144 ideas
| 19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
| A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 3426 | If one theory is reduced to another, we make fewer independent assumptions about the world [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If we reduce one theory to another, we reduce the number of independent assumptions about the world. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.215) |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
| 4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
| 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. |
| 3431 | Supervenience suggest dependence without reduction (e.g. beauty) [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience opens up the possibility of a relationship that gives us determination, or dependence, without reduction (as beauty supervenes on physical properties, but can't be given a physical definition). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.223) | |
| A reaction: Beauty is a bad analogy, since it rather obviously involves a beholder. There is nothing more to a statue than a substance of a certain shape. There are no good analogies for this sort of supervenience, because it doesn't exist. |
| 3437 | 'Physical facts determine all the facts' is the physicalists' slogan [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Physicalists are fond of saying that physical facts determine all the facts. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.232) | |
| A reaction: I totally agree with this slogan. As a view, it seems to me that it is reinforced by essentialism (see the ideas of Brian Ellis), which gives some indication of how facts are physically determined, and why there is no alternative. |
| 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) | |
| A reaction: A bold claim! I don't think laws of nature are a component of ontology. What would they be made of? Presumably the indexical fact drops out when I do. Personally I (unlike Chalmers) think experience is physical |
| 3430 | Resemblance or similarity is the core of our concept of a property [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Resemblance or similarity is the very core of our concept of a property. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.219) |
| 3432 | Is weight a 'resultant' property of water, but transparency an 'emergent' property? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Emergent properties are said to be irreducible to, and unpredictable from, the lower-level phenomena from which they emerge (as weight is a 'resultant' property, but the transparency of water is an 'emergent' property). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.228) | |
| A reaction: So weight is predictable, but transparency is a surprise? But presumably the transparency of water is totally predictable, once you understand it. Emergent properties are either dualist or reducible, in my view. |
| 3434 | Emergent properties are 'brute facts' (inexplicable), but still cause things [Kim] |
| Full Idea: For the emergentist why pain emerges when C-fibres are excited remains a mystery (a 'brute fact'), but such properties then take on a life of their own as 'downward causation'. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.229) | |
| A reaction: I don't think there are any 'brute facts', except perhaps at the lowest level of physics. Whatever happened to the principle of sufficient reason? Is the mind like God - a causal source which is uncaused? |
| 3436 | Should properties be individuated by their causal powers? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Arguably, properties must be individuated in terms of their causal powers. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.230) |
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 16425 | Metaphysical necessity is a bizarre, brute and inexplicable constraint on possibilities [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Strong metaphysical necessities will put constraints on the space of possible worlds that are brute and inexplicable. That's fine for our world, but bizarre for possible worlds. The realm of the possible has no room for such arbitrary constraint. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: He would say this, given that he wants zombies to be possible, just because he thinks he can conceive of them. Presumably he thinks a raging bonfire with no flames is also possible. His objection here is weak. |
| 16424 | Strong metaphysical necessity allows fewer possible worlds than logical necessity [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The hypothesized modality of 'strong' metaphysical necessity says there are fewer metaphysically possible worlds than there are logically possible worlds, and the a posteriori necessities can stem from factors independent of the semantics of terms. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers sets this up in order to reject it. He notes that it involves a big gap between conceivability and possibility. If a world is logically possible but metaphysically impossible, then it is impossible, surely? |
| 16426 | How can we know the metaphysical impossibilities; the a posteriori only concerns this world [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If some worlds are metaphysically impossible, it seems that we could never know it. By assumption the information is not available a priori, and a posteriori information only tells us about our world. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: You need essentialism to reply to this. If you discover the essence of something, you can predict its possibilities. You discover the natures of the powers and dispositions of actuality. |
| 3406 | Counterfactuals are either based on laws, or on nearby possible worlds [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: For counterfactuals there is the 'nomic-derivational' approach (which logically derives them from laws), and the 'possible world' approach (based on truth in worlds close to the actual one). | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.141) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 13956 | Kripke is often taken to be challenging a priori insights into necessity [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: At various points in this book, I use a priori methods to gain insight into necessity; this is the sort of thing that Kripke's account is often taken to challenge. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers uses his 2-D approach to split off an a priori part from Kripke's a posterior part of our insight into necessity. |
| 13963 | Maybe logical possibility does imply conceivability - by an ideal mind [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If we understand conceivability as conceivability-in-principle (by a superbeing?) then it is plausible that logical possibility of a world implies conceivability of the world, so logical possibility of a statement implies its conceivability. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: I see nothing incoherent in the possibility that there might be aspects of existence which are utterly inconceivable to any conscious mind. Infinity might be a start, if an 'infinite' mind were impossible. |
| 2407 | One can wrongly imagine two things being non-identical even though they are the same (morning/evening star) [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Just because one can imagine that A and B are not identical, it does not follow that A and B are not identical (think of the morning star and the evening star). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) |
| 5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
