display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
4879 | There is no more anger in adrenaline than silliness in a bottle of whiskey [Dennett] |
Full Idea: There is no more fear or anger in adrenaline than there is silliness in a bottle of whiskey. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: Not exactly an argument, but a nice rhetorical point against absurd claims about identity and reduction and elimination. We may say that there is no fear without adrenaline, and no adrenaline in a live brain without fear. |
4876 | Maybe there is a minimum brain speed for supporting a mind [Dennett] |
Full Idea: Perhaps there is a minimum speed for a mind, rather like the minimum escape velocity required to overcome gravity and leave the planet. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: Dennett rejects this speculation, but he didn't stop to imagine what it would be LIKE if your brain slowed down, and he never considers Edelman's view that mind is a process. Put the two together… |
8462 | A hallucination can, like an ague, be identified with its host; the ontology is physical, the idiom mental [Quine] |
Full Idea: A physical ontology has a place for states of mind. An inspiration or a hallucination can, like the fit of ague, be identified with its host for the duration. It leaves our mentalistic idioms fairly intact, but reconciles them with a physical ontology. | |
From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §VI) | |
A reaction: Quine is employing the same strategy that he uses for substances and properties (Idea 8461): take the predication as basic, rather than reifying the thing being predicated. The ague analogy suggests that Quine is an incipient functionalist. |
4878 | The materials for a mind only matter because of speed, and a need for transducers and effectors [Dennett] |
Full Idea: I think there are only two good reasons why, when you make a mind, the materials matter: speed, and the ubiquity of transducers and effectors throughout the nervous system. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: This sounds roughly right, because it gives you something between multiple realisability (minds made of cans and string), and type-type identity (minds ARE a particular material). Call it 'biological functionalism'? |