86 ideas
| 14027 | If we are to use words in enquiry, we need their main, unambiguous and uncontested meanings [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that we look to the primary conception corresponding to each word and that it stand in no need of demonstration, if, that is, we are going to have something to which we can refer the object of search or puzzlement and opinion. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 38) | |
| A reaction: This either points to definition or to consensus, and since definition seems in danger of some sort of Quinean circularity, I favour consensus. Philosophy is, after all, people discussing things, not inscriptions sent to the gods. |
| 14040 | Observation and applied thought are always true [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Everything that is observed or grasped by the intellect in an act of application is true. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 62) | |
| A reaction: Not quite clear what he means, but Epicurus is committed to perception as the source of knowledge, with the intellect extending the findings of the senses. He might subscribe to Descartes's 'clear and distinct' perceptions. |
| 3137 | Varieties of singular terms are used to designate token particulars [Rey] |
| Full Idea: We designate token particulars with singular terms, such as: proper names, numerals, definite descriptions, demonstratives, pronouns or variables. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1.1) |
| 3143 | Physics requires the existence of properties, and also the abstract objects of arithmetic [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Physics is committed to arithmetic, which seems committed to abstract objects such as numbers, and its causal explanations seem to appeal to properties, such as mass and charge. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.3) |
| 14028 | Nothing comes to be from what doesn't exist [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Nothing comes into being from what is not. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 38) | |
| A reaction: King Lear puts it better: Nothing will come of nothing [1.i]. There seems to be an underlying assumption that coming into being out of nothing is much weirder than just existing, but I am not convinced about that. It's all equally weird. |
| 14029 | If disappearing things went to nothingness, nothing could return, and it would all be gone by now [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: If that which disappears were destroyed into what is not, all things would have been destroyed, since that into which they were dissolved does not exist. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 39) | |
| A reaction: This follows on from Idea 14028. Theologians will immediately spot that this is the underlying principle cited by Aquinas in his Third Way for proving God's existence (Idea 1431). |
| 14030 | The totality is complete, so there is no room for it to change, and nothing extraneous to change it [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: The totality of things has always been just like it is now and always will be. For there is nothing for it to change into. For there exists nothing in addition to the totality, which could enter into it and produce the change. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 39) | |
| A reaction: This smacks of the sort of dubious arguments that the medieval theologians fell in love with. I never thought I'd say this, but I think Epicurus needs a comprehensive course in set theory before he makes remarks like this. |
| 14048 | Astronomical movements are blessed, but they don't need the help of the gods [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Movements, turnings, risings, settings, and related phenomena occur without any god helping out and ordaining or being about to ordain things, and at the same time have complete blessedness and indestructibility. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 76) | |
| A reaction: Epicurus is sometimes accused of atheism for remarks like these, but he is always trying to show piety in his attitudes. We might now call this attitude 'deism' (see alphabetical themes). |
| 14044 | The perceived accidental properties of bodies cannot be conceived of as independent natures [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: The shapes, colours, sizes and weights which are predicated of body as accidents, ...and are known by sense-perception, must not be thought of as independent natures (for that is inconceivable). | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 68) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an anti-platonist remark, though he is not denying that the accidental properties may have some universal character. I'm struck by how close the basic metaphysics of Epicurus is to that of Aristotle. |
| 14045 | Accidental properties give a body its nature, but are not themselves bodies or parts of bodies [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Accidental qualities are not non-existent, nor are they distinct corporeal entities inhering in the body, nor parts of it. We should think that the whole body throughout derives its permanent nature from these properties, though not as a compound of them. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 69) | |
| A reaction: 'Permanent' nature sounds more like essential than accidental properties. This is uncomfortably negative in its attempt to pin down what accidental properties are. The last bit seems to deny the bundle view of objects. Would he like tropes? |
| 14046 | A 'body' is a conception of an aggregate, with properties defined by application conditions [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Properties are known by their peculiar forms of application and comprehension, in close accompaniment with the aggregate [of atoms], which is given the predicate 'body' by reference to the aggregate conception. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 69) | |
| A reaction: There is an interesting hint here of how to think of properties (as both applying and comprehended in some distinctive way), and a suggestion that there is something conventional about bodies, depending on how we conceive them. |