| 2390 | We attribute beliefs to people in order to explain their behaviour [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Belief is something of an explanatory construct: we attribute beliefs to others largely in order to explain their behaviour. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.3) |
| 11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
| 2397 | 'Perception' means either an action or a mental state [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: 'Perception' can be used to refer either to the act of perceiving, or the internal state that arises as a result. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.2) |
| 2422 | The structure of the retina has already simplified the colour information which hits it [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: In vision three varieties of cones abstract out information according to the amount of light present in various overlapping wavelength ranges. Immediately, many distinctions present in the original light wave are lost. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.3) |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
| 3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
| 2396 | Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.2) |
| 12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
| 3368 | Mind is basically qualities and intentionality, but how do they connect? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is generally held that there are two broad categories of mental phenomena - qualitative states and intentional states (but what do they have in common?). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 23) | |
| A reaction: I am happy to accept this orthodox modern analysis. Putting it more simply: minds exist to enable experience and thought. I judge a priori that the two aspects are not separate. Qualia exist to serve thought, and qualia are necessary for thought. |
| 3392 | Mind is only interesting if it has causal powers [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Unless mental properties have causal powers, there would be little point in worrying about them. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.118) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't, on its own, actually rule out epiphenomenalism, but it does show why it barely qualifies as a serious theory. One might, in fact, say that we simply can't worry about something which has no causal powers. The powers might not be physical… |
| 3396 | Experiment requires mental causation [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Experimentation presupposes mental-to-physical causation and is impossible without it. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.128) | |
| A reaction: So an epiphenomenalist can't do experiments? Kim implies that there is some special mental assessment of the feedback from physical events, but presumably a robot or a zombie could do experiments. Spiders do experiments. |
| 3397 | Beliefs cause other beliefs [Kim] |
| Full Idea: A brief reflection makes it evident that most of our beliefs are generated by other beliefs we hold, and "generation" here could only mean causal generation. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.128) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, and yet implies an uncomfortable determinism, as if all our beliefs just happened to us. I don't claim proper free will, but I do say there is an element in belief formation which is just caused by bunches of beliefs. Call it character. |
| 2426 | Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'grain problem' for materialism was raised by Sellars: how could an experience be identical with a vast collection of physiological events, given the homogeneity of the former, and the fine-grainedness of the latter? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.5) | |
| A reaction: An interesting question, but it doesn't sound like a huge problem, given the number of connections in the brain. If the brain were expanded (as Leibniz suggested), the 'grains' might start to appear. We can't propose a 'deceived homunculus' to solve it. |
| 2391 | Can we be aware but not conscious? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is always accompanied by awareness, but awareness as I have described it need not be accompanied by consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.5) | |
| A reaction: One should consult Chalmers, but he is stretching the English word 'awareness' rather far. This road leads to saying that thermostats are 'aware', and information is aware of its content, which is probably very wrong indeed. Compare Idea 2415. |
| 2412 | Can we explain behaviour without consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: However the metaphysics of causation turns out, it seems relatively straightforward that a physical explanation of behaviour can be given that neither appeals to nor implies the existence of consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers needs this to support his idea that zombies are possible, but it strikes me as implausible. I find it inconceivable that our behaviour would be unchanged if we retained 'awareness' but lost consciousness. Try visiting an art gallery. |
| 2386 | Hard Problem: why brains experience things [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The Hard Problem is: why is all this brain processing accompanied by an experienced inner life? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The word 'accompanied' is interesting. A very epiphenomenal word! The answer to this neo-dualist question may be: if you do enough complex representational brain processing at high speed, it adds up to some which we call 'experience'. |
| 2416 | What turns awareness into consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Given the necessity of awareness, any candidate for an underlying law will have the form "Awareness plus something gives rise to consciousness" (…but simplicity suggests leaving out the 'something'). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.6.5) | |
| A reaction: You can't leave out the 'something' if you think awareness without consciousness is possible. The phenomenon of blindsight suggests that a whole extra brain area must come into play to produce the consciousness. It may not have a distinct ontology. |
| 2423 | Going down the scale, where would consciousness vanish? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Moving down the scale from lizards to slugs, there doesn't seem much reason to suppose that phenomenology should wink out while a reasonably complex perceptual psychology persists….and if you move on down to thermostats, where would it wink out? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.4) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem much of an argument, particularly if its conclusion is that there is phenomenology in thermostats. When day changes into night, where does it 'wink out'? Are we to conclude that night doesn't exist, or that day doesn't exist? |
| 2403 | Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Even if we knew every last detail about the physics of the universe, that information would not lead us to postulate the existence of conscious experience. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.3) | |
| A reaction: I find this a very strange claim. Given that the biggest gap in our physical knowledge is that concerning the brain and consciousness, Chalmer is no position to say this. Why shouldn't a physical revelation suddenly make consciousness inevitable? |
| 3367 | Both thought and language have intentionality [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Mental states are not the only things which exhibit intentionality - words and sentences can also refer to or represent facts or states of affairs. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 22) | |
