8 ideas
| 2534 | Mindless bodies are zombies, bodiless minds are ghosts [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: When bodies are conceived without mind, Zombies are the topic; when mind is conceived without bodies, Ghosts are the topic. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am not too impressed by either possibility. I doubt whether either of them are even logically possible. Can you have a magnet without its magnetism? Can you have magnetism with no magnet? |
| 2537 | Types are properties, and tokens are events. Are they split between mental and physical, or not? [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: The question is whether mental and physical types (which are properties) are distinct, and whether mental and physical tokens (which are events) are distinct. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. While the first one gives us the rather dodgy notion of 'property dualism', the second one seems to imply Cartesian dualism, if the events really are distinct. It seems to me that thought is an aspect of brain events, not a distinct event. |
| 2532 | Intentionality isn't reducible, because of its experiential aspect [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: The link between Aboutness and consciousness, plus the latter's theoretical recalcitrance, have prevented reduction of the former. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I remain unconvinced that Aboutness (intentionality) has to be wholly (or even partly conscious). We are more interested in our conscious mental states, because those are the ones we can report to other people, and discuss. |
| 2533 | Rule-following can't be reduced to the physical [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: If you can't squeeze an 'ought' from an 'is', then the feature of normativity will prevent the reduction of Aboutness. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A dubious argument. Hume's point is that no rational inference will get you from is to ought, but you can get there on a whim. I don't see normativity as being so intrinsically magical that it is irreducible. |
| 2535 | The main argument for physicalism is its simple account of causation [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: The dominant empirical argument for physicalism is the Overdetermination Argument: physics is closed and complete, mind is causally efficacious, the world isn't choc-full of overdetermination, so the mind is physical as well. | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find this argument utterly convincing. The idea that there is only one thing which is outside the interconnected causal nexus which seems to constitute the rest of reality, and that is a piece of meat inside our heads, strikes me as totally ridiculous. |
| 7845 | When we need to do something, we depute an inner servant to remind us of it [Proust] |
| Full Idea: Whenever we have something definite to do at a given moment, we depute a certain person inside us who is accustomed to that sort of duty to keep an eye on the clock and warn us of the time. This inner servant reminded me that Albertine was coming soon. | |
| From: Marcel Proust (Remembrance of Things Past [1922], Cities.2.1) | |
| A reaction: I think Proust is wrong that we 'depute' this servant. I think it comes as a built-in feature, and the servant could never be abandoned or sacked, no matter how poor the service. Each of us is a team, which includes servants. |
| 2536 | Do facts cause thoughts, or embody them, or what? [Sturgeon] |
| Full Idea: Does a thought relate to its truth conditions like a tree to its age, a bee dance to its target, or smoke to its cause? | |
| From: Scott Sturgeon (Matters of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Nice question. Is truth the purpose of thoughts, or the cause of thoughts, or the constitution(?) of thoughts? I vote for the bee….but we mustn't confuse truth with truth-conditions. |
| 4375 | Evaluations are not disguised emotions; instead, emotion is a type of evaluation [Achtenberg] |
| Full Idea: The emotivist gets things backwards: evaluations are not disguised emotions; instead, emotions are types of evaluation. | |
| From: Deborah Achtenberg (Cognition of Value in Aristotle's Ethics [2002], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice comment, though a bit optimistic. It is certainly a valuable corrective to emotivist to pin down the cognitive and evaluative aspects of emotion, rather than regarding them as 'raw' feelings. |