28 ideas
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 2319 | Metaphysics is the clarification of the ontological relationships between different areas of thought [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is the domain where different languages, theories, explanations, and conceptual systems come together and have their mutual ontological relationships sorted out and clarified. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §3 p.066) |
| 2317 | Reductionism is good on light, genes, temperature and transparency [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Examples where reductionism seems to give a good account of things are light, genes, temperature and transparency. | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.025) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This a fairly simple examples, thoroughly confirmed by science a long time ago. Life is a nicer example, because it is more complex and less obvious, but pretty much beyond dispute these days. |
| 2310 | Supervenience is linked to dependence [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is customary to associate supervenience with the idea of dependence or determination. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.011) | |
| A reaction: It is only 'customary' because, in principle, the supervenience might just be a coincidence. I might follow someone everywhere because I love them (dependence) or because they force me to (determination). There's always a reason. |
| 2315 | Mereological supervenience says wholes are fixed by parts [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Mereological supervenience is the doctrine that wholes are fixed by the properties and relations that characterise their parts. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.018) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this would be the opposite of 'holism'. Personally I would take mereological supervenience to be not merely correct, but to be metaphysically necessary. Don't ask me to prove it, of course. |
| 2329 | Causal power is a good way of distinguishing the real from the unreal [Kim] |
| Full Idea: A plausible criterion for distinguishing what is real from what is not real is the possession of causal power. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.119) |
| 2320 | Properties can have causal powers lacked by their constituents [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Macroproperties can, and in general do, have their own causal powers, powers that go beyond the causal powers of their microconstituents. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §3 p.085) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why the macro-powers 'go beyond' the sum of the micro-powers. Admittedly one molecule can't be slippery, but slipperiness can be totally reduced to molecule behaviour. |
| 530 | There are two contradictory arguments about everything [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There are two contradictory arguments about everything. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B06a), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 13314 | Protagoras says arguments on both sides are always equal [Kim, by Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Protagoras declares that it is possible to argue either side of any question with equal force, even the question whether or not one can equally argue either side of any question! | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998]) by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 088 | |
| A reaction: This is perhaps the most famous sceptical argument in the ancient world (though, note, Protagoras is most famous for his relativism rather than his scepticism). It is, of course, wrong. The arguments are sometimes equal, but often they are not. |
| 2065 | Not every person is the measure of all things, but only wise people [Plato on Kim] |
| Full Idea: We do not agree that every person is the measure of all things, but only wise people. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B01) by Plato - Theaetetus 183c | |
| A reaction: I fully agree with this, but only because I have an optimistic view that rational people converge on the truth. |
| 1550 | Why didn't Protagoras begin by saying "a tadpole is the measure of all things"? [Plato on Kim] |
| Full Idea: Why didn't he start 'Truth' off by saying "A pig is the measure of all things", or "a baboon",…or " tadpole"? That would have been a magnificently haughty beginning. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B01) by Plato - Theaetetus 161d1 |
| 2318 | Agency, knowledge, reason, memory, psychology all need mental causes [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The following all require a belief in mental causation: agency (mind causes events), knowledge (perception causes beliefs), reasoning (one belief causes another), memory (events cause ideas), psychology (science of mental causes). | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §2 p.031) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A very good list, which I cannot fault, and to which I cannot add. The question is: is there any mental activity left over which does NOT require causation? Candidates are free will, and the contingent character of qualia. I say the answer is, no. |
| 2325 | It seems impossible that an exact physical copy of this world could lack intentionality [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me inconceivable that a possible world exists that is an exact physical duplicate of this world but lacking wholly in intentionality. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: Personally I can't conceive of such a world lacking qualia either. The physical entails the mental, say I. |
| 2324 | Intentionality as function seems possible [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There has been much scepticism about a functionalist account of intentionality, particularly from Putnam (recently) and Searle, but, like many others, I don't see any principled objections to such an account. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: I agree. I don't believe that intentionality is a candidate for being one of those many 'magic' qualities which are supposed to make the reduction of mind to brain impossible. |
| 2314 | Maybe intentionality is reducible, but qualia aren't [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to hold that phenomenal properties (qualia) are irreducible, while holding intentional properties, including propositional attitudes, to be reducible (functionally, or biologically). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.017) | |
| A reaction: This is the position which Kim has settled for, but I find it baffling. If the universe is full of irreducibles that is one thing, but if everything in the universe is reducible except for one tiny item, that is implausible. |