| A reaction: This points to Searle's distinction between 'intrinsic' and 'derived' intentionality (see Idea 3465). We must now explain the difference between verbal intentionality and non-verbal intentionality (both as phenomena, and as information). |
| 3365 | Intentionality involves both reference and content [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There is referential intentionality (that some of our thoughts refer, or are 'about' something) and content intentionality (that propositional attitudes have content or meaning, often expressed by full sentences). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 21) | |
| A reaction: So could these be the external and internal components of content? Which might be the causal/historical component, and the descriptive component? Which might be known by (indirect) acquaintance and description? |
| 2400 | Is intentionality just causal connections? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Intentional properties should be analyzable in terms of causal connections to behaviour and the environment….so there is no separate ontological problem of intentionality. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) | |
| A reaction: There could only be no ontological problem if intentional states were purely physical. Everything is made of something (I presume). |
| 3360 | Are pains pure qualia, or do they motivate? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Are pains only sensory events, or do they also have a motivational component (e.g. aversiveness)? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 7) | |
| A reaction: A nice question. Given the occasional genuine masochist, and the way some people love tastes that others hate, it has always seemed to me that aversiveness was not a necessary property of pain. I couldn't train myself to like pain, though… |
| 2389 | Sometimes we don't notice our pains [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: What of the fact that we speak of pains that last for a day, even though there are times that they are not conscious? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This is hardly proof that there are non-conscious pains. Otherwise we might say we have a pain even after it has left us for good (because it might return), which seems daft. Not a crucial issue. The word 'pain' has two uses… |
| 2419 | Why should qualia fade during silicon replacement? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If parts of the brain are gradually replaced, perhaps by silicon chips, ...the most reasonable hypothesis is that qualia do not fade at all. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.3) | |
| A reaction: As it stands this could either assert dualism or functionalism. Personally I think the most reasonable hypothesis is that qualia would fade. Chalmers needs more imagination (or less?). What is it like to experience Alzheimer's Disease? |
| 3366 | Pain has no reference or content [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Some mental phenomena - in particular, sensations like tickles and pains - do not seem to exhibit either reference or content. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 21) | |
| A reaction: This could be challenged. These sensations cannot be had without a bodily location, and they give information about possible contact or damage. |
| 3389 | Inverted qualia and zombies suggest experience isn't just functional [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If inverted qualia, or absent qualia (zombies), are possible in functionally equivalent systems, qualia are not capturable by functional definitions. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.114) | |
| A reaction: The point here (I take it) is that we don't have to go the whole hog of saying the qualia are therefore epiphenomenal, although that is implied. How about a fail-safe situation, where qualia do it for me, and something else does the same for zombies? |
| 3391 | Crosswiring would show that pain and its function are separate [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: If you crosswire your 'pain box' and your 'itch box', the functionalist says you are in pain if the inputs and outputs are for pain, even though the feeling is of an itch. | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.115) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: If functionalists would indeed say this, then the objection seems to me almost conclusive. But they might well say that such simple crosswiring won't work. Itching won't produce pain behaviour - it lacks the correct function. |
| 2402 | It seems possible to invert qualia [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It seems entirely coherent that experiences could be inverted while physical structure is duplicated exactly. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: Strange how what seems 'entirely coherent' to a leading philosopher strikes me as totally incoherent. I would have thought it was only coherent to a dualist. I don't believe God makes the physics on Thursday, and adds experiences on Friday. |
| 2415 | In blindsight both qualia and intentionality are missing [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: In blindsight, the information does not qualify as directly available for global control, and subjects are not truly aware of the information. The lack of experience corresponds directly to a lack of awareness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.6.3) | |
| A reaction: Blindsight patients give correct answers about objects in their visual field, and you need 'global control' to speak the truth, even if you lack confidence in what you are saying. Philosophers should not be frightened of blindsight. Cf Idea 2391. |
| 3422 | Externalism about content makes introspection depend on external evidence [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Externalism about content would have the consequence that most of our knowledge of our own intentional states is indirect and must be based on external evidence. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.207) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a confusion, endemic in discussions of externalism. If what Shakespeare meant by 'water' is H2O, or Putnam means by 'elm' what experts say, the point is that their meanings are NOT part of their intentional states, which are bookmarks. |
| 3412 | How do we distinguish our anger from embarrassment? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: How do we know that we are angry rather than embarrassed? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.159) | |
| A reaction: A very nice question, because the only answer I (or anyone?) can think of is that they are distinguished by their content. Event A is annoying, while event B is embarrassing. Either of those feelings is almost inconceivable without its content. |
| 3363 | We often can't decide what emotion, or even sensation, we are experiencing [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is not always easy for us to determine what emotion (or even physical sensations) we are experiencing. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 18) | |
| A reaction: Confused sensations are, I would have thought, rare. Emotions, I think, are only confused when they are weak, and then a lot of the confusion is merely verbal. Our body and intuitions understand the feeling well enough, but we lack the vocabulary. |
| 2414 | When distracted we can totally misjudge our own experiences [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If one is distracted one may make judgements about one's experiences that are quite false. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.5) | |
