94 ideas
| 8605 | In addition to analysis of a concept, one can deny it, or accept it as primitive [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There are three ways to give an account: 1) 'I deny it' - this earns a failing mark if the fact is really Moorean. 2) 'I analyse it thus'. 3) 'I accept it as primitive'. Not every account is an analysis. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], '1 Ov Many') | |
| A reaction: I prefer Shoemaker's view (Idea 8559). Personally I think 1) should be employed more often than it is (it is a very misunderstood approach). 3) has been overused in recent years (e.g. by Davidson and McGinn). |
| 3137 | Varieties of singular terms are used to designate token particulars [Rey] |
| Full Idea: We designate token particulars with singular terms, such as: proper names, numerals, definite descriptions, demonstratives, pronouns or variables. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1.1) |
| 3143 | Physics requires the existence of properties, and also the abstract objects of arithmetic [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Physics is committed to arithmetic, which seems committed to abstract objects such as numbers, and its causal explanations seem to appeal to properties, such as mass and charge. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.3) |
| 8607 | Supervenience is reduction without existence denials, ontological priorities, or translatability [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is a stripped down form of reductionism, unencumbered by dubious denials of existence, claims of ontological priority, or claims of translatability. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Dup,Sup,Div') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. It implies that the honest reductionist (i.e. me) should begin by asserting supervience, and only at a second stage go on to deny a bit of existence, loudly affirm priorities, and offer translations. Honest toil. |
| 8606 | A supervenience thesis is a denial of independent variation [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A supervenience thesis is a denial of independent variation. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Dup,Sup,Div') | |
| A reaction: Not everyone agrees on this. This says if either A or B change, the change is reflected in the other one. But the other view is of one-way dependence. A only changes if B changes, but B can also make changes that don't affect A. |
| 8580 | Materialism is (roughly) that two worlds cannot differ without differing physically [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Final definition of 'Materialism': Among worlds where no natural properties alien to our world are instantiated, no two differ without differing physically; and two such worlds that are exactly alike physically are duplicates. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Min Mat') | |
| A reaction: This would presumably allow for an anomalous monist/property dualist view of mind, but not full dualism. But if there are no psychophysical laws, what stops the mental changing while the physical remains the same? |
| 8571 | Universals are wholly present in their instances, whereas properties are spread around [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Universals and properties are different because a universal is supposed to be wholly present wherever it is instantiated. A property, by contrast, is spread around. The property of being a donkey is partly present wherever there is a donkey. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: No mention of tropes. The claim that universals are widespread, and yet must be instantiated, is dealt with by Lewis's commitment to the existence of possible donkeys. |
| 8585 | Reference partly concerns thought and language, partly eligibility of referent by natural properties [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Reference consists in part of what we do in language or thought when we refer, but in part it consists in eligibility of the referent. And this eligibility to be referred to is a matter of natural properties. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: This is a surprising conclusion for Lewis to reach, having started from properties as any old set members (see Idea 8572). There are references to intentional objects, such as 'there should have been someone on duty'. |
| 8586 | Natural properties tend to belong to well-demarcated things, typically loci of causal chains [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: One thing that makes for naturalness of a property is that it is a property belonging exclusively to well-demarcated things (like my cat Bruce, who is a locus of causal chains). | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 8557. Well-demarcated things may also have gerrymandered properties that are parts of 'arbitrary Boolean compounds' (Lewis). Why not make use of the causal chains to identify the properties? |
| 8589 | For us, a property being natural is just an aspect of its featuring in the contents of our attitudes [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The reason natural properties feature in the contents of our attitudes is that naturalness is part of what it is to feature therein. We aren't built to take a special interest in natural properties, or that we call them natural if they are interesting. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: Evolution never features in Lewis's metaphysics. I would have thought we were very much built to focus on natural properties. This sounds odd, and gives no help in distinguishing natural properties from all our other daft contents. |
| 15460 | All perfectly natural properties are intrinsic [Lewis, by Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis proposed that all perfectly natural properties are intrinsic. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], p.355-7) by David Lewis - Defining 'Intrinsic' (with Rae Langton) IX | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'natural', 'property' and 'intrinsic'! Presumably there are natural extrinsic facts, in naturally necessary relationships. If all natural properties are powers, they would have to be intrinsic. Extrinsics would be derivative. |
