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19743
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A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4)
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A reaction:
This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role?
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19741
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If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2)
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A reaction:
In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong.
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19742
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Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers]
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Full Idea:
Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
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From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3)
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A reaction:
This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'.
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6616
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Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005])
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A reaction:
As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects.
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6615
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A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action.
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6614
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A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out.
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6612
|
Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90)
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A reaction:
Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences.
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22936
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A-series time positions are contradictory, and yet all events occupy all of them! [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]
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Full Idea:
McTaggart's proof of time's unreality: A-series positions (past, present and future) are mutually incompatible, so no event can exhibit more than one of them; but since A-series events change position, all events have all A-series posititions. Absurd!
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From:
report of J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 08 'McTaggart's'
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A reaction:
I'm not convinced that this is any more contradictory than someone being married at one time and unmarried at another. No one is suggesting that an A-series event can be both past and future simultaneously.
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4231
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Time involves change, only the A-series explains change, but it involves contradictions, so time is unreal [McTaggart, by Lowe]
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Full Idea:
McTaggart argued that time involves change, only the A-series can explain change, the A-series involves contradictions (past, present and future), and hence time is unreal.
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From:
report of J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927]) by E.J. Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics p.313
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A reaction:
I doubt whether it is a logical contradiction to say Waterloo has been past, present and future, though it is odd.
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4230
|
A-series expressions place things in time, and their truth varies; B-series is relative, and always true [McTaggart, by Lowe]
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Full Idea:
A-series expressions include words like 'today' and 'five weeks ago', and can be true at one time and false at another; B-series expressions are like 'simultaneously', and are always true, if true at all.
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From:
report of J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927]) by E.J. Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics p.308
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A reaction:
A-series gives time separate existence, where B-series time is purely relational. Intuition favours the A-series, but how fast do events travel against this fixed background?
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