Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative', 'Real Essence' and 'De Mundo (On the World)'

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4 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 4. Real Definition

16030	'Nominal' definitions identify things, but fail to give their essence [Jones,J-E]
	Full Idea: In the Aristotelian tradition, a 'nominal' definition is a pseudo-definition that identifies the members of the species or genus, but fails to capture the essence, e.g. 'man is the featherless biped'.
	From: Jan-Erik Jones (Real Essence [2012], §2)
	A reaction: You can 'individuate' an object as 'the only object in that drawer', while revealing nothing about it. So what must a definition do, in addition to picking something out uniquely?

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / a. Nature of Being

16789	Only supernatural means could annihilate anything once it had being [Hobbes]
	Full Idea: A being cannot naturally go out of existence. For even if a ship or a plank ceases to be a ship or a plank, it never naturally ceases to be a being. For a being, unless it is annihilated, does not cease to be a being. To annihilate is a supernatural task.
	From: Thomas Hobbes (De Mundo (On the World) [1642], 12.5)
	A reaction: This idea was becoming an orthodoxy in Hobbes's time, and leads to the various conservation laws in physics.

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act

7861	Libet says the processes initiated in the cortex can still be consciously changed [Libet, by Papineau]
	Full Idea: Libet himself points out that the conscious decisions still have the power to 'endorse' or 'cancel', so to speak, the processes initiated by the earlier cortical activity: no action will result if the action's execution is consciously countermanded.
	From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.4
	A reaction: This is why Libet's findings do not imply 'epiphenomenalism'. It seems that part of a decisive action is non-conscious, undermining the all-or-nothing view of consciousness. Searle tries to smuggle in free will at this point (Idea 3817).

6660	Libet found conscious choice 0.2 secs before movement, well after unconscious 'readiness potential' [Libet, by Lowe]
	Full Idea: Libet found that a subject's conscious choice to move was about a fifth of a second before movement, and thus later than the onset of the brain's so-called 'readiness potential', which seems to imply that unconscious processes initiates action.
	From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.9
	A reaction: Of great interest to philosophers! It seems to make conscious choices epiphenomenal. The key move, I think, is to give up the idea of consciousness as being all-or-nothing. My actions are still initiated by 'me', but 'me' shades off into unconsciousness.