| 15726 | Natural properties fix resemblance and powers, and are picked out by universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps we could call a property 'perfectly' natural if its members are all and only those things that share some one universal, ...where the natural properties would be the ones whose sharing makes for resemblance, and the ones relevant to causal powers. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: This is Lewis fishing for an account of properties that does a bit better than the mere recourse to set theory (which he intuitively favours) seems to do. He remains neutral about the ontological status of a universal (though he prefers nominalism). |
| 10717 | Natural properties figure in the analysis of similarity in intrinsic respects [Lewis, by Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Lewis argues that there are natural properties, which makes various analyses possible, especially of similarity in intrinsic respects. Naturalness comes in degrees, with perfectly natural properties being the limiting case. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 4 | |
| A reaction: This sounds to be the wrong way round. We don't start with similarities and work back to natural properties. We encounter natural properties (through their causal action), and these give rise to the similarities. |
| 16217 | Lewisian natural properties fix reference of predicates, through a principle of charity [Lewis, by Hawley] |
| Full Idea: For Lewis natural properties are important for their role in making language and thought determinate: principles of charity or humanity tell us to attribute natural properties to predicates wherever possible, break underdetermination of their reference. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 3.8 | |
| A reaction: Lewis always seems to find reasons in semantics or logic for his metaphysics, instead of in the science. Lewis ends up with 'folk' natural properties, instead of accurate ones. |
| 8613 | Objects are demarcated by density and chemistry, and natural properties belong in what is well demarcated [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Where my cat (Bruce) ends, there the density of matter, the relative abundance of chemical elements, abruptly change. Bruce is also a locus of causal chains, which traces back to natural properties. Natural properties belong to well demarcated things. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: This is an amazingly convoluted way to define natural properties in terms of the classes they generate, but it seems obvious to me that the properties are logically prior to the classes. |
| 7031 | Lewis says properties are sets of actual and possible objects [Lewis, by Heil] |
| Full Idea: David Lewis has produced an important theory of properties as sets of actual and possible objects. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by John Heil - From an Ontological Point of View §12.2 | |
| A reaction: The notion that a property is an 'object' sounds wrong, as it is too passive. It also seems to allow for the possibility of uninstantiated properties existing, where properties are presumably always 'of' something. |
| 8572 | Any class of things is a property, no matter how whimsical or irrelevant [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Any class of things, be it ever so gerrymandered and miscellaneous and indescribable in thought and language, and be it ever so superfluous in characterizing the world, is nevertheless a property. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: I much prefer, at the very least, the sparse approach of Armstrong, and in fact would vote for Shoemaker's highly physical view. Lewis proceeds after this to try to pick out the properties that really matter. |
| 18433 | There are far more properties than any brain could ever encodify [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There are so many properties that those specifiable in English, or in the brain's language of synaptic interconnections and neural spikes, could only be an infinitesimal minority. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: Thus there are innumerable properties that must lack predicates. But there are also innumerable predicates that correspond to no real properties. I conclude that properties and predicates have very little in common. Job done. |
| 8604 | We need properties as semantic values for linguistic expressions [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We need properties, sometimes natural and sometimes not, to provide an adequate supply of semantic values for linguistic expressions. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: A characteristically twentieth century approach, which I find puzzling. We don't need a Loch Ness Monster in order to use the term 'Loch Ness Monster'. Lewis appears to have been a pupil of Quine... He was not, though, a Predicate Nominalist. |
| 14499 | Properties are classes of possible and actual concrete particulars [Lewis, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Lewis has a preference for a nominalist conception of properties as classes of possible and actual concrete particulars. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects II.3 | |
| A reaction: I'm sympathetic to nominalism, but still can't swallow the idea that a property like redness is nothing more than a collection of particulars, the red things. This class will include all sorts of non-red features. |
| 15120 | Lewisian properties have powers because of their relationships to other properties [Lewis, by Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: According to Lewis's conception, the causal powers of a property are constituted by its patterned relations to other properties in the particular Humean mosaic that is the actual world. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by John Hawthorne - Causal Structuralism Intro | |
| A reaction: I just can't grasp this as a serious proposal. Relations cannot be the bottom line in explanation of the world. What are the relata? I take powers to be primitive. |
| 8573 | Most properties are causally irrelevant, and we can't spot the relevant ones. [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Properties do nothing to capture the causal powers of things. Almost all properties are causally irrelevant, and there is nothing to make the relevant ones stand out from the crowd. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: Shoemaker, who endorses a causal account of properties, has a go at this problem in Idea 8557. The property of being massive is more likely to be causal than existing fifty years after D-Day. Lewis attempts later to address the problem. |
| 8569 | I suspend judgements about universals, but their work must be done [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I suspend judgement about universals themselves; I only insist that, one way or another, their work must be done. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: This seems surprising (but admirable) in a great metaphysician, but I suppose it is symptomatic of the Humean approach to metaphysics. In the light of Ideas 3989 and 3990, I would have expected Lewis to deny universals. He probably did. |
| 21961 | Physics aims to discover which universals actually exist [Lewis, by Moore,AW] |
| Full Idea: For Lewis, we can see the purpose of physics as being to discover what universals there actually are. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics Intro | |
| A reaction: It seems that Lewis uses the word 'property' to mean predicates, which consist of a multitude of sets, while universals are the properties that naturally exist and cut nature at the joints . Infuriating, because the other way around seems better. |
| 8576 | The One over Many problem (in predication terms) deserves to be neglected (by ostriches) [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The transformed problem of One over Many (in terms of predication, rather than sameness of type) deserves our neglect. The ostrich that will not look at it is a wise bird indeed. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], '1 Ov Many') | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Armstrong, and defends Quine. The remark moves Ostrich Nominalism from the category of joke to the category of respectable. I think I side with Armstrong. How is predication primitive if it has two components? |
| 8570 | To have a property is to be a member of a class, usually a class of things [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To have a property is to be a member of a class, usually a class of things. (Note: this resembles the doctrine of Class Nominalism, but I do not claim to solve the One Over Many problem by this means, far from it). | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: Lewis remains neutral about the traditional question of whether universals exist. What does he mean by "is" in his assertion? Identity, predication or class membership? I think Lewis is open to many of the objections to Class Nominalism. |
| 8574 | Class Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism are pretty much the same [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Moderate Class Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism (in its present form) seem to me to be a single theory presented in different styles. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop' n9) | |
| A reaction: Lewis has earlier endorsed a cautious form of Class Nominalism (Idea 8570). Which comes first, having a resemblance, or being in a class? Quine seems to make resemblance basic (Idea 8486), but Lewis seems to make the class basic (Idea 8572). |
| 3145 | The Indiscernibility of Identicals is a truism; but the Identity of Indiscernibles depends on possible identical worlds [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law, the indiscernibility of identicals, is a truism which should not be confused with the more controversial identity of indiscernibles, which depends on the possibility of perfectly replicated universes. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.4) |
| 3172 | Empiricism says experience is both origin and justification of all knowledge [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Two of the key claims of empiricism are that all knowledge must be justified on the basis of experience, and that all knowledge in fact originates in experience. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) |
| 3166 | Animal learning is separate from their behaviour [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Rats and monkeys exhibit 'latent learning' (learning just for fun) which is later beneficial. They learn with no consequences, and then can't learn when the good consequences are available. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a bit of a setback for naturalised epistemology and cognitive science, if learning can't be brought within a stimulus-response framework. |
| 3232 | Abduction could have true data and a false conclusion, and may include data not originally mentioned [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Abduction moves from some data to a 'best explanation'. It is not deduction because the data could be true but the conclusion false, and it is not induction because the conclusion may involve data not mentioned in the premises. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], p.322) |
| 3128 | It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.2) |
| 3136 | The three theories are reduction, dualism, eliminativism [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There are three main views regarding the ontology of mental phenomena: reductionism, dualism and eliminativism. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It is precisely this picture which is rejected by Davidson and co, who want something called 'property dualism', with a unique relationship which is labelled 'supervenient'. Unfortunately there is no analogy for it. Not even beauty and a statue. |
| 3141 | Is consciousness 40Hz oscillations in layers 5 and 6 of the visual cortex? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Crick and Koch claim that visual consciousness is correlated with a 40Hz oscillation in layers five and six of the primary visual cortex. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Not many people seem to have been enthused by their proposal. The target is the NCC (Neural Correlate of Consciousness), but we would only accept that location if the 'oscillations' seemed in some way special. |
| 3148 | Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The privacy that is a serious issue for the dualist is a peculiarly epistemic privacy that not even telepathy or brain fusions would seem to overcome. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea in the traditional defence of dualism. I'm inclined to think that we are faced with deep privacy not because the mind is so hidden, but because the observer is trapped in NOT being the thing observed. In that sense, rocks are private. |
| 3164 | Intentional explanations are always circular [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There can seem to be no escape from the "intentional circle" - the use of one intentional idiom always seems to presuppose the use of another. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: The best explanation of this is Conceptual Dualism (Papineau: Thinking about Consciousness). We are locked into dualist concepts because of our long-term ignorance about the brain. |
| 3138 | Arithmetic and unconscious attitudes have no qualia [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The contents of thoughts, beliefs and desires seem quite distinct from qualia. Arithmetic has no particular feeling attached to it, and Freud showed that many propositional attitudes have no feeling at all, as they are unconscious. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't think we should rule out 'pre-conscious' qualia. The fact that advanced human mental capacities like arithmetic have thinned out their qualia doesn't count against qualia being essential to normal mental life. |
| 3142 | Why qualia, and why this particular quale? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If we allow as a brute fact that certain mental states possess conscious qualitative content, there is still the problem of explaining why they possess one content rather than another (why does this stimulus look RED?). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the Really Hard Question. The Hard Question is merely 'why are creatures aware of their thoughts?' Personally I don't rule out finding a physical answer to the RHQ, and it is certainly not grounds for drifting into neo-dualism. |
| 3224 | If qualia have no function, their attachment to thoughts is accidental [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If qualia are non-functionally defined objects, then their attachment to their role in my thought would seem to be metaphysically accidental. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.4.2) | |
| A reaction: A rock at sea can cause a shipwreck without being defined as 'a shipwrecker'. It is, of course, tautological that if qualia have a 'role' in my thoughts, they must have causal powers, but 'function' is a much trickier concept. |
| 3227 | Are qualia a type of propositional attitude? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Qualitative experience is just a particular species of propositional attitude. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.6.1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds very implausible. If I hear a loud and baffling noise, is a proposition instantly involved? When a subtle change of colour occurs in the sky at sunset, is that 'propositional'? Do slugs formulate propositions when they taste garlic? |
| 3226 | Are qualia irrelevant to explaining the mind? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenal objects and properties are no more needed to explain the workings of our mind than are angels needed to explain the motion of the planets. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.6.1) | |
| A reaction: The question would be whether 'phenomenal properties' contained unique information, which could therefore influence behaviour. It is also a matter of exactly what you are trying to explain. |
| 3229 | If colour fits a cone mapping hue, brightness and saturation, rotating the cone could give spectrum inversion [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If colour can be modelled as a cone, with points mapped by hue, brightness and saturation, then a rotation could be isomorphic with the hues switched, so we may all experience different hues. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.7.1) | |
| A reaction: from Levine |
| 3223 | Self-consciousness may just be nested intentionality [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It is tempting to think that if a system has concepts for nested intentionality and first-person reflection, it has all that's needed for self-consciousness. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.2.2) | |
| A reaction: If there nothing more than nested intentionality in complex minds like ours, the top level of the nesting would still have a special status. And if the top level always seemed to stay the same while the lower levels changed, I'd probably call it the Self |
| 3162 | Experiments prove that people are often unaware of their motives [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Experiments have shown (Nisbett and Wilson 1977) that people's introspective knowledge is a lot less reliable than they suppose. People are sensitive to but entirely unaware of many factors that influence their social behaviour. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 3.2.2) | |
| A reaction: This type of observation rests on an overemphasis on the conscious mind. We are not conscious of liver events, or of deep buried brain events, both of which motivate us. We should only expect introspection to reveal what is fully conscious. |
| 3163 | Brain damage makes the unreliability of introspection obvious [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The most dramatic phenomena undermining the absolute reliability of introspection are those of blindsight and "anosognosia" (unawareness of one's own brain damage). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 3.2.2) | |
| A reaction: It might depend on what you expected introspection to reveal. If you only expected it to tell you about your consciousness, it would be unreasonable to expect knowledge of blindsight information by introspection. |
| 3196 | Free will isn't evidence against a theory of thought if there is no evidence for free will [Rey] |
| Full Idea: We don't need arguments to show that if there were free will then computational accounts of the mind would be inadequate; what is needed is good evidence that there actually exists such free will in the first place. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.6) |
| 3195 | If reason could be explained in computational terms, there would be no need for the concept of 'free will' [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If a computational account of reasoning processes could be given, then there is no need to settle the issue of "free will", as reason could get along without it. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.6) |
| 3165 | Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There are three different views concerning behaviourism - the 'radical' view, which aims at eliminativism, the 'analytical' view, which is a reductionist enterprise, and the 'methodological' view, somewhere between the two. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4) | |
| A reaction: The first appears to be ontological, the second about relationships between areas of our language, and the third epistemological. You could attempt language reduction because we can only know behaviour, because that's all there is. |
| 3180 | Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Defining most mental states seems to requiring citing other mental states - but perhaps behaviourists can define them all simultaneously | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting strategy for trying to avoid the well known circularity of attempting to define mental states in behavioural terms. Behaviourism won't go away. |
| 3167 | Animals don't just respond to stimuli, they experiment [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Animals exhibit 'spontaneous alteration' in their behaviour (e.g. varying the route to the food), or improvisation (finding short cuts instead of following training). They use mental maps, or dead reckoning, not just conditioned responses. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.1.4) | |
| A reaction: If we can't even get a decent behaviourist account of animal behaviour, presumably the chances for humans look even less good. 'Black box' behaviourism, rather than the eliminativist version, might allow internal mechanisms to modify responses. |
| 3173 | How are stimuli and responses 'similar'? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Radical behaviourists say animals emit "similar" responses to "similar" reinforcements, but that is empty without specifying in what respect there is a similarity. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: The point is that when you try to specify the similarity you are (supposedly) forced to use mental language to make the distinctions, thus contradicting behaviourism. It is not, though, self-evidently impossible to give a behaviourist specification. |
| 3179 | Behaviour is too contingent and irrelevant to be the mind [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The two main anti-behaviourist intuitions are that mind and behaviour only relate contingently, and that for much mental life (thinking, emotion) the resulting behaviour seems unimportant. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Attractive intuitions, but not unquestionable. Since no two states of mind are ever fully identical, we can never test whether the resulting behaviour arises contingently or necessarily. The second point underestimates the physicality of mental life. |
| 3186 | If a normal person lacked a brain, would you say they had no mind? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If many otherwise ordinary people turned out to have skulls which were empty or filled with oatmeal, would that mean that they didn't have minds? | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 7.1.4) | |
| A reaction: That's a John Locke sort of question, implying that 'persons' are logically independent of their implementation. Personally I would search for a radio receiver, because oatmeal is implausible as a thinker. |
| 3127 | Dualism and physicalism explain nothing, and don't suggest any research [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Neither dualism nor physicalism provides much serious explanation of any mental phenomena, or even much in the way of a program of research. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if people who demand an "explanation of mental phenomena" are quite clear about what it is they want. God might just say "Mental phenomena are just brain events from the brain's point of view". |
| 3188 | Homuncular functionalism (e.g. Freud) could be based on simpler mechanical processes [Rey] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'homuncular functionalism' (such as Freud's or Plato's internal struggles of the soul) needn't lead to an infinite regress if eventually the homunculi become so stupid they could be replaced by a machine. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 7.2.2) | |
| A reaction: from Fodor |
| 3216 | Is the room functionally the same as a Chinese speaker? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The question for a computational-representation theory about the Chinese Room is: is what is happening inside the room functionally equivalent to what is happening inside a normal Chinese speaker? | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Certainly the Room lacks morality ('how can I torture my sister?'). It won't spot connections between recent questions. It won't ask itself questions. It will take years to spot absurd questions. |
| 3220 | Searle is guilty of the fallacy of division - attributing a property of the whole to a part [Rey] |
| Full Idea: You should no more attribute understanding of Chinese to this one part of the system than you should ascribe the properties of the entire British Empire to Queen Victoria. This is the fallacy of division. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.2.3) | |
| A reaction: This very nicely pinpoints what is wrong with the Chinese Room argument (nice analogy, too). If you carefully introspect what is involved when you 'understand' something, it is immensely complex, though it feels instant and simple. |
