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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Should a materialist believe in qualia?' and 'Reason, Truth and History'

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2 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
For Empedocles thinking is almost identical to perception [Empedocles, by Theophrastus]
     Full Idea: Empedocles assumes that thinking is either identical to or very similar to sense-perception.
     From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], A86) by Theophrastus - On the Senses 9
     A reaction: Not to be sniffed at. We can, of course, control our thinking (though we can't control the controller) and we contemplate abstractions, but that might be seen as a sort of perception. Vision is not as visual as we think.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / b. Human rationality
Rationality is one part of our conception of human flourishing [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Our notion of rationality is, at bottom, just one part of our conception of human flourishing, our idea of the good.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Pref)
     A reaction: This looks like the beginnings of virtue epistemology, since rationality will have criteria, which would seem to be virtues. I find this idea appealing, both as a view of rationality, and as a view of the human good.