Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Elm and the Expert', 'Letter to the Editor about Bayle' and 'Reason, Emotions and Good Life'

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2 ideas

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor]
     Full Idea: Type physicalism is, roughly, the doctrine that psychological kinds are identical to neurological kinds.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App A n.1)
     A reaction: This gets my general support, leaving open the nature of 'kinds'. Presumably the identity is strict, as in 'Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus'. It seems unlikely that if you and I think the 'same' thought, that we have strictly identical brain states.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor]
     Full Idea: What Hume didn't see was that the causal and representational properties of mental symbols have somehow to be coordinated if the coherence of mental life is to be accounted for.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4)
     A reaction: Certainly the idea that it all somehow becomes magic at the point where the brain represents the world is incoherent - but it is a bit magical. How can the whole of my garden be in my brain? Weird.