| 3206 | One computer program could either play chess or fight a war [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It is always possible to provide incompatible interpretations of formal theories, so that a computer could use the same program one day to play chess, the next to fight a war. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to present a huge gulf between human chess players (who 'understand' what they are doing) and machines, but I don't accept it. Giving the machine cameras and multi-level software would fix it. |
| 8579 | Psychophysical identity implies the possibility of idealism or panpsychism [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Psychophysical identity is a two-way street: if all mental properties are physical, then some physical properties are mental; but then all physical properties might be mental, or every property of everything might be both physical and mental. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Min Mat') | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is the thought that has impressed Galen Strawson. The whole story seems to include the existence of 'mental properties' as a distinct category. This line of thought strikes me as a serious misunderstanding. |
| 3140 | If you explain water as H2O, you have reduced water, but not eliminated it [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Reduction is not the same as elimination; if chemists reduce water to H2O, or biologists reduce life to a complex chemical process, they have not shown that they don't exist. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'elimination'. It is important to be clear whether you are eliminating something from life, or from strict philosophical ontology. Ontologists never mention mountains. |
| 3134 | Human behaviour can show law-like regularity, which eliminativism can't explain [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There is clear evidence against eliminative materialism in the law-like correlations found among millions of answers in standardised school tests, for which it can give no explanation. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.3) | |
| A reaction: Not very persuasive. If neural networks got involved in complex competitions with one another, you would expect them to evolve similar tactics. |
| 3199 | Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes [Rey] |
| Full Idea: In connectionism, each node is given an activation level, and each branch a weight, according to possible degree of effect. This results in 'excitatory' and 'inhibitory' connections. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: Whether such a system could ever be 'conscious' is not the only interesting question. What could such a system do? Could it ever be good at philosophy? |
| 3201 | Connectionism explains well speed of perception and 'graceful degradation' [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Connectionism is better than other AI strategies at capturing the extraordinary swiftness of perception, and of degrading in a 'graceful' way. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: A good theory had better capture the extraordinary swiftness of perception. Also the swiftness of recognition. Compare seeing a surprising old friend in a crowd, and recognising the person you are looking for. |
| 3202 | Connectionism explains irrationality (such as the Gamblers' Fallacy) quite well [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Connectionism offers promising accounts of irrational behaviour, such as people's bias towards positive instances, and their tendency to fall for the gamblers' fallacy. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: That is strong support, because the chances of a computational robot having such tendencies is virtually nil, but all humans have the biases referred to (even philosophers). |
| 3200 | Pattern recognition is puzzling for computation, but makes sense for connectionism [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Connectionism is a way of capturing the holism of pattern recognition, as stressed by many critics of computational theories of mind. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: I am drawn to the idea that arithmetic derives from pattern recognition, and the latter is basic to all minds (a kind of instant unthinking induction), so this seems to me a win for connectionism. |
| 3150 | Can identity explain reason, free will, non-extension, intentionality, subjectivity, experience? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Eight properties of mind are problems for the identity theory: rationality, free will, spatiality, privacy, intentionality, essential mentality, subjective content, and the explanatory gap. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: The list could go on: poetry, creativity, love, normativity... Actually, these are problems for every theory. |
| 3129 | Physicalism offers something called "complexity" instead of mental substance [Rey] |
| Full Idea: In physicalism the "ghost in the machine" is merely replaced by the "complexity" in it. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.2) | |
| A reaction: This is nonsense. No one thinks that mere complexity generates consciousness. The assumption is that we would begin to understand the mind only if we could somehow map the connections of the brain. |
| 3139 | Some attitudes are information (belief), others motivate (hatred) [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Propositional attitudes divide into two broad types: neutral informational ones (belief, suspicion, imagining), and directional ones which motivate an agent (preference, desire, hate). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: Since suspicions are motivating, and preferences are informational, this is not a very sharp distinction. An alternative would be to say that there is one type, and sometimes the will gets involved. |
| 3171 | Children speak 90% good grammar [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Ninety percent of most young children's utterances are grammatical. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is good evidence for some sort of innate element in the grammar of language. But the accurate grammar is not in a particular language. Good communication must be the driving force in all this. |