| A reaction: Of course, when one is distracted one can make mistakes about anything. This does imply that if there is indeed infallible knowledge to be had from introspection, it will at least require full concentration to achieve it. Cf Idea 8883. |
| 3409 | Mental substance causation makes physics incomplete [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Since Cartesian dualism implies causation from outside of the physical domain, this means there can be no complete physical theory of the physical domain. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.147) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, should be taken as a very strong argument against dualism, rather than as bad news for physics. Some exception might make the closure of physics impossible, but the claim that our brain is the exception looks highly suspect. |
| 2409 | Maybe dualist interaction is possible at the quantum level? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The only form of interactionist dualism that has seemed even remotely tenable in the contemporary picture is one that exploits certain properties of quantum mechanics. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.4) | |
| A reaction: I think he is bluffing. No doubt quantum mechanics offers many intriguing possibilities, such as the interaction of many worlds within the mind, but I am not aware that anything non-physical is ever postulated. Physicists don't deal in the non-physical. |
| 2411 | Supervenience makes interaction laws possible [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: There is an objection to dualism that it cannot explain how the physical and the nonphysical interact, but the answer is simple on a natural supervenience framework - they interact by virtue of psychophysical laws (…which are as eternal as physics). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.6) | |
| A reaction: There are different sorts of laws. What Chalmers is hoping for would be a mere regularity, like the connection of cancer to smoking, but the objection is that the discovery of causal mechanisms, to give truly explanatory laws, is simply impossible. |
| 2424 | It is odd if experience is a very recent development [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It would be odd for a fundamental property like experience to be instantiated for the first time only relatively late in the history of the universe, and even then only in occasional complex systems. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.4) | |
| A reaction: The assumption of this remark is that experience is 'fundamental', which seems to claim that it is a separate ontological category. Maybe, but experience doesn't seem to be a thing. 'Process' seems a better term, and that is not a novelty in the universe. |
| 3399 | If epiphenomenalism were true, we couldn't report consciousness [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If epiphenomenalism were true, it would be a mystery how such things could be known to us. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.130) | |
| A reaction: If a brain were asked whether it was conscious, it would presumably say 'yes', but (if epiphenomenalism were true) the cause of that would have to be brain events, and NOT information that it is conscious, which the brain could not have. Big objection. |
| 3390 | Are inverted or absent qualia coherent ideas? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers doubt the coherence of the very idea of inverted or absent qualia. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.115) | |
| A reaction: The possibility of inverted qualia with identical brain structures strikes me as nil, but it would be odd to deny that qualia could be changed by brain surgery, given that insects can see ultra-violet, and some people are colourblind. |
| 3414 | What could demonstrate that zombies and inversion are impossible? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Is there anything about the qualitative characters of mental states which, should we come to know it, would convince us that zombies and qualia inversion are not really possible? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.171) | |
| A reaction: The issue is what causes the qualitative states, not their 'characters'. This strikes me as falling into the trap of thinking that 'what it is like to be..' is a crucial issue. I think zombies are impossible, but not because I experience redness. |
| 2413 | If I can have a zombie twin, my own behaviour doesn't need consciousness [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of my zombie twin's claims does not depend on consciousness, as there is none in his world. It follows that the explanation of my claims is also independent of the existence of consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Epiphenomenalism says my accounts of my consciousness are NOT because of my consciousness (which seems daft). Chalmers here gives a very good reason why we should not be a friend of philosophical zombies. |
| 3359 | Cartesian dualism fails because it can't explain mental causation [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Its inability to explain the possibility of "mental causation" doomed Cartesian dualism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 4) | |
| A reaction: This is a modern way of stating the interaction problem. Personally I am inclined to think that dualism was doomed by the spread of the scientific materialist view to every other corner of our knowledge except the mind. Plenty of causes baffle us. |
| 3369 | Logical behaviourism translates mental language to behavioural [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Logical behaviourism says any meaningful statement about mental phenomena can be translated without loss of content into a statement solely about behavioural and physical phenomena. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 29) | |
| A reaction: Also called analytical behaviourism. If we are supposed to infer the ontology of mental states from language, this makes me cross. Maybe we only discuss mentality in behavioural terms because we are epistemologically, and hence linguistically, limited. |
| 3428 | Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Behaviourism can be considered as an attempt to reduce the mental to the physical via definitional bridge principles (every mental expression being given a behavioural definition). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.217) | |
| A reaction: Effectively these would (if they had been discoverable) have been the elusive psycho-physical laws (which Davidson says do not exist). The objection to behaviourism is precisely that there is no fixed behaviour attached to a given mental state. |
| 3380 | Are dispositions real, or just a type of explanation? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists take a "realist" approach to dispositions whereas the behaviourist embraces an "instrumentalist" line. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 78) | |
| A reaction: A helpful distinction, which immediately shows why functionalism is superior to behaviourism. There must be some explanation of mental dispositions, and the instrumental view is essentially a refusal to think about the real problem. |
| 3370 | What behaviour goes with mathematical beliefs? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Is there even a loosely definable range of bodily behaviour that is characteristically exhibited by people when they believe, say, that there is no largest prime number? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 32) | |
| A reaction: This is a highly persuasive argument against behaviourism. Very abstract and theoretical thoughts have no related behaviour, especially among non-mathematicians. I probably believe this idea about numbers, but I can't think what to do about it. |
