display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
| 7892 | The completeness of physics is needed for mind-brain identity [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Without the completeness of physics, there is no compelling reason to identify the mind with the brain. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 7) | |
| A reaction: Papineau says the completeness of physics was accepted from the 1950s. Why were Epicurus and Hobbes physicalists? Do we have a circularity here? How do you establish the completeness of physics, without asserting mind to be physical? |
| 7879 | Mind-brain reduction is less explanatory, because phenomenal concepts lack causal roles [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Mind-brain reductions are less explanatory than characteristic reductions in other areas of science, ...because phenomenal concepts have no special associations with causal roles. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This may always have some truth in it, but I would expect reductive accounts in the far future to get much closer to giving explanations of phenomenal experience. We can't work down from the phenomenal end, but we can work up from the physical/causal end. |
| 20971 | Weak reduction of mind is to physical causes; strong reduction is also to physical laws [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Weak reduction of mind requires only that mental causes be identified with physical causes. A strong reduction requires also that the laws by which such causes operate follow by composition from non-special laws. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 3 n8) | |
| A reaction: I'm cautious about laws, but I still vote for strong reduction. No new principles are needed to make a mind from a brain. |
| 7856 | It is absurd to think that physical effects are caused twice, so conscious causes must be physical [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Many effects that we attribute to conscious causes have full physical causes. But it would be absurd to suppose that these effects are caused twice over. So the conscious causes must be identical to some part of those physical causes. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [Papineau labelled this the Causal Argument] Of course two causes can combine to produce an effect, and there can be redundant physical overcausation, but in general I think this is a good argument. |
| 7881 | Accept ontological monism, but conceptual dualism; we think in a different way about phenomenal thought [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: We should be ontological monists, but we should be conceptual dualists. We need to recognise a special phenomenal way of thinking about conscious properties, if we are to dispel the confusions that persuade us that conscious properties cannot be material. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.01) | |
| A reaction: This idea came to me as a revelation, and strikes me as spot on. We have developed conceptual dualism simply because humans cannot directly see that their thinking is actually physical brain activity. Thought seems ungrounded, and utterly different. |
| 7866 | Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: While there is indeed a before-after difference in Mary, this is just a matter of coming to think in new ways, and acquiring a new concept. There is no new experiential property. She could think about the property perfectly well, using material concepts. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I think it is better to talk of Mary encountering a new mode of experiencing something, just as experience becomes blurred when glasses are removed. No one acquires new 'knowledge' of blurred objects when they remove their glasses. |