Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', 'The Idea of the Brain' and 'The Psychophysical Nexus'

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7 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 12. Rejecting Truthmakers
19044 Saying truths fit experience adds nothing to truth; nothing makes sentences true [Davidson]
     Full Idea: The notion of fitting the totality of experience ...adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. ....Nothing, ...no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world.
     From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.11), quoted by Willard Quine - On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma p.39
     A reaction: If you don't have a concept of what normally makes a sentence true, I don't see how you go about distinguishing what is true from what is false. You can't just examine the sentence to see if it has the 'primitive' property of truth. Holism is involved....
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
4242 Pure supervenience explains nothing, and is a sign of something fundamental we don't know [Nagel]
     Full Idea: Pure, unexplained supervenience is never a solution to a problem but a sign that there is something fundamental we don't know.
     From: Thomas Nagel (The Psychophysical Nexus [2000], §III)
     A reaction: This seems right. It is not a theory or an explanation, merely the observation of a correlation which will require explanation. Why are they correlated?
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
6400 Without the dualism of scheme and content, not much is left of empiricism [Davidson]
     Full Idea: The third dogma of empiricism is the dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, which cannot be made intelligible and defensible. If we give it up, it is not clear that any distinctive empiricism remains.
     From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.189)
     A reaction: The first two dogmas were 'analyticity' and 'reductionism', as identified by Quine in 1953. Presumably Hume's Principles of Association (Idea 2189) would be an example of a scheme. A key issue is whether there is any 'pure' content.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 6. Relativism Critique
6398 Different points of view make sense, but they must be plotted on a common background [Davidson]
     Full Idea: Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them.
     From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.184)
     A reaction: This seems right to me. I am very struck by the close similarities between people from wildly differing cultural backgrounds, as seen, for example, at the Olympic Games.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 8. Brain
23216 The brain is not passive, and merely processing inputs; it is active, and intervenes in the world [Cobb]
     Full Idea: A number of scientists are now realising that, by viewing the brain as a computer that passively responds ot inputs and processes data, we forget that it is an active organ, part of the body intervening in the world.
     From: Matthew Cobb (The Idea of the Brain [2020], Intro)
     A reaction: I like any idea which reminds us that nature is intrinsically active, and not merely passive. Laws are in nature, not imposed on it. My preferred ontology, based on powers as fundamental, applies to the brain, as well as to physics. No free will needed.
23226 There is a single mouse neuron which has 862 inputs and 626 outputs [Cobb]
     Full Idea: Researchers have recently described a single inhibitory neuron in a region called the visual thalamus of the mouse - it has 862 input synapses and 626 output synapses.
     From: Matthew Cobb (The Idea of the Brain [2020], 11)
     A reaction: This is the kind of fact which philosophers of mind must be aware of when offering accounts of thought which are in danger of being simplistic.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation
6399 Criteria of translation give us the identity of conceptual schemes [Davidson]
     Full Idea: Studying the criteria of translation is a way of focusing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes.
     From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.184)
     A reaction: This is why it was an inspired idea of Quine's to make translation a central topic in philosophy. We must be cautious, though, about saying that the language is the conceptual scheme, as that leaves animals with no scheme at all.