| 3373 | Snakes have different pain behaviour from us [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If it is an analytic truth that anyone in pain has a tendency to wince or groan, what about snakes? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 37) | |
| A reaction: Snakes do, however, exhibit what looks like 'I really don't like that' behaviour, and their rapid avoidance movements are identical to ours. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure what a snake does what it has a stomach upset. I see Kim's point. |
| 3371 | Behaviour depends on lots of mental states together [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Mind-to-behaviour connections are always defeasible - by the occurrence of a further mental state. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 35) | |
| A reaction: But then an object's falling under gravity is always defeasible, by someone catching it first. This popular idea is meant to show that there could, as Davidson puts it, 'no psycho-physical laws', but I suspect the laws are just complex, like weather laws. |
| 3372 | Behaviour is determined by society as well as mental states [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The factors that determine exactly what you are doing when you produce a physical gesture include the customs, habits and conventions that are in force, so it is unlikely that anyone could produce correct behavioural definitions of mental terms. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 36) | |
| A reaction: This problem can be added to the problem that it is hard to specify behaviour without reference to mentalistic terms. The point is clearly right, as what I am doing when I wave my hand in the air will depend on all sorts of conventions and expectations. |
| 3388 | Machine functionalism requires a Turing machine, causal-theoretical version doesn't [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Machine functionalism requires a mental state to be a physical realisation of a Turing machine; causal-theoretical functionalism only requires that there be appropriate "internal states". | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.112) | |
| A reaction: Searle's objection to the Turing machine version seems good - that such a machine has an implicit notion of a user/interpreter, which is absent from this theory of mind. |
| 3379 | Neurons seem to be very similar and interchangeable [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Most neurons, it has been said, are pretty much alike and largely interchangeable. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 76) | |
| A reaction: This fact, if true, is highly significant, because the correct theory of the mind must therefore be some sort of functionalism. If what a neuron is is insignificant, then what it does must be what matters. |
| 2417 | Does consciousness arise from fine-grained non-reductive functional organisation? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: I claim that conscious experience arises from fine-grained functional organisation….. we might call it 'non-reductive functionalism'. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Chalmers' final position. If consciousness is 'emergent' and cannot be reduced, what has fine-grained got to do with it? I take 'fine-grained' to be a hint at why the brain becomes conscious. Fine-grained functions cause something. |
| 3384 | The person couldn't run Searle's Chinese Room without understanding Chinese [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is by no means clear that any human could manage to do what Searle imagines himself to be doing in the Chinese Room - that is, short of throwing away the rule book and learning some real Chinese. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.100) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear how a rule book could contain answers to an infinity of possible questions. The Chinese Room is just a very poor analogy with what is envisaged in the project of artificial intelligence. |
| 2428 | Maybe the whole Chinese Room understands Chinese, though the person doesn't [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Opponents typically reply to Searle's argument by conceding that the person in the room does not understand Chinese, and arguing that the understanding should instead be attributed to the system consisting of the person and the pieces of paper. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 4.9.4) | |
| A reaction: Searle himself spotted this reply. It seems plausible to say that a book contains 'understanding', so the translation dictionary may have it. A good Room would cope with surprise questions. |
| 3393 | How do functional states give rise to mental causation? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: On the functionalist account of mental properties, just where does a mental property get its causal powers? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.118) | |
| A reaction: That is the key problem. Something can only have a function if it has intrinsic powers (corkscrews are rigid and helix-shaped). It can't be irrelevant that pain hurts. |
| 2418 | The Chinese Mind doesn't seem conscious, but then nor do brains from outside [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: While it may be intuitively implausible that Block's 'mind' made of the population of China would give rise to conscious experience, it is equally intuitively implausible that a brain should give rise to experience. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like good support for functionalism, but I am more inclined to see it as a critique of 'intuition' as a route to truth where minds are concerned. Intuition isn't designed for that sort of work. |
| 3439 | Reductionism gets stuck with qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The main obstacle to mind-body reduction is qualia. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.236) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am also impressed by Leibniz's Mill (Idea 2109). No microscope could ever reveal the contents of thought. How can it be so vivid for the owner, but totally undetectable to an observer? |
| 3427 | Reductionism is impossible if there aren't any 'bridge laws' between mental and physical [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Most antireductionist arguments focus on the unavailability of bridge laws to effect the reduction of psychological theory to physical theory (as found in reducing the gas laws to theories about molecules). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.216) | |
| A reaction: Reduction can, of course, be achieved by identity rather than by bridge laws. I would say that all that prevents us from predicting mental events from physical ones is the sheer complexity involved. Cf. predicting the detailed results of an explosion. |
| 3424 | Most modern physicalists are non-reductive property dualists [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The most widely accepted form of physicalism today is the nonreductive variety, ...which combines ontological physicalism with property dualism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.212) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that property dualism is actually in decline, but we will see. I have yet to find a coherent definition of property dualism. If being simultaneously red and square isn't property dualism, then what is it? Sounds like dualism to me. |
| 3376 | We can't assess evidence about mind without acknowledging phenomenal properties [Kim] |
