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7510
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Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker]
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Full Idea:
Connectionists do not, of course, believe that the mind is a blank slate, but they do believe in the closest mechanistic equivalent, a general purpose learning device.
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From:
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
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A reaction:
This shows the closeness of connectionism to Hume's associationism (Idea 2189), which was just a minimal step away from Locke's mind as 'white paper' (Idea 7507). Pinker is defending 'human nature', but connectionism has a point.
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7513
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Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker]
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Full Idea:
Are memories stored in protein sequences, in new neurons or synapses, or in changes in the strength of existing synapses?
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From:
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
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A reaction:
This seems to be a neat summary of current neuroscientific thinking about memory. If you are thinking that memory couldn't possibly be so physical, don't forget the mind-boggling number of events involved in each tiny memory. See Idea 6668.
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7509
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Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker]
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Full Idea:
The roundworm only has 959 cells, and 302 neurons in a fixed wiring diagram; it eats, mates, approaches and avoids certain smells, and that's about it. This makes it obvious that human 'free' behaviour comes from our complex biological makeup.
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From:
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
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A reaction:
I find this a persuasive example. Three hundred trillion neurons cannot possibly produce behaviour which is more than broadly predictable, and then it is the environment and culture that make it predictable, not the biology.
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7512
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There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG]
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Full Idea:
Connectionist networks have difficulty with the kind/individual distinction (ducks/this duck), with compositionality (relations), with quantification (reference of 'all'), with recursion (embedded thoughts), and the categorical reasoning (exceptions).
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From:
report of Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) by PG - Db (ideas)
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A reaction:
[Read Pinker p.80!] These are essentially all the more sophisticated aspects of logical reasoning that Pinker can think of. Personally I would be reluctant to say a priori that connectionism couldn't cope with these things, just because they seem tough.
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7505
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Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker]
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Full Idea:
To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged.
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From:
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Pref)
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A reaction:
The point is that modern liberal thinking says everything is nurture (which can be changed), not nature (which can't). Virtue theory, of which I am a fan, requires a concept of human nature, as the thing which can attain excellence in its function.
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21099
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People must have agreed to authority, because they are naturally equal, prior to education [Hume]
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Full Idea:
When we consider how nearly equal all men are in their bodily force, and even in their mental powers and faculties, till cultivated by education, ...then nothing but their own consent could at first associate them together, and subject them to authority.
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.276)
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A reaction:
This doesn't sound very convincing. Some people are much better suited than others to training and education. Men vary enormously in size.
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20495
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We no more give 'tacit assent' to the state than a passenger carried on board a ship while asleep [Hume]
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Full Idea:
[If we give 'tacit' assent to the state] ...we may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master, though he was carried aboard while asleep.
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283)
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A reaction:
We should probably drop the whole idea that we give assent to the state. We are stuck with a state, and a few of us can escape, if it seems important enough, but most of us have no choice. He hope to assent to the controllers of the state.
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6703
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Poor people lack the knowledge or wealth to move to a different state [Hume]
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Full Idea:
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages that he acquires?
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283)
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A reaction:
Of course, in the nineteenth century the Scottish poor did, going to America, which welcomed the poor, and spoke English. Hume's point is the right reply to anyone who says 'If you don't like it, go elsewhere'. Also 'No! Change it!'
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21102
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We all know that the history of property is founded on injustices [Hume]
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Full Idea:
Reason tells us that there is no property in durable objects, such as land or houses, when carefully examined in passing from hand to hand, but must, in some period, have been founded on fraud and injustice.
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.288)
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A reaction:
A prime objection to Nozick, who fantasises about an initial position of just ownership, which can then be the subject of just contracts. In 1866 thousands of white people were granted land in the USA, but not a single black freed slave got anything.
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