| 14047 | Bodies have impermanent properties, and permanent ones which define its conceived nature [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Impermanent properties do not have the nature of an entire thing, which we call a body when we grasp it in aggregate, nor the nature of permanent accompaniments without which it is not possible to conceive of a body. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 70) | |
| A reaction: Epicurus doesn't discuss essences, but this seems to commit to the basic Aristotelian idea, that there there are some properties which actually bestow identity, and then others which are optional for that thing. The 'conception' is always mentioned. |
| 3145 | The Indiscernibility of Identicals is a truism; but the Identity of Indiscernibles depends on possible identical worlds [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law, the indiscernibility of identicals, is a truism which should not be confused with the more controversial identity of indiscernibles, which depends on the possibility of perfectly replicated universes. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.4) |
| 14039 | Above and below us will never appear to be the same, because it is inconceivable [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: What is over our heads ...or what is below any point which we think of ...will never appear to us as being at the same time and in the same respect both up and down. For it is impossible to conceive of this. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 60) | |
| A reaction: Note that he says it will 'never appear to us' as both - not that it absolutely cannot be both. Both Aristotle and Epicurus are much more focused on how our humanity shapes our metaphysics than the modern pure metaphysicians are. |
| 14050 | We aim to dissolve our fears, by understanding their causes [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: If we give a correct and complete causal account of the source of our disturbance and fears, we will dissolve them, by accounting for the phenomena to which we are constantly exposed, and which terrify other men most severely. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 82) | |
| A reaction: Notice 'other' men! This eudaimonist aim lies at the heart of Epicurus's physical account of the world. He was primarily interested in living better, rather than in physical science. He seeks 'tranquillity' and 'freedom from disturbance'. |
| 14037 | Atoms only have shape, weight and size, and the properties which accompany shape [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: One must believe that the atoms bring with them none of the qualities of things which appear except shape, weight, and size and the properties which necessarily accompany shape. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 54) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be fairly precisely a claim that atoms only have primary qualities, though that terminology only came in in the seventeenth century. I take the view to be more or less correct. |
| 3172 | Empiricism says experience is both origin and justification of all knowledge [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Two of the key claims of empiricism are that all knowledge must be justified on the basis of experience, and that all knowledge in fact originates in experience. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) |
| 3166 | Animal learning is separate from their behaviour [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Rats and monkeys exhibit 'latent learning' (learning just for fun) which is later beneficial. They learn with no consequences, and then can't learn when the good consequences are available. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a bit of a setback for naturalised epistemology and cognitive science, if learning can't be brought within a stimulus-response framework. |
| 6010 | Illusions are not false perceptions, as we accurately perceive the pattern of atoms [Epicurus, by Modrak] |
| Full Idea: Epicurus says illusions are not false perceptions, because the senses accurately report the pattern of atoms; for instance, the edges are worn off the pattern produced by a square tower, so its perception as a round tower is true. | |
| From: report of Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 47-53) by Deborah K.W. Modrak - Classical theories of Mind | |
| A reaction: As so often, Epicurus got it right, because Democritus got it right, thus demonstrating that good philosophy must be preceded by good physics. However, good physics must be preceded and followed by good philosophy. |
| 3232 | Abduction could have true data and a false conclusion, and may include data not originally mentioned [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Abduction moves from some data to a 'best explanation'. It is not deduction because the data could be true but the conclusion false, and it is not induction because the conclusion may involve data not mentioned in the premises. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], p.322) |
| 3128 | It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.2) |
| 3136 | The three theories are reduction, dualism, eliminativism [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There are three main views regarding the ontology of mental phenomena: reductionism, dualism and eliminativism. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It is precisely this picture which is rejected by Davidson and co, who want something called 'property dualism', with a unique relationship which is labelled 'supervenient'. Unfortunately there is no analogy for it. Not even beauty and a statue. |
| 14041 | The soul is fine parts distributed through the body, resembling hot breath [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: The soul is a body made up of fine parts distributed throught the entire aggregate, most closely resembling breath with a certain admixture of heat, in one way resembling breath and in another resembling heat | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 63) | |
| A reaction: Remember that 'psuché' refers as much to the life within a creature as it does to the consciousness. The stoics seem to have held a similar view. |