| Full Idea: In order to make sense of the empirical character of mind-brain identity, we must acknowledge the existence of phenomenal properties. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 66) | |
| A reaction: Mind-brain identity is, of course, an ontological theory, not an epistemological one (like empiricism). I suspect that the basis for my belief in reductive physicalism is an intuition, which I am hoping is a rational intuition. Cf. Idea 3989. |
| 2406 | H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about that [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Searle argues that H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about liquidity. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Good! |
| 2405 | Perhaps consciousness is physically based, but not logically required by that base [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It remains plausible that consciousness arises from a physical basis, even though it is not entailed by that basis. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find this totally implausible. Since every other property or process in the known universe seems to be entailed by its physical basis, I don't expect the mind to be an exception. |
| 3362 | Supervenience says all souls are identical, being physically indiscernible [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If one accepts the supervenience of mental on physical, this logically implies that there can only be one Cartesian soul, because such souls are physically indiscernible, and hence mentally indiscernible. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 10) | |
| A reaction: Not very persuasive. Brains are certainly discernible, and so are parts of brains. Egos might be mentally discernible. I don't find my notion of personal identity collapsing just because I espouse property dualism. |
| 3413 | Zombies and inversion suggest non-reducible supervenience [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The main argument for the physical supervenience of qualia, then, is the apparent conceivability of zombies and qualia inversion in organisms physically indistinguishable from us. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.171) | |
| A reaction: Since neither zombies nor qualia inversion for identical brains seem to me to be even remotely conceivable, I won't trouble myself with the very vague concept of 'supervenience'. |
| 2395 | Zombies imply natural but not logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It seems logically possible that a creature physically identical to a conscious creature might have no conscious experiences (a zombie)…so conscious experience supervenes naturally but not logically on the physical. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: "It seems possible" isn't much of an argument. This claim by Chalmers has been a great incentive to reassess what is or isn't possible. Can a brain lack consciousness? Can a tree fall over silently? Can cyanide stop poisoning us? |
| 9318 | Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Chalmers, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| Full Idea: In Chalmers's non-reductive theory, phenomenal consciousness is treated as a fundamental feature of the world, that cannot be explained in nonphenomenal terms. Theory is still possible, in the regularities of interaction. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996]) by U Kriegel / K Williford - Intro to 'Self-Representational Consciousness' n2 | |
| A reaction: I can't make much sense of this view without a backing of panpsychism. How could a 'fundamental' feature of reality only begin to appear when life evolves on one particular planet? But 'panpsychism' is a warning of big misunderstandings. See Idea 2424. |
| 2404 | Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It is consistent with the physical facts about a mouse that it has conscious experiences, and it is consistent with the physical facts that it does not. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.4) | |
| A reaction: No. It is consistent with our KNOWLEDGE of a mouse that it may or may not be conscious. I take this to be the key error of Chalmers, which led him to the mistaken idea that zombies are possible. The usual confusion of ontology and epistemology…. |
| 3374 | Token physicalism isn't reductive; it just says all mental events have some physical properties [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Token physicalism (as opposed to type physicalism) is a weak doctrine which simply says that any event or occurrence with a mental property has some physical property or other. It is not committed to reductionism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 61) | |
| A reaction: Sounds nice, but it seems incoherent to me. How can something have a physical property if it isn't physical? Try 'it isn't coloured, but has colour properties', or 'not a square, but with square properties'. 'Not divine, but divine properties' maybe. |
| 3433 | The core of the puzzle is the bridge laws between mind and brain [Kim] |
| Full Idea: From the emergentist point of view, the reductionists bridge laws are precisely what need to be explained. Why do these mental-physical correlations hold? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.229) | |
| A reaction: Everyone is happy with the bridge laws from chemistry to physics, but no one knows (deep down) why those exact laws hold. We need to understand what consciousness is; its cause will then, I think, become apparent. |
| 3377 | Elimination can either be by translation or by causal explanation [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The two best know attempts to analyse away mental states are Armstrong's causal conception of such states (e.g. pain is a neural event caused by tissue damage), and Smart's 'topic-neutral translation'. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 67) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong's view certainly seems to be missing something, since his 'pain' could do the job without consciousness. I take Smart's approach to be the germ of the right answer. |
| 3438 | Reductionists deny new causal powers at the higher level [Kim] |
| Full Idea: For the reductionist, no new causal powers emerge at higher levels, which goes against the claims of the emergentist and the non-reductive physicalist. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.232) | |
| A reaction: I would say that all higher level causes are simply the sums of lower level causes, as in chemistry and physics. What could possibly produced the power at the higher level, apart from the constituents of the thing? Magic? |
| 3440 | Without reductionism, mental causation is baffling [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If reductionism goes, so does the intelligibility of mental causation. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.237) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. Substance dualism turns mental causation into a miracle, but property dualism is really no better. If no laws connect brain and mind, you have no account. I don't see how 'reasons are causes' (Davidson) helps at all. |
| 2429 | Temperature (etc.) is agreed to be reducible, but it is multiply realisable [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Many physical phenomena that are often taken to be paradigms of reducibility (e.g. temperature) are in fact multiply realizable. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], n 2.20) | |
| A reaction: So multiple realisability isn't such a big problem for physicalism. I take it, though, that all hot things have some physical type of event in common (a level of molecular energy). Finding the level of commonality is the challenge. |
