display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Institutional types are irreducible, though I assume that institutional tokens are reducible in the sense of strict identity, all the way down to the subatomic level. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems a promising distinction, as the boundaries of 'institutions' disappear when you begin to reduce them to lower levels (cf. Idea 4601), and yet plenty of institutions are self-evidently no more than physics. Plants are invisible as physics. |
| 6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: If types cannot be reduced to more physical levels, this is not an embarrassment, as long as our institutional categories, our physiological categories, and our physical categories are just alternative groupings of the same tokens. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a self-evident truth about a car engine, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply equally to a brain. Lycan's identification of the type as the thing which cannot be reduced seems a promising explanation of much confusion among philosophers. |
| 6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: One space-time slice may be occupied by a collection of molecules, a metal strip, a key, an allower of entry to hotel rooms, a facilitator of adultery, and a destroyer souls. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Desdemona's handkerchief is a nice example. This sort of remark seems to be felt by some philosophers to be heartless wickedness, and yet it so screamingly self-evident that it is impossible to deny. |
| 2392 | Properties supervene if you can't have one without the other [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties supervene on A-properties if no two possible situations are identical with respect to their A-properties while differing in their B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would have thought that if this condition is achieved, then we could go on to say B-properties supervene on A because A is causing them. We shouldn't be shy about this. Personally I think the Bs are necessary. |
| 2393 | Logical supervenience is when one set of properties must be accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties logically supervene on A-properties if no two logically possible situations are identical with respect to their A-properties but distinct with respect to their B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the gap into which Chalmers wants to slip zombies. He's wrong. He thinks that because he can imagine Bs without As, that this makes their separation logically possible. No doubt he can imagine a bonfire on the moon. |
| 2394 | Natural supervenience is when one set of properties is always accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties supervene naturally on A-properties if any two naturally possible situations with the same A-properties have the same B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Since it is hard to imagine a healthy working brain failing to produce consciousness, given the current laws of nature, almost everyone (except extreme dualists) must concede that they are naturally supervenient. I wonder why they are. |
| 2398 | Reduction requires logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Reductive explanation requires a logical supervenience relation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.3) | |
| A reaction: Why can't you say that in another world there are zombies, but in this world the mind is explained by its natural supervenience on the brain (given the current natural laws)? Driving on the left in Britain is explained by current laws. |
| 16048 | Physicalism says in any two physically indiscernible worlds the positive facts are the same [Chalmers, by Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Chalmers says that physicalism is true in a world w just in case every positive fact that obtains in w also obtains in any world physically indiscernible from w. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.1) by Karen Bennett - Supervenience | |
| A reaction: [Bennett summarises Chalmers' argument on pp.39-40] Chalmers says negative facts depend on the world's limits, which aren't part of the physical facts of the world. |
| 2401 | All facts are either physical, experiential, laws of nature, second-order final facts, or indexical facts about me [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Facts about the world are exhausted by physical facts, conscious experiences, laws of nature, a second-order that's-all fact, and perhaps an indexical fact about my location. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) |
| 6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.0) | |
| A reaction: A passing remark in a discussion of functionalism about the mind, but I find it appealing. Causation is basic to materialistic metaphysics, and it creates networks of regular causes. It leaves open the essentialist question of WHY it has that role. |