| 3141 | Is consciousness 40Hz oscillations in layers 5 and 6 of the visual cortex? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Crick and Koch claim that visual consciousness is correlated with a 40Hz oscillation in layers five and six of the primary visual cortex. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Not many people seem to have been enthused by their proposal. The target is the NCC (Neural Correlate of Consciousness), but we would only accept that location if the 'oscillations' seemed in some way special. |
| 3148 | Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The privacy that is a serious issue for the dualist is a peculiarly epistemic privacy that not even telepathy or brain fusions would seem to overcome. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea in the traditional defence of dualism. I'm inclined to think that we are faced with deep privacy not because the mind is so hidden, but because the observer is trapped in NOT being the thing observed. In that sense, rocks are private. |
| 3164 | Intentional explanations are always circular [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There can seem to be no escape from the "intentional circle" - the use of one intentional idiom always seems to presuppose the use of another. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: The best explanation of this is Conceptual Dualism (Papineau: Thinking about Consciousness). We are locked into dualist concepts because of our long-term ignorance about the brain. |
| 3138 | Arithmetic and unconscious attitudes have no qualia [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The contents of thoughts, beliefs and desires seem quite distinct from qualia. Arithmetic has no particular feeling attached to it, and Freud showed that many propositional attitudes have no feeling at all, as they are unconscious. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't think we should rule out 'pre-conscious' qualia. The fact that advanced human mental capacities like arithmetic have thinned out their qualia doesn't count against qualia being essential to normal mental life. |
| 3142 | Why qualia, and why this particular quale? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If we allow as a brute fact that certain mental states possess conscious qualitative content, there is still the problem of explaining why they possess one content rather than another (why does this stimulus look RED?). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the Really Hard Question. The Hard Question is merely 'why are creatures aware of their thoughts?' Personally I don't rule out finding a physical answer to the RHQ, and it is certainly not grounds for drifting into neo-dualism. |
| 8130 | Qualities of experience are just representational aspects of experience ('Representationalism') [Harman, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Harman defended what came to be known as 'representationalism' - the view that qualitative aspects of experience are nothing other than representational aspects. | |
| From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Intrinsic Quality of Experience [1990]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.459 | |
| A reaction: Functionalists like Harman have a fairly intractable problem with the qualities of experience, and this may be clutching at straws. What does 'represent' mean? How is the representation achieved? Why that particular quale? |
| 3224 | If qualia have no function, their attachment to thoughts is accidental [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If qualia are non-functionally defined objects, then their attachment to their role in my thought would seem to be metaphysically accidental. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.4.2) | |
| A reaction: A rock at sea can cause a shipwreck without being defined as 'a shipwrecker'. It is, of course, tautological that if qualia have a 'role' in my thoughts, they must have causal powers, but 'function' is a much trickier concept. |
| 3227 | Are qualia a type of propositional attitude? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Qualitative experience is just a particular species of propositional attitude. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.6.1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds very implausible. If I hear a loud and baffling noise, is a proposition instantly involved? When a subtle change of colour occurs in the sky at sunset, is that 'propositional'? Do slugs formulate propositions when they taste garlic? |
| 3226 | Are qualia irrelevant to explaining the mind? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenal objects and properties are no more needed to explain the workings of our mind than are angels needed to explain the motion of the planets. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.6.1) | |
| A reaction: The question would be whether 'phenomenal properties' contained unique information, which could therefore influence behaviour. It is also a matter of exactly what you are trying to explain. |
| 3229 | If colour fits a cone mapping hue, brightness and saturation, rotating the cone could give spectrum inversion [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If colour can be modelled as a cone, with points mapped by hue, brightness and saturation, then a rotation could be isomorphic with the hues switched, so we may all experience different hues. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.7.1) | |
| A reaction: from Levine |
| 3223 | Self-consciousness may just be nested intentionality [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It is tempting to think that if a system has concepts for nested intentionality and first-person reflection, it has all that's needed for self-consciousness. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.2.2) | |
| A reaction: If there nothing more than nested intentionality in complex minds like ours, the top level of the nesting would still have a special status. And if the top level always seemed to stay the same while the lower levels changed, I'd probably call it the Self |
| 3162 | Experiments prove that people are often unaware of their motives [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Experiments have shown (Nisbett and Wilson 1977) that people's introspective knowledge is a lot less reliable than they suppose. People are sensitive to but entirely unaware of many factors that influence their social behaviour. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 3.2.2) | |
