8 ideas
| 15473 | How does anything get outside itself? [Fodor, by Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Fodor asks the stirring and basic question 'How does anything get outside itself?' | |
| From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 03.6 | |
| A reaction: Is this one of those misconceived questions, like major issues concerning 'what's it like to be?' In what sense am I outside myself? Is a mind any more mysterious than a shadow? |
| 2981 | Is intentionality outwardly folk psychology, inwardly mentalese? [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: For Fodor the intentionality of the propositional-attitude vocabulary of our folk psychology is the outward expression of the inward intentionality of the language of the brain. | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.39 | |
| A reaction: I would be very cautious about this. Folk psychology works, so it must have a genuine basis in how brains work, but it breaks down in unusual situations, and might even be a total (successful) fiction. |
| 2985 | Are beliefs brains states, but picked out at a "higher level"? [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Fodor holds that beliefs are brain states or processes, but picked out at a 'higher' or 'special science' level. | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.82 | |
| A reaction: I don't think you can argue with this. Levels of physical description exist (e.g. pure physics tells you nothing about the weather), and I think 'process' is the best word for the mind (Idea 4931). |
| 3135 | Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: The modest mentalism of the Computational/Representational Theory of Thought (CRTT), associated with Fodor, says mental processes are computational, defined over syntactically specified entities, and these entities represent the world (are also semantic). | |
| From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that if you built a machine that did all these things, it would become conscious, which sounds unlikely. Do footprints 'represent' feet, or does representation need prior consciousness? |
| 2983 | Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Fodor is concerned with producing a realist and physicalist account of 'narrow content' (i.e. wholly in-the-head content). | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.54 | |
| A reaction: The emergence of 'wide' content has rather shaken Fodor's game plan. We can say "Oh dear, I thought I was referring to H2O", so there must be at least some narrow aspect to reference. |
| 19087 | The meaning or purport of a symbol is all the rational conduct it would lead to [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Issues of Pragmaticism [1905], EP ii.246), quoted by Danielle Macbeth - Pragmatism and Objective Truth p.169 n1 | |
| A reaction: Macbeth says pragmatism is founded on this theory of meaning, rather than on a theory of truth. I don't see why the causes of a symbol shouldn't be as much a part of its meaning as the consequences are. |
| 4053 | If it is desirable that a given patient die, then moral objections to killing them do not apply [Rachels] |
| Full Idea: The cause of death (injection or disease) is important from the legal point of view, but not morally. If euthanasia is desirable in a given case then the patient's death is not an evil, so the usual objections to killing do not apply. | |
| From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.102) | |
| A reaction: Seems reasonable, but a very consequentialist view. Is it good that small children should clean public toilets? |
| 4052 | It has become normal to consider passive euthanasia while condemning active euthanasia [Rachels] |
| Full Idea: It seems to have become accepted that passive euthanasia (by withholding treatment and allowing a patient to die) may be acceptable, whereas active euthanasia (direct action to kill the patient) is never acceptable. | |
| From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.97) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to attack the distinction. It is hard to distinguish the two cases, as well as being hard to judge them. |