| 3174 | Good grammar can't come simply from stimuli [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Grammatical sensitivity is in no way a physical property of the stimulus, and we can't imagine how to build a device which would produce grammatical structures in response to the environment. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: You could try to program it with a set of (say) Aristotelian categories, and mechanisms to sort the environment accordingly. It then has to query its database, in response to practical needs. A doddle. |
| 3170 | We train children in truth, not in grammar [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Very young children have been shown (Brown and Halon 1970) to be 'reinforced' not for their grammar but for the informational content of what they say. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is what you would expect. It doesn't follow that the grammar comes from innate mechanisms, because the pressure to get the information right could impose increasing accuracy in grammar. |
| 3213 | Animals may also use a language of thought [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The language of thought need not only be confined to creatures which speak a natural language. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.1.1) | |
| A reaction: I take it as axiomatic that our brains are no different in principles and fundamental mechanics from the lowliest of creatures. See Idea 7509. |
| 3215 | Images can't replace computation, as they need it [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Processing of images and mental models seems to require, and therefore is unlikely to replace, computation and representation. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.1.2) | |
| A reaction: A good point. If you are a fan of mental imagery, you still have to explain how we can hold an image, or recall it, or manipulate it. I always, I don't know why, wince at the thought of 'computations' among neurons. |
| 3194 | CRTT is good on deduction, but not so hot on induction, abduction and practical reason [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The computational/representational theory of thought has given a good account of deduction, but mechanical theories of induction, abduction and practical reason are needed in order to make a machine which could reason. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the best analysis of rationality that I have found (four components: deduction, induction, abduction, practical reason). I can think of nothing to add, and certainly none of these should be omitted. |
| 3147 | Problem-solving clearly involves manipulating images [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Recent experiments (Shepard 1982) suggest people have imagistic representations they inspect when solving problems. In comparing two rotated images, the time for comparison varies with the angle of rotation. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.5.3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't prove that they are slowly rotating something. It may just be harder to make the leap to the new shape, when it is 'further away'. Picturing a 20-sided figure, we don't add sides one-by-one. |
| 3175 | Animals map things over time as well as over space [Rey] |
| Full Idea: To map things like food over time, animals must somehow represent events as having temporal properties, and somehow store those representations ready for later use. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: If the mechanisms for doing this are basic, then so is the ontology. Objects must be categorised, properties spotted, time-spans correlated etc. 'Represent' needs to be sharp to be useful. |
| 3207 | Simple externalism is that the meaning just is the object [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The oldest version of the externalist theory of meaning is the Fido/Fido theory, according to which the meaning of a representation is the object for which it stands. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.2) | |
| A reaction: Modern baptismal theories of reference seem to have taken us back to this, for distinct individuals such as Aristotle, or natural kinds like gold. What, though, does 'Fido' mean to me? Asthma! |
| 3176 | Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) |
| 3181 | A one hour gap in time might be indirectly verified, but then almost anything could be [Rey] |
| Full Idea: You couldn't directly verify that the whole universe had stopped for one hour, but you might indirectly verify it (by prediction) - but then almost anything could be very indirectly verified. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: Does indirect verification include time travel? Or perfect knowledge of quantum theory, and total knowledge of quantum states. Laplace's Hypothesis. |
| 3204 | The meaning of "and" may be its use, but not of "animal" [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The view that the meaning of language of thought expressions is based on their conceptual role (derived from Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use), is most plausible for the logical connectives like "and", but implausible for, say, "animal". | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It was the logical connectives that got LW started on this track. If it doesn't work for 'animal' then does that mean we need two different theories? |
| 3205 | Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Semantic holism is a desperate measure. Belief content would be continually changed by new beliefs, evidence for a belief would change the target belief, and no two people would ever agree on concepts. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It is far more plausible to say language is a bit on the holistic side. Total holism is mad. |
| 3209 | Causal theories of reference (by 'dubbing') don't eliminate meanings in the heads of dubbers [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Causal histories may have some role to play in a theory of reference, but the chain of causation requires internal characterisations at each stage, and the original dubber had one thing rather than another in mind when dubbing. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: The modern view of direct reference seems to prefer social context rather than a complete causal chain. |
