display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
4621 | Whatever exists has qualities, so it is no surprise that states of minds have qualities [Heil] |
Full Idea: Whatever exists has qualities, so it is no surprise that states of minds have qualities. | |
From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: If only I knew what a 'quality' was. Do combinations have qualities in addition to the qualities of the components? A pair of trees, a pile of sand, a mass of neurons. |
15473 | How does anything get outside itself? [Fodor, by Martin,CB] |
Full Idea: Fodor asks the stirring and basic question 'How does anything get outside itself?' | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 03.6 | |
A reaction: Is this one of those misconceived questions, like major issues concerning 'what's it like to be?' In what sense am I outside myself? Is a mind any more mysterious than a shadow? |
4623 | Propositional attitudes are not the only intentional states; there is also mental imagery [Heil] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers have thought that intentional states are exhausted by propositional attitudes, but what about mental imagery? You may have propositional attitudes to food, but I would wager that most of your thoughts about it are imagistic. | |
From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: Seems right. If I encounter an object by which I am bewildered, I may form no propositions at all about it, but I can still contemplate the object. |
2981 | Is intentionality outwardly folk psychology, inwardly mentalese? [Lyons on Fodor] |
Full Idea: For Fodor the intentionality of the propositional-attitude vocabulary of our folk psychology is the outward expression of the inward intentionality of the language of the brain. | |
From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.39 | |
A reaction: I would be very cautious about this. Folk psychology works, so it must have a genuine basis in how brains work, but it breaks down in unusual situations, and might even be a total (successful) fiction. |
4626 | The widespread externalist view says intentionality has content because of causal links of agent to world [Heil] |
Full Idea: The prevailing 'externalist' line on intentionality regards intentional states of mind as owing their content (what they are of, or about) to causal relations agents bear to the world. | |
From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: This goes back to Putnam's Twin Earth. 'Meanings aren't in the head'. I may defer to experts about what 'elm' means, but I may also be arrogantly wrong about what 'juniper' means. |