20 ideas
| 21339 | We want the ontology of relations, not just a formal way of specifying them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A satisfying account of relations must be ontologically serious. This means refusing to rest content with abstract specifications of relations as sets of ordered n-tuples. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A set of ordered entities would give the extension of a relation, which wouldn't, among other things, explain co-extensive relations (if all the people to my left were also taller than me). Heil's is a general cry from the heart about formal philosophy. |
| 21349 | Two people are indirectly related by height; the direct relation is internal, between properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If Simmias is taller than Socrates, they are indirectly related; they are related via their possession of properties that are themselves directly - and internally - related. Hence relational truths are made true by non-relational features of the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Founding') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a strategy for reducing external relations to internal relations, which are intrinsic to objects, which thus reduces the ontology. Heil is not endorsing it, but cites Kit Fine 2000. The germ of this idea is in Plato. |
| 21340 | Maybe all the other features of the world can be reduced to relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A striking idea is that relations are ontologically primary: monadic, non-relational features of the world are constituted by relations. A view of this kind is defended by Peirce, and contemporary 'structural realists' like Ladyman. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Relational') | |
| A reaction: I can't make sense of this proposal, which seems to offer relations with no relata. What is a relation? What is it made of? How do you individuate two instances of a relations, without reference to the relata? |
| 21348 | In the case of 5 and 6, their relational truthmaker is just the numbers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We might say that the truthmakers for 'six is greater than five' are six and five themselves. On this view, truthmakers for one class of relational truths are non-relational features of the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Founding') | |
| A reaction: That seems to be a good way of expressing the existence of an internal relation. |
| 21351 | Truthmaking is a clear example of an internal relation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaking is a paradigmatic internal relation: if you have a truthbearer, a representation, and you have the world as the truthbearer represents it as being, you have truthmaking, you have the truthbearer's being true. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Causal') | |
| A reaction: It is nice to have an example of an internal relation other than numbers, and closer to the concrete world. Is the relation between the world and facts about the world the same thing, or another example? |
| 21344 | If R internally relates a and b, and you have a and b, you thereby have R [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A simple way to think about internal relations is: if R internally relates a and b, then, if you have a and b, you thereby have R. If you have six and you have five, you thereby have six's being greater than five. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'External') | |
| A reaction: This seems to work a lot better for abstracta than for physical objects, where I am struggling to think of a parallel example. Parenthood? Temporal relations between things? Acorn and oak? |
| 21350 | If properties are powers, then causal relations are internal relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: On the conception that properties are powers, it is no longer obvious that causal relations are external relations. Given the powers - all the powers in play - you have the manifestations. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Causal') | |
| A reaction: This also delivers on a plate the necessity felt to be in causal relations, because the relation is inevitable once you are given the relata. But can you have an accidental (rather than essential) internal relation? Not in the case of numbers. |
| 4608 | Minds are hard-wired, or trial-and-error, or experimental, or full self-aware [Dennett, by Heil] |
| Full Idea: Dennett identifies a hierarchy of minds running from 'Darwinian' (hard-wired solutions to problems), to 'Skinnerian' (trial-and-error), to 'Popperian' (anticipating possible experience), to 'Gregorian' (self-conscious representation, probably linguistic). | |
| From: report of Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996]) by John Heil - Philosophy of Mind Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. The concept of an experiment seems a major step (assessing reality against an internal map), and the ability to think about one's own thoughts certainly strikes me as the mark of a top level mind. Maybe that is the importance of language. |
| 4880 | Sentience comes in grades from robotic to super-human; we only draw a line for moral reasons [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: 'Sentience' comes in every imaginable grade or intensity, from the simplest and most 'robotic', to the most exquisitely sensitive, hyper-reactive 'human'. We have to draw a line for moral policy, but it is unlikely we will ever discover a threshold. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the only plausible view, if you take the theory of evolution seriously. We can even observe low-grade marginal sentience in our own minds, and then shoot up the scale when we focus our minds properly on an object. |
| 4873 | What is it like to notice an uncomfortable position when you are asleep? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: What is it like to notice, while sound asleep, that your left arm has become twisted into a position in which it is putting undue strain on your left shoulder? Like nothing. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice question, and all part of Dennett's accurate campaign to show that consciousness is not an all-or-nothing thing. As when we are barely aware of driving, innumerable things happen in the shadowy corners of thought. |
| 4881 | Being a person must involve having second-order beliefs and desires (about beliefs and desires) [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: An important step towards becoming a person is the step up from a first-order intentional system to a second-order system (which has beliefs and desires about beliefs and desires). | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Call it 'meta-thought'. I agree. Dennett thinks language is crucial to this, but the hallmark of intelligence and full-blown personhood is meta- and meta-meta-thought. Maybe the development of irony is a step up the evolutionary scale. Sarcasm is GOOD. |
| 4875 | We descend from robots, and our intentionality is composed of billions of crude intentional systems [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: We are descended from robots, and composed of robots, and all the intentionality we enjoy is derived from the more fundamental intentionality of billions of crude intentional systems. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: A more grand view of intentionality (such as Searle's) seems more attractive than this, but the crucial fact about Dennett is that he takes the implications of evolution much more seriously than other philosophers. He's probably right. |
| 4879 | There is no more anger in adrenaline than silliness in a bottle of whiskey [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: There is no more fear or anger in adrenaline than there is silliness in a bottle of whiskey. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Not exactly an argument, but a nice rhetorical point against absurd claims about identity and reduction and elimination. We may say that there is no fear without adrenaline, and no adrenaline in a live brain without fear. |
| 4876 | Maybe there is a minimum brain speed for supporting a mind [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps there is a minimum speed for a mind, rather like the minimum escape velocity required to overcome gravity and leave the planet. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Dennett rejects this speculation, but he didn't stop to imagine what it would be LIKE if your brain slowed down, and he never considers Edelman's view that mind is a process. Put the two together… |
| 4878 | The materials for a mind only matter because of speed, and a need for transducers and effectors [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: I think there are only two good reasons why, when you make a mind, the materials matter: speed, and the ubiquity of transducers and effectors throughout the nervous system. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This sounds roughly right, because it gives you something between multiple realisability (minds made of cans and string), and type-type identity (minds ARE a particular material). Call it 'biological functionalism'? |
| 4874 | The predecessor and rival of the language of thought hypothesis is the picture theory of ideas [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The ancestor and chief rival of the language-of-thought hypothesis is the picture theory of ideas - that thoughts are about what they are about because they resemble their objects. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: When you place them side by side, neither seems quite right. How can a mental state resemble an object, and how can an inner language inherently capture the features of an object? Maybe we lack the words for the correct theory. |
| 4882 | Concepts are things we (unlike dogs) can think about, because we have language [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: A dog cannot consider its concepts. Concepts are not things in a dog's world in the way that cats are. Concepts are things in our world, because we have language. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Dogs must have concepts, though, or much of their behaviour (like desperation to go for a walk, or to eat) is baffling. This is as good a proposal as I have ever encountered for the value of language. Meta-thought is a huge evolutionary advantage. |
| 4872 | Most people see an abortion differently if the foetus lacks a brain [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: If a fetus that is being considered for abortion is known to be anencephalic (lacking a brain), this dramatically changes the issue for most people, though not for all. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A very effective point, as it is hard to see what grounds could be given for not aborting in this case. But the brain then clearly becomes the focus of why abortion is often rejected by many people. |
| 16591 | Prime matter is nothing but its parts [Vanini] |
| Full Idea: The whole of prime matter, considered as prime matter, is nothing other than its parts. | |
| From: Julio Cesare Vanini (Amphitheatrum [1615], Ex 5:p.28), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.2 | |
| A reaction: This is a late scholastic writer rejecting the traditional (and obscure) prime matter with the new corpuscularian approach. It signals the end of the Greek concept of matter. |
| 4877 | Maybe plants are very slow (and sentient) animals, overlooked because we are faster? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Might plants just be 'very slow animals', enjoying sentience that has been overlooked by us because of our human timescale chauvinism? | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Delightful thought, arising from pondering the significance of the speed of operation of the brain. I think it is false, because I think high speed is essential to mind, and Dennett seems not to. |