Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative', 'Essentialists and Essentialism' and 'Martin Heidegger in conversation'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / h. Dasein (being human)

15584	I say the manifestation of Being needs humans, and humans only exist as reflected in Being [Heidegger]
	Full Idea: The fundamental thought of my thinking is precisely that Being, or the manifestation of Being, needs human beings and that, vice versa, human beings are only human beings if they are standing in the manifestation of Being.
	From: Martin Heidegger (Martin Heidegger in conversation [1969], p.82), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 5 'Signs'
	A reaction: I don't think I understand the second half of this, but I sense some sort of intuition that the consciousness of humans 'enlarges' Being, or bestows an identity on it, or some such thing.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties

14380	The distinction between necessary and essential properties can be ignored [Rocca]
	Full Idea: Some philosophers distinguish between necessary properties and essential properties. This distinction is irrelevant to my purposes. Following Yablo, I shall ignore this distinction in what follows.
	From: Michael della Rocca (Essentialists and Essentialism [1996], I n1)
	A reaction: This is two years after Kit Fine's seminal paper suggesting the distinction is real. The first step towards a good metaphysics is to realise that Della Rocca and Yablo have made a horrible mistake.

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.