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Ideas for 'From an Ontological Point of View', 'works' and 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz'

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4 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / a. Consciousness
Unlike Marxists, Foucault explains thought internally, without deference to conscious ideas [Foucault, by Gutting]
     Full Idea: Unlike Marxists, Foucault's project is to offer an internal account of human thinking, without assuming a privileged status for the conscious content of that thought.
     From: report of Michel Foucault (works [1978]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 4
     A reaction: His project is historical. Personally I resent anyone who claims to understand my thought better than I do. I suppose my intellectual duty is to read Foucault, and see (honestly) whether his project applies to me.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories
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.
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.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / c. Explaining qualia
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.