10 ideas
| 4045 | Children may have three innate principles which enable them to learn to count [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: It has been proposed (on the basis of observations) that young children have three innate principles of counting - one-to-one correspondence of number to item, stable order for numbers, and cardinality (which labels the nth item counted). | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.60) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea of observed patterns as central (which is the one-to-one principle). But the other two principles are plausible, and show why pure empiricism won't work. |
| 4044 | Rat behaviour reveals a considerable ability to count [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Rats can determine the number of times they have pressed a lever up to at least twenty-four presses,…and can consistently turn down the fifth tunnel on the left in a maze. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.58) | |
| A reaction: This seems to encourage an empirical view of maths (pattern recognition?) rather than a Platonic one. Or numbers are innate in rat brains? |
| 4048 | Infant brains appear to have inbuilt ontological categories [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Infant behaviour implies inbuilt ontological categories of thing, place, event, path, action, sound, manner, amount and number. ...There is an algebra of relationships between them. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.109) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. We would expect the categories in infant brains to have instrumental value, but we don't have to accept them as true. Adults (even Aristotle) are big infants. |
| 4043 | Elephants can be correctly identified from as few as three primitive shapes [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: An elephant may be fully represented by nine primitive shapes ('geons'), but it may require as few as three geons in appropriate relations to be correctly identified. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.7) | |
| A reaction: Encouraging the idea of the mind as a maker of maps and models |
| 4049 | The way in which colour experiences are evoked is physically odd and unpredictable [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: A unique yellow experience may be evoked with monochrome light of 580nm, or a mixture of 540nm and 670nm. ..Our interpretation of colour experience is a highly idiosyncratic artefact of our visual system. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.117) | |
| A reaction: This confirms what I have always thought - that colour (as qualia) is strictly a feature of minds, not of the world. |
| 4047 | Gestalt psychology proposes inbuilt proximity, similarity, smoothness and closure principles [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Gestalt psychology claims that there are at least four unlearned factors in perceptual grouping - the principles of proximity (close things), of similarity, of good continuation (extending lines in a smooth course), and closure (which completes figures). | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.103) | |
| A reaction: This offers a bridge between Hume's associationism and rationalist claims of innate ideas |
| 4053 | If it is desirable that a given patient die, then moral objections to killing them do not apply [Rachels] |
| Full Idea: The cause of death (injection or disease) is important from the legal point of view, but not morally. If euthanasia is desirable in a given case then the patient's death is not an evil, so the usual objections to killing do not apply. | |
| From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.102) | |
| A reaction: Seems reasonable, but a very consequentialist view. Is it good that small children should clean public toilets? |
| 4052 | It has become normal to consider passive euthanasia while condemning active euthanasia [Rachels] |
| Full Idea: It seems to have become accepted that passive euthanasia (by withholding treatment and allowing a patient to die) may be acceptable, whereas active euthanasia (direct action to kill the patient) is never acceptable. | |
| From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.97) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to attack the distinction. It is hard to distinguish the two cases, as well as being hard to judge them. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |