11 ideas
| 2546 | Philosophy is a magnificent failure in its attempt to overstep the limits of our knowledge [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy marks the limits of human theoretical intelligence. Philosophy is an attempt to overstep our cognitive bounds, a kind of magnificent failure. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.209) | |
| A reaction: No one attempts to overstep boundaries once they are confirmed as such. The magnificent attempts persist because failure is impossible to demonstrate (except, perhaps, by Gödel's Theorem). |
| 2544 | Thoughts have a dual aspect: as they seem to introspection, and their underlying logical reality [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Our thoughts have a kind of duality, corresponding to their surface appearance to introspection and their underlying logical reality. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.147) |
| 13128 | 'Ultimate sortals' cannot explain ontological categories [Westerhoff on Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: 'Ultimate sortals' are said to be non-subordinated, disjoint from one another, and uniquely paired with each object. Because of this, the ultimate sortal cannot be a satisfactory explication of the notion of an ontological category. | |
| From: comment on David Wiggins (Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity [1971], p.75) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §26 | |
| A reaction: My strong intuitions are that Wiggins is plain wrong, and Westerhoff gives the most promising reasons for my intuition. The simplest point is that objects can obviously belong to more than one category. |
| 2539 | Mental modules for language, social, action, theory, space, emotion [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The prevailing view in cognitive psychology is that the mind consists of separate faculties, each with a certain cognitive task: linguistic, social, practical, theoretical, abstract, spatial and emotional. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.40) | |
| A reaction: 'Faculties' are not quite the same as 'modules', and this list mostly involves more higher-order activities than a modules list (e.g. Idea 2495). The idea that emotion is a 'faculty' sounds old-fashioned. |
| 2545 | Free will is mental causation in action [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Free will is mental causation in action. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.167) |
| 2543 | Brains aren't made of anything special, suggesting panpsychism [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: All matter must contain the potential to underlie consciousness, since there is nothing special about the matter that composes brain tissue. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.100) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me one of the most basic assumptions which we should all make about the mind. The mind is made of the brain, and the brain is made of food. However, there must be something 'special' about the brain. |
| 2540 | Examining mind sees no brain; examining brain sees no mind [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: You can look into your mind until you burst and not discover neurons and synapses, and you can stare at someone's brain from dawn till dusk and not perceive the consciousness that is so apparent to the person whose brain it is. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.47) | |
| A reaction: This is a striking symmetry of ignorance, though hardly enough to justify McGinn's pessimism about understanding the mind. 'When you are in the grass you can't see the whole of England; if you can see the whole of England, you won't see the grass'. |
| 2547 | There is information if there are symbols which refer, and which can combine into a truth or falsehood [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: There is information in a system if there are symbols in it that refer to things and that together form strings that can be true or false. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.225) | |
| A reaction: We can also directly apprehend information by perception. Are facts identical with correct information? Can a universal generalisation be information? |
| 22381 | Being a good father seems to depend on intentions, rather than actual abilities [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Being a good father, or daughter, or friend seems to depend on one's intentions, rather than on such things as cleverness and strength. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Goodness and Choice [1961], p.138) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about that. In wartime a good father might need to be actually brave, and in times of hardship be actually economically successful. 'He meant well, but he was a hopeless father'? |
| 22380 | Some words, such as 'knife', have a meaning which involves its function [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The word 'knife' names an object in respect of its function. That is not to say (simply) that it names an object which has a function, but also that the function is involved in the meaning of the word. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Goodness and Choice [1961], p.134) | |
| A reaction: It seems faintly possible that someone (a child, perhaps) could know the word and recognise the object, but not know what the object is for. Ditto with other things which have functional names. |
| 2542 | Causation in the material world is energy-transfer, of motion, electricity or gravity [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Causation in the material world works by energy transfer of some sort: transfer of motion, of electrical energy, of gravitational force. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.92) |