| 2313 | Emergentism says there is no explanation for a supervenient property [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The emergentism (of Searle), like ethical intuitionism, views mind-body supervenience as something that admits no explanation - it is a brute fact. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.013) | |
| A reaction: This is why 'emergence' is no sort of theory, and is really old-fashioned dualism in a dubious naturalistic disguise. If mind 'emerges', there is presumably a causal mechanism for that. |
| 2328 | The only mental property that might be emergent is that of qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If emergentism is correct about anything, it is more likely to be correct about qualia than about anything else. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.103) | |
| A reaction: I'm puzzled by a view that says that nearly all of the mind is reducible, but one tiny aspect of it is 'emergent'. What sort of ontology is envisaged by that? |
| 2309 | Non-Reductive Physicalism relies on supervenience [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers saw in mind-body supervenience a satisfying metaphysical statement of physicalism without reductionism. This widely influential position is now known as "nonreductive physicalism". | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.008) | |
| A reaction: If two things supervene on one another, then we should be asking why. Occasionalism and Parallelism are presumably not the answer. Coldness supervenes on ice. |
| 2311 | Maybe strong supervenience implies reduction [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe strong supervenience is inconsistent with the irreducibility of the supervenient properties to their subvenient bases. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.012) | |
| A reaction: If two things are really very very supervenient on one another (superdupervenient?), then you have to ask WHY? If there isn't identity, then there is surely a highly lawlike connection? |
| 2308 | Identity theory was overthrown by multiple realisations and causal anomalies [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The two principle arguments which overthrew the mind-brain identity theory were the multiple realization argument of Hilary Putnam, and the anomalist argument of Davidson, which contained the seeds of functionalism and anomalous monism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.002) | |
| A reaction: The first argument strikes me as significant and interesting, but Davidson seems weak. It makes the unsubstantiated claim that mind is outside the laws of physics, and irreducible. |
| 2322 | Multiple realisation applies to other species, and even one individual over time [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Multiple realization goes deeper and wider than biological species, and even in the same individual the neural realizer, or correlate, of a given mental state or function may change over time through maturation and brain injuries. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.095) | |
| A reaction: The tricky question here is what you mean by 'change'. How different must a pattern of neurons be before you say it is of a different type? How do you individuate a type? |
| 2327 | Knowledge and inversion make functionalism about qualia doubtful [Kim] |
| Full Idea: My doubts about functionalist accounts of qualia are based on the much discussed arguments from qualia inversions, and from epistemic considerations. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.102) | |
| A reaction: With a colour inversion experience changes but function doesn't. But maybe function does change if you ask the right questions. 'Is this a warm colour?' It certainly strikes me that qualia contain useful (epistemic) information. |
| 2323 | Emotions have both intentionality and qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It has been customary to distinguish between two broad categories of mental phenomena, the intentional and the phenomenal, without excluding those that have both (e.g. emotions). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: This has become the conventional modern account of the mind. It seems a little too simple to say that the mind is characterised by two clearcut phenomena like this. I suspect that his picture will be modified in time. |
| 22392 | Morality is inescapable, in descriptive words such as 'dishonest', 'unjust' and 'uncharitable' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There is a sense in which morality is inescapable - in moral epithets such as 'dishonest', 'unjust', 'uncharitable'; these do not cease to apply to a man because he is indifferent to the ends of morality: they may indeed apply because of his indifference. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.172 n15) | |
| A reaction: Odysseus was admired for lying, and charity wasn't a virtue in the ancient world. They won't go away as factual descriptions, but the values attached to them vary quite a lot. |
| 23685 | Reason is not a motivator of morality [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her middle period she changed her mind, and attacks moral rationalism. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: That is, she doubted whether moral reasons are sufficient to motivate moral actions, which presumably therefore need desires, as the Humeans claimed. Reasons rely on merely hypothetical rules. |
| 23691 | Rejecting moral rules may be villainous, but it isn't inconsistent [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The man who rejects morality because he sees no reason to obey its rules can be convicted of villainy but not of inconsistency. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.161) | |
| A reaction: This is 'middle period' Foot, when she decided that Hume was right about the need for a desire as moral motivator. Before and after this time, she thought there were reasons to be moral, as well as desires. |
| 22391 | Saying we 'ought to be moral' makes no sense, unless it relates to some other system [Foot] |
| Full Idea: 'One ought to be moral' makes no sense at all unless the 'ought' has the moral subscript, giving a tautology, or else relates morality to some other system such as prudence or etiquette. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.169 n18) | |
| A reaction: This aims to undercut the Kantian view that morality is an absolute call to duty (filling us with wonder, like the starry heavens). Foot aims to root morality in the real world. |
| 22389 | Morality no more consists of categorical imperatives than etiquette does [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Moral judgements have no better claim to be categorical imperatives than do statements about matters of etiquette. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.164) | |
| A reaction: Her claim is that all moral judgements are responses to situations, and so are hypothetical. This judgement of hers is the culmination of a careful discussion. |