display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 3469 | Mind and brain don't interact if they are the same [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There is no "link" between consciousness and the brain, any more than there is a link between the liquidity of water and the H2O molecules. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.III) | |
| A reaction: We say of some properties that 'x is F', and of others that 'x has F', and of others that 'x is F because of y' (as in a knife having sharpness because it is thin and hard). Consciousness might fit the third case just as well as the first. |
| 12727 | It's impossible, but imagine a body carrying on normally, but with no mind [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If it could be supposed that a body exists without a mind, then a man would do everything in the same way as if he did not have a mind, and men would speak and write the same things, without knowing what they do. ...But this supposition is impossible. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Paper of December 1676 [1676], A6.3.400), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 5 | |
| A reaction: This is clearly the zombie dream, three centuries before Robert Kirk's modern invention of the idea. Leibniz's reason for denying the possibility of zombies won't be the modern physicalist reason. |
| 3487 | Without internal content, a zombie's full behaviour couldn't be explained [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There could be no intentional zombie, because (unlike with a conscious agent) there simply is no fact of the matter as to exactly which aspectual shapes its alleged intentional states have. Is it seeking water or H2O? | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.III) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response to this is behaviourist talk of 'dispositions'. The dispositions of scientist when seeking water and when seeking H2O are different. Zombies behave identically to us, so their intentional states have whatever is needed to do the job. |