| 3375 | If an orange image is a brain state, are some parts of the brain orange? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If an orange visual image is a brain state then, by the indiscernibility of identicals, some brain state must also be orange. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 64) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the Hardest of all Hard Questions: how can I experience orange if my neurons haven't turned orange? What on earth is orangeness? I don't believe it is a 'microproperty' of orange objects; it's in us. |
| 3411 | How do we distinguish our attitudes from one another? [Kim] |
| Full Idea: How do you find out that you believe, rather than, say, doubt or merely hope, that it will rain tomorrow? | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.159) | |
| A reaction: There should be a special medal created for philosophers who ask reasonable questions which are impossible to answer. They are among the greatest discoveries. |
| 3410 | Folk psychology has adapted to Freudianism [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Freudian depth psychology has now almost achieved the status of folk psychology of the sophisticates. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.158) | |
| A reaction: You don't need to be a 'sophisticate' to laugh knowingly when someone makes an embarrassing Freudian slip. Terms like 'neurotic' are commonplace among modern folk. |
| 3387 | A culture without our folk psychology would be quite baffling [Kim] |
| Full Idea: A culture that lacked our folk psychology would be unintelligible to us, and its language untranslatable into our own. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.110) | |
| A reaction: Surely we can manage to discuss the processing life of a robot, without having to resort to anthropomorphic psychology? Its human-style behaviour will fit, but the rest blatantly won't. |
| 3386 | Folk psychology has been remarkably durable [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Commonsense psychology seems to have an advantage over scientific psychology: its apparent greater stability. Scientific theories seem to come and go. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.110) | |
| A reaction: This seems to make the assumption that the folk are in universal long-term agreement about such things, which seems doubtful. See Ideas 2987 and 3410. |
| 3394 | Maybe folk psychology is a simulation, not a theory [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There is the "theory" theory of commonsense psychology, and also a "simulation" theory, which says it is not a matter of laws, but of simulating the behaviour of others, using ourselves as models. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.123) | |
| A reaction: Using ourselves as models may be the normal and correct way to relate to people within our own culture, but we have to start theorising when we encounter (e.g.) suicide bombers. |
| 23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
| 18403 | Indexicals may not be objective, but they are a fact about the world as I see it [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Even if the indexical is not an objective fact about the world, it is a fact about the world as I find it, and it is the world as I find it that needs explanation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers treats them as important, whereas the way he expresses it could make them eliminable, if the world seen by him is eliminable. |
| 3382 | A machine with a mind might still fail the Turing Test [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The Turing test is too tough, because something doesn't have to be smart enough to outwit a human (or even have language) to have mentality or intelligence. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 97) | |
| A reaction: Presumably an alien with an IQ of 580 would also fail the Turing test. Indeed people of normal ability, but from a very different culture, might also fail. However, most of us would pass it. |
| 3383 | The Turing Test is too specifically human in its requirements [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The Turing test is too narrow, because it is designed to fool a human interrogator, but there could be creatures which are intelligent but still fail the test. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 97) | |
| A reaction: I think the key test for intelligence would be a capacity for metathought. 'What do you think of the idea that x?' Their thoughts about x might be utterly stupid, of course. How do you measure 'stupid'? |
| 3408 | Two identical brain states could have different contents in different worlds [Kim] |
| Full Idea: States that have the same intrinsic properties - the same neural/physical properties - may have different contents if they are embedded in different environments. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.146) | |
| A reaction: This is a way of expressing externalism. It depends what you mean by 'contents'. I struggle to see how "H2O" could be the content of the word 'water' among ancient Greeks. |
| 3420 | Two types of water are irrelevant to accounts of behaviour [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The difference in the two types of 'water' in the Twin Earth experiment seem psychologically irrelevant, for behaviour causation or explanation. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.203) | |
| A reaction: A rather important point. No matter how externalist you are about what content really is, people can only act on the internal aspects of it. |
| 3421 | Content is best thought of as truth conditions [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is standard to take contents as truth conditions. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.203) | |
| A reaction: This tradition runs from Frege to Davidson, and has been extended to truth conditions in possible worlds. Rivals will involve intentions, or eliminativism about meaning. |
| 3418 | 'Arthritis in my thigh' requires a social context for its content to be meaningful [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The example of someone claiming "arthritis in my thigh" shows that the content of belief depends, at least in part but crucially, on the speech practices of the linguistic community in which we situate the subject. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.197) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find this social aspect to meaning to be more convincing that Putnam's idea that the physical world is part of meaning. It connects nicely with the social aspects of justification. |
| 3416 | Content may match several things in the environment [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If content is said to be 'covariance' with something in the environment, then the belief that there are horses in the field covaries reliably with the presence of horses in the field, but also the presence of horse genes in the field. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.192) | |
| A reaction: That's the end of that interesting proposal, then. Or is it? Looking at the field from a distance this is right, but down the microscope, the covariance varies. The theory lives on. |
| 3419 | Pain, our own existence, and negative existentials, are not external [Kim] |
| Full Idea: No external factors seem to be required for Fred's belief that he is in pain, or that he exists, or that there are no unicorns. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.198) | |
| A reaction: This is an extremely important observation for anyone who was getting over-excited about external accounts of content. Unicorns might connect externally to horns and horses. |
| 3417 | Content depends on other content as well as the facts [Kim] |
