Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative', 'works' and 'Experience First (and reply)'

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7 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle

15941	For intuitionists excluded middle is an outdated historical convention [Brouwer]
	Full Idea: From the intuitionist standpoint the dogma of the universal validity of the principle of excluded third in mathematics can only be considered as a phenomenon of history of civilization, like the rationality of pi or rotation of the sky about the earth.
	From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]), quoted by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite VI.2
	A reaction: [Brouwer 1952:510-11]

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / h. Reals from Cauchy

18247	Brouwer saw reals as potential, not actual, and produced by a rule, or a choice [Brouwer, by Shapiro]
	Full Idea: In his early writing, Brouwer took a real number to be a Cauchy sequence determined by a rule. Later he augmented rule-governed sequences with free-choice sequences, but even then the attitude is that Cauchy sequences are potential, not actual infinities.
	From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 6.6
	A reaction: This is the 'constructivist' view of numbers, as espoused by intuitionists like Brouwer.

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding

19542	It is nonsense that understanding does not involve knowledge; to understand, you must know [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: The proposition that understanding does not involve knowledge is widespread (for example, in discussions of what philosophy aims at), but hardly withstands scrutiny. If you do not know how a jet engine works, you do not understand how it works.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.24)
	A reaction: This seems a bit disingenuous. As in 'Theaetetus', knowing the million parts of a jet engine is not to understand it. More strongly - how could knowledge of an infinity of separate propositional truths amount to understanding on their own?

19543	To grasp understanding, we should be more explicit about what needs to be known [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: An essential prerequisite for useful discussion of the relation between knowledge and understanding is systematic explicitness about what is to be known or understood.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.25)
	A reaction: This is better. I say what needs to be known for understanding is the essence of the item under discussion (my PhD thesis!). Obviously understanding needs some knowledge, but I take it that epistemology should be understanding-first. That is the main aim.

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 7. Knowledge First

19541	Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: If we say our cognitive aim is to get knowledge, the opposing views are the naturalistic view that what matters is just true belief (or just 'getting by'), or that there are rival epistemic goods such as understanding and wisdom.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.17)
	A reaction: [compressed summary] I'm a fan of understanding. The accumulation of propositional knowledge would relish knowing the mass of every grain of sand on a beach. If you say the propositions should be 'important', other values are invoked.

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.