5 ideas
| 14790 | 'Abduction' is beginning a hypothesis, particularly if it includes preference of one explanation over others [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The first starting of a hypothesis and the entertaining of it …is an inferential step which I propose to call 'abduction'. This will include a preference for any one hypothesis over others which would equally explain the facts. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Abduction and Induction [1901], I) | |
| A reaction: I take there to be no more important function within human thought than the procedure by which we give preference to one particular explanation. It only makes sense, I think, if we take it as part of a coherence theory of justification. |
| 14791 | Abduction involves original suggestions, and not just the testing involved in induction [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is of the nature of abduction to involve an original suggestion; while typical induction has no originality in it, but only tests a suggestion already made. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Abduction and Induction [1901], I) | |
| A reaction: Peirce's 'abduction' is not, then, just the choice of a best explanation. He came up with the idea because he was keen to capture the creative and imaginative character of rational thought. |
| 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. |
| 7607 | Nagarjuna and others pronounced the world of experience to be an illusion [Nagarjuna, by Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: Many later Buddhists (after Nagarjuna, c.120 CE) developed a belief that everything we experience is an illusion: in the West we would call them idealists. | |
| From: report of Nagarjuna (teachings [c.120]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is just one step beyond Plato (who at least hung onto the immediate world as an inferior reality), and is presumably intended to motivate meditators to break out of the misery of existence into a higher realm. Personally I am against it. |