| Full Idea: An objection to the 'covariance' theory of content is that what you believe is influenced, often crucially, by what else you believe. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.193) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of a reply to this, if the covariance theory is suggesting that content just IS covariance of mental states with the environment. Externalism says that mind extends into the world. |
| 14708 | Rationalist 2D semantics posits necessary relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility [Chalmers, by Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Chalmers seeks a rationalist interpretation of the 2D framework, situated in the tradition which posits a golden triangle of necessary constitutive relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 2.3.1 | |
| A reaction: The first prize of the project is to get some sort of apriori knowledge about these crucial relations. I suppose the superduper prize is to get apriori knowledge of the possibilities of the world, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that. |
| 13958 | The 'primary intension' is non-empirical, and fixes extensions based on the actual-world reference [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'primary intension' of a concept is a function from worlds to extensions reflecting the way the actual-world reference is fixed, ...which is independent of empirical factors. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This bit is a priori because the concept picks out something, no matter what its essence turns out to be. I take it to be a priori because it is stipulative. |
| 2399 | Meaning has split into primary ("watery stuff"), and secondary counterfactual meaning ("H2O") [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The single Fregean intension has fragmented into two: a primary intension ("watery stuff") that fixes reference in the actual world, and a secondary intension ("H2O") that picks out reference in counterfactual possible worlds. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: No one actually performs this schizoid double operation, so this is theory disconnected from life. What is the role of 'H2O' in the actual world, and 'watery stuff' in the others? |
| 13959 | The 'secondary intension' is determined by rigidifying (as H2O) the 'water' picked out in the actual world [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'secondary intension' of 'water' picks out the water (H2O) in all worlds. ..It is determined by first evaluating the primary intension at the actual world, and then rigidifying it so that the same sort of thing is picked out in all possible worlds. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: No wonder Soames calls 2-D semantics 'Byzantine'. If we don't actually do this psychologically, what exactly is Chalmers describing? Is this revisionary semantics - i.e. how we ought to do it if we want to talk about the world properly? |
| 13957 | Primary and secondary intensions are the a priori (actual) and a posteriori (counterfactual) aspects of meaning [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Primary intension picks out a referent in a world considered as actual; secondary considers it as counterfactual. ...(62) We can think of the primary and secondary intensions as the a priori and a posteriori aspects of meaning, respectively. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: Primary intension is a priori because, it seems, it is stipulative ('water' means 'the watery stuff'), whereas the secondary intension (in counterfactual worlds) is empirical ('water' is used to refer to H2O/XYZ). We get internalism and externalism. |
| 13961 | We have 'primary' truth-conditions for the actual world, and derived 'secondary' ones for counterfactual worlds [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: 'Primary' truth-conditions tell us how the actual world has to be for an utterance of the statement to be true in that world; ....'secondary' truth-conditions give the truth-value in counterfactual worlds, given that the actual world turned out some way. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the reinterpretation of the truth-conditions account in terms of two-dimensional semantics. My first reaction is not very positive. Why can't we fix our references in counterfactual worlds, and then apply them to the actual (like inventions)? |
| 13962 | Two-dimensional semantics gives a 'primary' and 'secondary' proposition for each statement [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If we see a proposition as a function from possible worlds to truth-values, then the two sets of truth-conditions yield two propositions associated with any statement. A 'primary' for those which express a truth, and 'secondary' for counterfactual truth. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is where 2-D semantics becomes increasingly 'Byzantine'. Intuition and introspection don't seem to offer me two different propositions for every sentence I utter. I can't see this theory catching on, even if it is technically beautiful. |
| 11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
| 13960 | In two-dimensional semantics we have two aspects to truth in virtue of meaning [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Both the 'primary' and 'secondary' intension qualify as truths in virtue of meaning; they are simply true in virtue of different aspects of meaning. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of two-dimensional semantics, which has split Fregean sense into an a priori and an a posterior part. Chalmers is trying to hang onto the idea that we might see necessity as largely analytic. |
| 3403 | We assume people believe the obvious logical consequences of their known beliefs [Kim] |
| Full Idea: We attribute to a subject beliefs that are obvious logical consequences of beliefs already attributed to him. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.135) | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'obvious'. Presumably they must be judged obvious to the believer, but only if they have thought of them. We can't believe all the simple but quirky implications of our beliefs. |
| 3402 | If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If someone says "I do and I don't like x", we do not take her to be expressing a literally contradictory belief. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.135) | |
| A reaction: It might mean 'one minute I like it, and the next minute I don't', where there seems to be a real contradiction, with a time factor. You can't sustain both preferences with conviction. |
| 6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 3401 | A common view is that causal connections must be instances of a law [Kim] |
| Full Idea: A widely but not universally accepted principle is that causally connected events must instantiate a law. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.133) |
| 3407 | Laws are either 'strict', or they involve a 'ceteris paribus' clause [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Some laws are held to be 'strict', and others involve a 'ceteris paribus' clause. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.143) |
| 16427 | Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Presumably it is in God's powers, when creating the world, to do anything that is logically possible. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't really understand why anyone would say that the only constraint on God is logic. Presumably no logic is breached if God places in object simultaneously in two spacetime locations, but it would be an impressive achievement. |
| 22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
| A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |