Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Externalism', 'Consciousness: matter becomes imagination' and 'Letters to Hegel'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts

---

5 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / c. Features of mind

6152	Minds are rational, conscious, subjective, self-knowing, free, meaningful and self-aware [Rowlands]
	Full Idea: The apparent features of mind which are not obviously physical include: rationality, thought, consciousness, subjectivity, infallible first-person knowledge, freedom, meaning and self-awareness.
	From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2)
	A reaction: A helpful list, some of which can be challenged. Ryle challenges first-person infallibility. Hume challenges self-awareness. Quine challenges meaning. Lots of people (e.g. Spinoza) challenge freedom. The Churchlands seem to challenge consciousness.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind

4924	A conscious human being rapidly reunifies its mind after any damage to the brain [Edelman/Tononi]
	Full Idea: It seems that after a massive stroke or surgical resection, a conscious human being is rapidly "resynthesised" or reunified within the limits of a solipsistic universe that, to outside appearances, is warped and restricted.
	From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 3)
	A reaction: Note that there are two types of 'unity of mind'. This comment refers to the unity of seeing oneself as a single person, rather than the smooth unbroken quality of conscious experience. I presume that there is no point in a mind without the first unity.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 6. Anti-Individualism

6173	Content externalism implies that we do not have privileged access to our own minds [Rowlands]
	Full Idea: Content externalism threatens the idea of first-person authority in all its forms, and does so because it calls into question the idea that the access we have to our own mental states is privileged in the way required for such authority.
	From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.7)
	A reaction: I am inclined to respond by saying that since we clearly have privileged access to our own minds, that means there must be something wrong with content externalism.

6174	If someone is secretly transported to Twin Earth, others know their thoughts better than they do [Rowlands]
	Full Idea: If someone knew that a thinker had, without realising it, been transported to Twin Earth, they would almost certainly be a higher authority on the content of the thinker's thoughts than would the thinker.
	From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.8)
	A reaction: They would certainly be a higher authority on the truth of the thinker's thoughts, but only in the way that you might think I hold a diamond when I know it is a club. If the thinker believes it is H2O, the fact that it isn't is irrelevant to content.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 8. Brain

4932	A conscious state endures for about 100 milliseconds, known as the 'specious present' [Edelman/Tononi]
	Full Idea: The 'specious present' (William James), a rough estimate of the duration of a single conscious state, is of the order of 100 milliseconds, meaning that conscious states can change very rapidly.
	From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12)
	A reaction: A vital feature of our subjective experience of time. I wonder what the figure is for a fly? It suggests that conscious experience really is like a movie film, composed of tiny independent 'frames' of very short duration.