5 ideas
| 21686 | Sense-data are dubious abstractions, with none of the plausibility of tables [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The notion of pure sense datum is a pretty tenuous abstraction, a good deal more conjectural than the notion of an external object, a table or a sheep. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Mental Entities [1952], p.225) | |
| A reaction: This seems to sum up the view of sense-data held by the generation after Russell and Moore. Ayer still talks about them, but Russell had already given them up. The simple challenge is - what is the evidence for their existence? Cf innate ideas. |
| 21685 | Empiricism says evidence rests on the senses, but that insight is derived from science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The crucial insight of empiricism is that any evidence for science has its end points in the senses. This insight remains valid, but it is an insight which comes after physics, physiology, and psychology, not before. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Mental Entities [1952], p.225) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I think Hume and co. were probably outlining essential presuppositions and contraints which must be accepted by science. Quine offers empiricism as more like a description of science (with success as its authority?). |
| 4691 | If all mental life were conscious, we would be unable to see things, or to process speech [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: If there were nothing more to our mind than our conscious awareness, then we would be unable to see anything or to process speech. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Making of a Philosopher [2002], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: A vital point. Traditional dualism has left us a simplistic exaggeration of the role of consciousness, and the misapprehension that most of what we do is conscious - which it clearly isn't, once you think about it. |
| 4690 | If meaning is speaker's intentions, it can be reduced to propositional attitudes, and philosophy of mind [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The importance of Grice's analysis of speaker meaning is that it offers the prospect of analysing the whole phenomenon of linguistic meaning in terms of propositional attitudes… thus turning semantics into a department of the philosophy of mind. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Making of a Philosopher [2002], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: Although meaning being truth conditions is the most cited theory, the reduction of semantics to an aspect of mind also seems almost orthodox now. But how do the symbols 'represent' the attitudes? |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |