Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Brainstorms:Essays on Mind and Psychology', 'Paraconsistent Logic' and 'The Extended Mind'

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8 ideas

4. Formal Logic / E. Nonclassical Logics / 7. Paraconsistency
15382 Paraconsistent reasoning can just mean responding sensibly to inconsistencies [Jago]
     Full Idea: A practical application of paraconsistent reasoning is in large databases. It does not mean that contradictions could be true, but only that we sometimes need to draw sensible conclusions from inconsistent data. 'Dialethists' believe some contradictions.
     From: Mark Jago (Paraconsistent Logic [2010])
     A reaction: Interesting as a more cautious and sensible attitude to the scandal of paraconsistency.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / a. Beliefs
19743 A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers]
     Full Idea: Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is.
     From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4)
     A reaction: This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role?
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 6. Anti-Individualism
6176 A mechanism can count as 'cognitive' whether it is in the brain or outside it [Clark/Chalmers, by Rowlands]
     Full Idea: If the operation of a brain implant inside the brain is a cognitive operation, why should it not count as a cognitive operation when it is outside the brain? There are many mechanisms which would count as cognitive if they were inside the subject.
     From: report of A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.9
     A reaction: This argues for externalism of the vehicle of thought, rather than its content. The idea is that there is no significant difference between remembering a phone number and writing it on a bit of paper. I find it hard to disagree.
19741 If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers]
     Full Idea: If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.
     From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2)
     A reaction: In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong.
19742 Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers]
     Full Idea: Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
     From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3)
     A reaction: This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'.
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.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / a. Memory is Self
19744 If a person relies on their notes, those notes are parted of the extended system which is the person [Clark/Chalmers]
     Full Idea: If Otto relies on his notebook, what this comes to is that Otto himself is best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources.
     From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §5)
     A reaction: You start to get giddy as you read this stuff. If two people constantly share a notebook, they begin to blend into one another. It inclines me towards a more 'animalist' view of the nature of a person or a self.
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'.