Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Perception', 'Time and Free Will' and 'An essentialist approach to Truth-making'

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2 ideas

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
Physicalism cannot allow internal intentional objects, as brain states can't be 'about' anything [Robinson,H]
     Full Idea: It is generally conceded by reductive physicalists that a state of the brain cannot be intrinsically about anything, for intentionality is not an intrinsic property of anything, so there can be no internal objects for a physicalist.
     From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], V.4)
     A reaction: Perhaps it is best to say that 'aboutness' is not a property of physics. We may say that a brain state 'represents' something, because the something caused the brain state, but representations have to be recognised
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 5. Causal Argument
Experienced time means no two mental moments are ever alike [Bergson]
     Full Idea: If duration [experienced time] is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments in a life-story.
     From: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will [1889], p.220), quoted by Pete A.Y. Gunter - Bergson p.174
     A reaction: This implies that we are intrinsically unpredictable, and there certainly can't be a regularity account of mental causation. The sense of time is said to make the self radically different from the rest of reality. Bergson later rejected dualism.