| A reaction: This type of observation rests on an overemphasis on the conscious mind. We are not conscious of liver events, or of deep buried brain events, both of which motivate us. We should only expect introspection to reveal what is fully conscious. |
| 3163 | Brain damage makes the unreliability of introspection obvious [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The most dramatic phenomena undermining the absolute reliability of introspection are those of blindsight and "anosognosia" (unawareness of one's own brain damage). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 3.2.2) | |
| A reaction: It might depend on what you expected introspection to reveal. If you only expected it to tell you about your consciousness, it would be unreasonable to expect knowledge of blindsight information by introspection. |
| 3196 | Free will isn't evidence against a theory of thought if there is no evidence for free will [Rey] |
| Full Idea: We don't need arguments to show that if there were free will then computational accounts of the mind would be inadequate; what is needed is good evidence that there actually exists such free will in the first place. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.6) |
| 3195 | If reason could be explained in computational terms, there would be no need for the concept of 'free will' [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If a computational account of reasoning processes could be given, then there is no need to settle the issue of "free will", as reason could get along without it. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.6) |
| 3180 | Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Defining most mental states seems to requiring citing other mental states - but perhaps behaviourists can define them all simultaneously | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting strategy for trying to avoid the well known circularity of attempting to define mental states in behavioural terms. Behaviourism won't go away. |
| 3165 | Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There are three different views concerning behaviourism - the 'radical' view, which aims at eliminativism, the 'analytical' view, which is a reductionist enterprise, and the 'methodological' view, somewhere between the two. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4) | |
| A reaction: The first appears to be ontological, the second about relationships between areas of our language, and the third epistemological. You could attempt language reduction because we can only know behaviour, because that's all there is. |
| 3167 | Animals don't just respond to stimuli, they experiment [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Animals exhibit 'spontaneous alteration' in their behaviour (e.g. varying the route to the food), or improvisation (finding short cuts instead of following training). They use mental maps, or dead reckoning, not just conditioned responses. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.1.4) | |
| A reaction: If we can't even get a decent behaviourist account of animal behaviour, presumably the chances for humans look even less good. 'Black box' behaviourism, rather than the eliminativist version, might allow internal mechanisms to modify responses. |
| 3173 | How are stimuli and responses 'similar'? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Radical behaviourists say animals emit "similar" responses to "similar" reinforcements, but that is empty without specifying in what respect there is a similarity. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: The point is that when you try to specify the similarity you are (supposedly) forced to use mental language to make the distinctions, thus contradicting behaviourism. It is not, though, self-evidently impossible to give a behaviourist specification. |
| 3179 | Behaviour is too contingent and irrelevant to be the mind [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The two main anti-behaviourist intuitions are that mind and behaviour only relate contingently, and that for much mental life (thinking, emotion) the resulting behaviour seems unimportant. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Attractive intuitions, but not unquestionable. Since no two states of mind are ever fully identical, we can never test whether the resulting behaviour arises contingently or necessarily. The second point underestimates the physicality of mental life. |
| 3186 | If a normal person lacked a brain, would you say they had no mind? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If many otherwise ordinary people turned out to have skulls which were empty or filled with oatmeal, would that mean that they didn't have minds? | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 7.1.4) | |
| A reaction: That's a John Locke sort of question, implying that 'persons' are logically independent of their implementation. Personally I would search for a radio receiver, because oatmeal is implausible as a thinker. |
| 3127 | Dualism and physicalism explain nothing, and don't suggest any research [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Neither dualism nor physicalism provides much serious explanation of any mental phenomena, or even much in the way of a program of research. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if people who demand an "explanation of mental phenomena" are quite clear about what it is they want. God might just say "Mental phenomena are just brain events from the brain's point of view". |
| 3188 | Homuncular functionalism (e.g. Freud) could be based on simpler mechanical processes [Rey] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'homuncular functionalism' (such as Freud's or Plato's internal struggles of the soul) needn't lead to an infinite regress if eventually the homunculi become so stupid they could be replaced by a machine. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 7.2.2) | |
| A reaction: from Fodor |
| 3216 | Is the room functionally the same as a Chinese speaker? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The question for a computational-representation theory about the Chinese Room is: is what is happening inside the room functionally equivalent to what is happening inside a normal Chinese speaker? | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Certainly the Room lacks morality ('how can I torture my sister?'). It won't spot connections between recent questions. It won't ask itself questions. It will take years to spot absurd questions. |
