view that qualia are intrinsic to the processes and NOT to the 'states'. Heil must be right, though. I am sure qualia are not just epiphenomena - they are too useful. |