8 ideas
| 16597 | Quantity is the capacity to be divided [Digby] |
| Full Idea: Quantity …is divisibility, or a capacity to be divided into parts. | |
| From: Kenelm Digby (Two treatises [1644], I.2.8), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 04.1 | |
| A reaction: 'Quantity' is scholastic philosophy is a concept we no longer possess. Without quantity, a thing might potentially exist at a spaceless point. Quantity is what spreads things out. See Pasnau Ch. 4. |
| 3286 | An organism is conscious if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: An organism only has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974], p.166) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to argue with this, but one should push on and ask what features of its consciousness make it such that there is a 'what it is like'. What is it like to have a subconscious mind, or be deeply asleep, or drive while daydreaming? |
| 3288 | Can we describe our experiences to zombies? [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The goal of an objective phenomenology would be to describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974], p.179) | |
| A reaction: This seems a bizarre expectation. We can already explain visual experience to the blind up to a point, but no one is dreaming of an "objective phenomenology" which will give blind people total understanding, just by reading about it in braille. |
| 4883 | Nagel's title creates an impenetrable mystery, by ignoring a bat's ways that may not be "like" anything [Dennett on Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Nagel's title invites us to ignore all the different ways in which bats might accomplish their cunning feats without its "being like" anything for them. We create an impenetrable mystery for ourselves if we assume that Nagel's title makes sense. | |
| From: comment on Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Kinds of Minds Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: This could well be correct about bats, but the question applies to humans as well, and we can't deny that "what it is like" is a feature of some creatures' realities. On the fringes of our own consciousness there are mental events that are "like" nothing. |
| 3287 | We can't be objective about experience [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us further away from it. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974], p.174) | |
| A reaction: We can, however, talk to one another about our subjectivity, and compare notes, and such 'inter-subjectivity' may be one approach to objectivity. We must concede Nagel's point, but we also miss something about a stone if we must remain outside of it. |
| 4989 | Physicalism should explain how subjective experience is possible, but not 'what it is like' [Kirk,R on Nagel] |
| Full Idea: A physicalist account of conscious experience must explain how it is possible for a physical system to be a conscious subject, but not 'what it is like' for some organism. | |
| From: comment on Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §4.2 | |
| A reaction: You can't entirely evade Nagel's challenge. We are trying to discover the 'neural correlate of consciousness', which will explain why we are conscious, but we also want to know why we experience green for one wavelength, and red for another. |
| 7667 | There are two sides to men - the pleasantly social, and the violent and creative [Diderot, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: Diderot is among the first to preach that there are two men: the artificial man, who belongs in society and seeks to please, and the violent, bold, criminal instinct of a man who wishes to break out (and, if controlled, is responsible for works of genius. | |
| From: report of Denis Diderot (works [1769], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism | |
| A reaction: This has an obvious ancestor in Plato's picture (esp. in 'Phaedrus') of the two conflicting sides to the psuché, which seem to be reason and emotion. In Diderot, though, the suppressed man has virtues, which Plato would deny. |
| 16731 | Colours arise from the rarity, density and mixture of matter [Digby] |
| Full Idea: The origin of all colours in bodies is plainly deduced out of the various degrees of rarity and density, variously mixed and compounded. | |
| From: Kenelm Digby (Two treatises [1644], I.29.4), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 22.5 | |
| A reaction: We are still struggling with this question, though I think the picture is gradually become clear, once you get the hang of the brain. Easy! See Idea 17396. |