| 3220 | Searle is guilty of the fallacy of division - attributing a property of the whole to a part [Rey] |
| Full Idea: You should no more attribute understanding of Chinese to this one part of the system than you should ascribe the properties of the entire British Empire to Queen Victoria. This is the fallacy of division. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.2.3) | |
| A reaction: This very nicely pinpoints what is wrong with the Chinese Room argument (nice analogy, too). If you carefully introspect what is involved when you 'understand' something, it is immensely complex, though it feels instant and simple. |
| 3206 | One computer program could either play chess or fight a war [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It is always possible to provide incompatible interpretations of formal theories, so that a computer could use the same program one day to play chess, the next to fight a war. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to present a huge gulf between human chess players (who 'understand' what they are doing) and machines, but I don't accept it. Giving the machine cameras and multi-level software would fix it. |
| 3134 | Human behaviour can show law-like regularity, which eliminativism can't explain [Rey] |
| Full Idea: There is clear evidence against eliminative materialism in the law-like correlations found among millions of answers in standardised school tests, for which it can give no explanation. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.3) | |
| A reaction: Not very persuasive. If neural networks got involved in complex competitions with one another, you would expect them to evolve similar tactics. |
| 3140 | If you explain water as H2O, you have reduced water, but not eliminated it [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Reduction is not the same as elimination; if chemists reduce water to H2O, or biologists reduce life to a complex chemical process, they have not shown that they don't exist. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'elimination'. It is important to be clear whether you are eliminating something from life, or from strict philosophical ontology. Ontologists never mention mountains. |
| 3200 | Pattern recognition is puzzling for computation, but makes sense for connectionism [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Connectionism is a way of capturing the holism of pattern recognition, as stressed by many critics of computational theories of mind. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: I am drawn to the idea that arithmetic derives from pattern recognition, and the latter is basic to all minds (a kind of instant unthinking induction), so this seems to me a win for connectionism. |
| 3201 | Connectionism explains well speed of perception and 'graceful degradation' [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Connectionism is better than other AI strategies at capturing the extraordinary swiftness of perception, and of degrading in a 'graceful' way. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: A good theory had better capture the extraordinary swiftness of perception. Also the swiftness of recognition. Compare seeing a surprising old friend in a crowd, and recognising the person you are looking for. |
| 3202 | Connectionism explains irrationality (such as the Gamblers' Fallacy) quite well [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Connectionism offers promising accounts of irrational behaviour, such as people's bias towards positive instances, and their tendency to fall for the gamblers' fallacy. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: That is strong support, because the chances of a computational robot having such tendencies is virtually nil, but all humans have the biases referred to (even philosophers). |
| 3199 | Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes [Rey] |
| Full Idea: In connectionism, each node is given an activation level, and each branch a weight, according to possible degree of effect. This results in 'excitatory' and 'inhibitory' connections. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: Whether such a system could ever be 'conscious' is not the only interesting question. What could such a system do? Could it ever be good at philosophy? |
| 14042 | The soul cannot be incorporeal, because then it could neither act nor be acted upon [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Those who say that the soul is incorporeal are speaking to no point; for if it were of that character, it could neither act nor be acted upon at all. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 67) | |
| A reaction: This just is the causal argument, which is espoused by Papineau and other modern physicalists. Personally I am inclined to agree with Papineau, that it is so simple and conclusive that it is hardly worth discussing further. Dualism needs a miracle. |
| 3150 | Can identity explain reason, free will, non-extension, intentionality, subjectivity, experience? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Eight properties of mind are problems for the identity theory: rationality, free will, spatiality, privacy, intentionality, essential mentality, subjective content, and the explanatory gap. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: The list could go on: poetry, creativity, love, normativity... Actually, these are problems for every theory. |
| 3129 | Physicalism offers something called "complexity" instead of mental substance [Rey] |
| Full Idea: In physicalism the "ghost in the machine" is merely replaced by the "complexity" in it. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], Int.2) | |
| A reaction: This is nonsense. No one thinks that mere complexity generates consciousness. The assumption is that we would begin to understand the mind only if we could somehow map the connections of the brain. |
