8 ideas
| 19261 | Understanding is seeing coherent relationships in the relevant information [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: What is distinctive about understanding (after truth is satisfied) is the internal seeing or appreciating of explanatory and other coherence-inducing relationships in a body of information that is crucial for understanding. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding [2003], 198), quoted by Anand Vaidya - Understanding and Essence 'Distinction' | |
| A reaction: For me this ticks exactly the right boxes. Coherent explanations are what we want. The hardest part is the ensure their truth. Kvanvig claims this is internal, so we can understand even if, Gettier-style, our external connections are lucky. |
| 2534 | Mindless bodies are zombies, bodiless minds are ghosts [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: When bodies are conceived without mind, Zombies are the topic; when mind is conceived without bodies, Ghosts are the topic. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am not too impressed by either possibility. I doubt whether either of them are even logically possible. Can you have a magnet without its magnetism? Can you have magnetism with no magnet? |
| 2537 | Types are properties, and tokens are events. Are they split between mental and physical, or not? [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: The question is whether mental and physical types (which are properties) are distinct, and whether mental and physical tokens (which are events) are distinct. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. While the first one gives us the rather dodgy notion of 'property dualism', the second one seems to imply Cartesian dualism, if the events really are distinct. It seems to me that thought is an aspect of brain events, not a distinct event. |
| 2532 | Intentionality isn't reducible, because of its experiential aspect [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: The link between Aboutness and consciousness, plus the latter's theoretical recalcitrance, have prevented reduction of the former. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I remain unconvinced that Aboutness (intentionality) has to be wholly (or even partly conscious). We are more interested in our conscious mental states, because those are the ones we can report to other people, and discuss. |
| 2533 | Rule-following can't be reduced to the physical [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: If you can't squeeze an 'ought' from an 'is', then the feature of normativity will prevent the reduction of Aboutness. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A dubious argument. Hume's point is that no rational inference will get you from is to ought, but you can get there on a whim. I don't see normativity as being so intrinsically magical that it is irreducible. |
| 2535 | The main argument for physicalism is its simple account of causation [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: The dominant empirical argument for physicalism is the Overdetermination Argument: physics is closed and complete, mind is causally efficacious, the world isn't choc-full of overdetermination, so the mind is physical as well. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find this argument utterly convincing. The idea that there is only one thing which is outside the interconnected causal nexus which seems to constitute the rest of reality, and that is a piece of meat inside our heads, strikes me as totally ridiculous. |
| 2536 | Do facts cause thoughts, or embody them, or what? [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: Does a thought relate to its truth conditions like a tree to its age, a bee dance to its target, or smoke to its cause? | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Nice question. Is truth the purpose of thoughts, or the cause of thoughts, or the constitution(?) of thoughts? I vote for the bee….but we mustn't confuse truth with truth-conditions. |
| 7482 | Resurrection developed in Judaism as a response to martyrdoms, in about 160 BCE [Anon (Dan), by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The idea of resurrection in Judaism seems to have first developed around 160 BCE, during the time of religious martyrdom, and as a response to it (the martyrs were surely not dying forever?). It is first mentioned in the book of Daniel. | |
| From: report of Anon (Dan) (27: Book of Daniel [c.165 BCE], Ch.7) by Peter Watson - Ideas | |
| A reaction: Idea 7473 suggests that Zoroaster beat them to it by 800 years. |