6 ideas
| 2599 | Either intentionality causes things, or epiphenomenalism is true [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The avoidance of epiphenomenalism requires making it plausible that intentional properties can meet sufficient conditions for causal responsibility. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.154) | |
| A reaction: A wordy way of saying we either have epiphenomenalism, or the mind had better do something - and a good theory will show how. The biggest problem of the mind may not be Chalmer's Hard Question (qualia), but how thought-contents cause things. |
| 2597 | Contrary to the 'anomalous monist' view, there may well be intentional causal laws [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I argue that (contrary to the doctrine called "anomalous monism") there is no good reason to doubt that there are intentional causal laws. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.151) | |
| A reaction: I certainly can't see a good argument, in Davidson or anywhere else, to demonstrate their impossibility. Give the complexity of the brain, they would be like the 'laws' for weather or geology. |
| 2598 | Lots of physical properties are multiply realisable, so why shouldn't beliefs be? [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If one of your reasons for doubting that believing-that-P is a physical property is that believing is multiply realizable, then you have the same reason for doubting that being an airfoil (or a mountain) counts as a physical property. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.153) | |
| A reaction: This merely points out that functionalism is not incompatible with physicalism, which must be right. |
| 541 | Virtue comes more from habit than character [Critias] |
| Full Idea: More men are good through habit than through character. | |
| From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B09), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 3.29.41 |
| 16697 | Time is independent of motion, because God could stop everything for a short or long time [Crathorn, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Suppose God annihilates everything, and then creates something new. The vacant interval could last a shorter or longer time, so there are facts about time independent of facts about motion. | |
| From: report of William Crathorn (Sentences [1335], I.16, concl.2) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Not very persuasive if God is in some way 'timeless'. Crathorn would have loved Shoemaker's argument, where motionless time is the best explanation, rather than a possible explanation. |
| 542 | Fear of the gods was invented to discourage secret sin [Critias] |
| Full Idea: When the laws forbade men to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, to frighten the wicked, even if they sin in secret. | |
| From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B25), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 9.54 |