Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes' and 'Prcis of 'Ruling Passions''

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4 ideas

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism

4988	Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM]
	Full Idea: It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true.
	From: comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9
	A reaction: If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory.

4987	Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced [Churchland,PM]
	Full Idea: Eliminative materialism says our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena is a radically false theory, so defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced (rather than reduced).
	From: Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981], Intro)
	A reaction: It is hard to see what you could replace the idea of a 'belief' with in ordinary conversation. We may reduce beliefs to neuronal phenomena, but we can't drop the vocabulary of the macro-phenomena. The physics of weather doesn't eliminate 'storms'.

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality

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?

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / d. Ethical theory

11911	Some philosophers always want more from morality; for others, nature is enough [Blackburn]
	Full Idea: The history of moral theory is largely a history of battles between people who want more (truth, absolutes...) - Plato, Locke, Cudworth, Kant, Nagel - and people content with what we have (nature) - Aristotle, Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume, Stevenson.
	From: Simon Blackburn (Précis of 'Ruling Passions' [2002], p.133)
	A reaction: [Thanks to Neil Sinclair for this one] As a devotee of Aristotle, I like this. I'm always impressed, though, by people who go the extra mile in morality, because they are in the grips of purer and loftier ideals than I am. They also turn into monsters!