9 ideas
| 7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
| A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
| 16627 | If you remove the accidents from a horse and a lion, the intellect can't tell them apart [Francis of Marchia] |
| Full Idea: Let all accidents be removed from a lion and a horse. Nothing remains in the intellect to distinguish them. We distinguish a lion and a horse only by analogy to the accidents proper to each. The intellect does not have an essential concept of either one. | |
| From: Francis of Marchia (Commentary on Sentences [1330], I.3.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 07.3 | |
| A reaction: What a very nice thought experiment, and very convincing about how the mind perceives such things. But we don't believe horse and lion just consists of the surface properties of them which we experience. |
| 15473 | How does anything get outside itself? [Fodor, by Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Fodor asks the stirring and basic question 'How does anything get outside itself?' | |
| From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 03.6 | |
| A reaction: Is this one of those misconceived questions, like major issues concerning 'what's it like to be?' In what sense am I outside myself? Is a mind any more mysterious than a shadow? |
| 2981 | Is intentionality outwardly folk psychology, inwardly mentalese? [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: For Fodor the intentionality of the propositional-attitude vocabulary of our folk psychology is the outward expression of the inward intentionality of the language of the brain. | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.39 | |
| A reaction: I would be very cautious about this. Folk psychology works, so it must have a genuine basis in how brains work, but it breaks down in unusual situations, and might even be a total (successful) fiction. |
| 2985 | Are beliefs brains states, but picked out at a "higher level"? [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Fodor holds that beliefs are brain states or processes, but picked out at a 'higher' or 'special science' level. | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.82 | |
| A reaction: I don't think you can argue with this. Levels of physical description exist (e.g. pure physics tells you nothing about the weather), and I think 'process' is the best word for the mind (Idea 4931). |
| 3135 | Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: The modest mentalism of the Computational/Representational Theory of Thought (CRTT), associated with Fodor, says mental processes are computational, defined over syntactically specified entities, and these entities represent the world (are also semantic). | |
| From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that if you built a machine that did all these things, it would become conscious, which sounds unlikely. Do footprints 'represent' feet, or does representation need prior consciousness? |
| 2983 | Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Fodor is concerned with producing a realist and physicalist account of 'narrow content' (i.e. wholly in-the-head content). | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.54 | |
| A reaction: The emergence of 'wide' content has rather shaken Fodor's game plan. We can say "Oh dear, I thought I was referring to H2O", so there must be at least some narrow aspect to reference. |
| 7909 | The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
| A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory. |
| 7908 | At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
| A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff. |