Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Naturalizing the Mind' and 'Thinking and Experience'

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8 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind

5802	Representations are in the head, but their content is not, as stories don't exist in their books [Dretske]
	Full Idea: Representations are in the head, but their content is not; in this sense, the mind isn't in the head any more than stories (i.e. story contents) are in books.
	From: Fred Dretske (Naturalizing the Mind [1997], §1.6)
	A reaction: This is the final consequence of Putnam's idea that meanings ain't in the head. Intentionality is an extraordinary bridge between the brain and the external world. The ontology of stories, and musical compositions, is one philosophy's deepest problems.

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / d. Purpose of consciousness

5809	Some activities are performed better without consciousness of them [Dretske]
	Full Idea: Some tasks (playing the piano, speaking foreign languages, playing fast sports) are best performed when the agent is largely unconscious of the details.
	From: Fred Dretske (Naturalizing the Mind [1997], Ch.4 n16)
	A reaction: A significant point, but it supports the evolutionary view, which is that what matters is success, and consciousness will switch on or off, whichever promotes the activity best.

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / a. Nature of qualia

5808	Qualia are just the properties objects are represented as having [Dretske]
	Full Idea: The Representational Thesis of mind identifies the qualities of experience - qualia - with the properties objects are represented as having.
	From: Fred Dretske (Naturalizing the Mind [1997], §3.2)
	A reaction: This seems to challenge the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, of which I am very fond. Is 'looks beautiful' a property of an object? Is the feeling of anger a property of an object? Qualia are properties of brains?

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 3. Abstraction by mind

9032	Before we can abstract from an instance of violet, we must first recognise it [Price,HH]
	Full Idea: Abstraction is preceded by an earlier stage, in which we learn to recognize instances; before I can conceive of the colour violet in abstracto, I must learn to recognize instances of this colour when I see them.
	From: H.H. Price (Thinking and Experience [1953], Ch.II)
	A reaction: The problem here might be one of circularity. If you are actually going to identify something as violet, you seem to need the abstract concept of 'violet' in advance. See Idea 9034 for Price's attempt to deal with the problem.

9035	If judgement of a characteristic is possible, that part of abstraction must be complete [Price,HH]
	Full Idea: If we are to 'judge' - rightly or not - that this object has a specific characteristic, it would seem that so far as the characteristic is concerned the process of abstraction must already be completed.
	From: H.H. Price (Thinking and Experience [1953], Ch.III)
	A reaction: Personally I think Price is right, despite the vicious attack from Geach that looms. We all know the experiences of familiarity, recognition, and identification that go on when see a person or picture. 'What animal is that, in the distance?'

9034	There may be degrees of abstraction which allow recognition by signs, without full concepts [Price,HH]
	Full Idea: If abstraction is a matter of degree, and the first faint beginnings of it are already present as soon as anything has begun to feel familiar to us, then recognition by means of signs can occur long before the process of abstraction has been completed.
	From: H.H. Price (Thinking and Experience [1953], Ch.III)
	A reaction: I like this, even though it is unscientific introspective psychology, for which no proper evidence can be adduced - because it is right. Neuroscience confirms that hardly any mental life has an all-or-nothing form.

9036	There is pre-verbal sign-based abstraction, as when ice actually looks cold [Price,HH]
	Full Idea: We must still insist that some degree of abstraction, and even a very considerable degree of it, is present in sign-cognition, pre-verbal as it is. ...To us, who are familiar with northern winters, the ice actually looks cold.
	From: H.H. Price (Thinking and Experience [1953], Ch.IV)
	A reaction: Price may be in the weak position of doing armchair psychology, but something like his proposal strikes me as correct. I'm much happier with accounts of thought that talk of 'degrees' of an activity, than with all-or-nothing cut-and-dried pictures.

9037	Intelligent behaviour, even in animals, has something abstract about it [Price,HH]
	Full Idea: Though it may sound odd to say so, intelligent behaviour has something abstract about it no less than intelligent cognition; and indeed at the animal level it is unrealistic to separate the two.
	From: H.H. Price (Thinking and Experience [1953], Ch.IV)
	A reaction: This elusive thought strikes me as being a key one for understanding human existence. To think is to abstract. Brains are abstraction machines. Resemblance and recognition require abstaction.