Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Brainstorms:Essays on Mind and Psychology', 'The Metaphysics of Space-Time Substantivalism' and 'Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and Essentialism'

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4 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories

3158	Theories of intentionality presuppose rationality, so can't explain it [Dennett]
	Full Idea: Intentional theory is vacuous as psychology because it presupposes and does not explain rationality or intelligence.
	From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainstorms:Essays on Mind and Psychology [1978], p.15?)
	A reaction: Virtually every philosophical theory seems to founder because it presupposes something like the thing it is meant to explain. I agree that 'intentionality' is a slightly airy concept that would probably reduce to something better.

17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 3. Intentional Stance

3159	Beliefs and desires aren't real; they are prediction techniques [Dennett]
	Full Idea: Intentional systems don't really have beliefs and desires, but one can explain and predict their behaviour by ascribing beliefs and desires to them. This strategy is pragmatic, not right or wrong.
	From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainstorms:Essays on Mind and Psychology [1978], p.7?)
	A reaction: If the ascription of beliefs and desires explains behaviour, then that is good grounds for thinking they might be real features of the brain, and even if that is not so, they are real enough as abstractions from brain events, like the 'economic climate'.

27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 4. Substantival Space

19035	General Relativity allows substantivalism about space-time - that it has independent properties [Hoefer]
	Full Idea: General Relativity describes space-time in a way that allows it to exist with determinate properties not reducible to the properties and relations of its material contents. Hence nearly all physicists and philosophers writing on GR are substantivalists.
	From: Carl Hoefer (The Metaphysics of Space-Time Substantivalism [1996], p.5), quoted by Barbara Vetter - Potentiality 7.3
	A reaction: I'm encouraged by this, as I instinctly favour substantivalism. Imagine removing all the objects from space-time, one by one. What happens as you approach the end of the task? Once they are removed, can they be replaced?

27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 5. Species

17366	Virtually all modern views of speciation rest on relational rather than intrinsic features [Okasha]
	Full Idea: On all modern species concepts (except the phenetic), the property in virtue of which a particular organism belongs to one species rather than another is a relational rather than an intrinsic property of the organism.
	From: Samir Okasha (Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and Essentialism [2002], p.201), quoted by Michael Devitt - Resurrecting Biological Essentialism 4
	A reaction: I am in sympathy with Devitt's attack on this view, for the same reason that I take relational explanations of almost anything (such as the mind) to be inadequate. We need to know the intrinsic features that enable the relations.