| 3210 | If meaning and reference are based on causation, then virtually everything has meaning [Rey] |
| Full Idea: What is special about meaning? If meaning and reference are just the result of causal chains, almost everything will mean something, since almost everything is reliably caused by something. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.2.2) | |
| A reaction: It would be insane to think that all causal events produced meanings. It is probably better not to mention causation at all when discussing meaning. |
| 3149 | Referential Opacity says truth is lost when you substitute one referring term ('mother') for another ('Jocasta') [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Referential Opacity says you cannot preserve truth if you substitute one referring term for another ('Oedipus desires Jocasta', 'Oedipus desires his mother'). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.5.6) | |
| A reaction: ….That is, in the context of expressing a propositional attitude. 'Oedipus desired his mother' was true. This idea requires some ignorance on the part of the person expressing the thought. |
| 3169 | A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then' [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Bifurcated logical particles (either/or, if/then) are in principle beyond the power of any local chaining device to build sentences. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: True in natural languages, but not in formal ones? If P then either if-Q-then-R or if-S-then-T. Is that chaining? If rain, then if light then puddles, or if heavy then floods. Hm. |
| 8614 | A sophisticated principle of charity sometimes imputes error as well as truth [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Unlike principles of crude charity, sophisticated principles of charity call for imputations of error in the subject if he has lived in deceptive conditions. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: This begs lots of questions about how you decide conditions are 'deceptive' if you have not yet embarked on your radical interpretation of the subject. Davidson's point still stands, that imputing truth must be the normal procedure. |
| 8615 | We need natural properties in order to motivate the principle of charity [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We need natural properties, so that the principle of charity will impute a bias towards believing that things are green rather than grue, and towards a basic desire for long life, rather than long-life-unless-one-was-born-on-a-Monday.... | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: Lewis always seems to be approaching things from the wrong end. We don't need properties so that we can attribute charity, so that we can interpret. We interpret, because we can be charitable, because we all experience natural properties. |
| 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? |
| 3221 | Our desires become important when we have desires about desires [Rey] |
| Full Idea: What gives people's desires certain moral importance is the fact that they have desires about those desires. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.1) | |
| A reaction: from Frankfurt |
| 8608 | Counterfactuals 'backtrack' if a different present implies a different past [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A counterfactual can be said to 'backtrack' if it can be said that if the present were different a different past would have led up to it (rather than if the present were different, the same past would have had a different outcome). | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Dup,Sup,Div') | |
| A reaction: A nice clear definition of a concept which is important in Lewis's analysis of causation. In the current context he is concerned with elucidation of determinism and materialism. I would say (intuitively) that all counterfactuals backtrack. |
| 8584 | Causal counterfactuals must avoid backtracking, to avoid epiphenomena and preemption [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: My counterfactual analysis of causation needs counterfactuals that avoid backtracking; else the analysis faces fatal counterexamples involving epiphenomenal side-effects or cases of causal preemption. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Laws and C') | |
| A reaction: The concept of true epiphenomena (absolutely no causal powers) strikes me as bogus. |
| 8581 | Physics discovers laws and causal explanations, and also the natural properties required [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Physics must not just discover laws and causal explanations. In putting forward as comprehensive theories that recognise only a limited range of natural properties, physics proposes inventories of the natural properties instantiated in our world. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Min Mat') | |
| A reaction: Physics does this job extremely well, offering things like force, spin, charge that are the building blocks for their theories. There is metaphysics at the heart of physics, unavoidably. |
| 15727 | Physics aims for a list of natural properties [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Physics aspires to give an inventory of natural properties. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Dup,Sup,Div') | |
| A reaction: The sort of beautifully simple remark by which philosophers ought to earn a good living in the intellectual community. Come on physicists - this is all we want! Presumably the inventory will include an account of how they all work. |
| 8611 | A law of nature is any regularity that earns inclusion in the ideal system [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A law of nature is any regularity that earns inclusion in the ideal system (or, in case of ties, in every ideal system). | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Laws and C') | |
| A reaction: Reminiscent of Peirce's view of truth (Idea 7661). This wouldn't seem to eliminate the danger of regularities with underlying causes ending up as laws (day causes night). Or very trivial regularities ending up as laws. |