| 3139 | Some attitudes are information (belief), others motivate (hatred) [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Propositional attitudes divide into two broad types: neutral informational ones (belief, suspicion, imagining), and directional ones which motivate an agent (preference, desire, hate). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: Since suspicions are motivating, and preferences are informational, this is not a very sharp distinction. An alternative would be to say that there is one type, and sometimes the will gets involved. |
| 3174 | Good grammar can't come simply from stimuli [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Grammatical sensitivity is in no way a physical property of the stimulus, and we can't imagine how to build a device which would produce grammatical structures in response to the environment. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: You could try to program it with a set of (say) Aristotelian categories, and mechanisms to sort the environment accordingly. It then has to query its database, in response to practical needs. A doddle. |
| 3171 | Children speak 90% good grammar [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Ninety percent of most young children's utterances are grammatical. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is good evidence for some sort of innate element in the grammar of language. But the accurate grammar is not in a particular language. Good communication must be the driving force in all this. |
| 3213 | Animals may also use a language of thought [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The language of thought need not only be confined to creatures which speak a natural language. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.1.1) | |
| A reaction: I take it as axiomatic that our brains are no different in principles and fundamental mechanics from the lowliest of creatures. See Idea 7509. |
| 3170 | We train children in truth, not in grammar [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Very young children have been shown (Brown and Halon 1970) to be 'reinforced' not for their grammar but for the informational content of what they say. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is what you would expect. It doesn't follow that the grammar comes from innate mechanisms, because the pressure to get the information right could impose increasing accuracy in grammar. |
| 3215 | Images can't replace computation, as they need it [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Processing of images and mental models seems to require, and therefore is unlikely to replace, computation and representation. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.1.2) | |
| A reaction: A good point. If you are a fan of mental imagery, you still have to explain how we can hold an image, or recall it, or manipulate it. I always, I don't know why, wince at the thought of 'computations' among neurons. |
| 3194 | CRTT is good on deduction, but not so hot on induction, abduction and practical reason [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The computational/representational theory of thought has given a good account of deduction, but mechanical theories of induction, abduction and practical reason are needed in order to make a machine which could reason. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the best analysis of rationality that I have found (four components: deduction, induction, abduction, practical reason). I can think of nothing to add, and certainly none of these should be omitted. |
| 3147 | Problem-solving clearly involves manipulating images [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Recent experiments (Shepard 1982) suggest people have imagistic representations they inspect when solving problems. In comparing two rotated images, the time for comparison varies with the angle of rotation. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.5.3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't prove that they are slowly rotating something. It may just be harder to make the leap to the new shape, when it is 'further away'. Picturing a 20-sided figure, we don't add sides one-by-one. |
| 3175 | Animals map things over time as well as over space [Rey] |
| Full Idea: To map things like food over time, animals must somehow represent events as having temporal properties, and somehow store those representations ready for later use. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: If the mechanisms for doing this are basic, then so is the ontology. Objects must be categorised, properties spotted, time-spans correlated etc. 'Represent' needs to be sharp to be useful. |
| 3207 | Simple externalism is that the meaning just is the object [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The oldest version of the externalist theory of meaning is the Fido/Fido theory, according to which the meaning of a representation is the object for which it stands. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.2) | |
| A reaction: Modern baptismal theories of reference seem to have taken us back to this, for distinct individuals such as Aristotle, or natural kinds like gold. What, though, does 'Fido' mean to me? Asthma! |
| 3176 | Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.3) |
| 3181 | A one hour gap in time might be indirectly verified, but then almost anything could be [Rey] |
| Full Idea: You couldn't directly verify that the whole universe had stopped for one hour, but you might indirectly verify it (by prediction) - but then almost anything could be very indirectly verified. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: Does indirect verification include time travel? Or perfect knowledge of quantum theory, and total knowledge of quantum states. Laplace's Hypothesis. |
| 3204 | The meaning of "and" may be its use, but not of "animal" [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The view that the meaning of language of thought expressions is based on their conceptual role (derived from Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use), is most plausible for the logical connectives like "and", but implausible for, say, "animal". | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It was the logical connectives that got LW started on this track. If it doesn't work for 'animal' then does that mean we need two different theories? |
| 3205 | Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Semantic holism is a desperate measure. Belief content would be continually changed by new beliefs, evidence for a belief would change the target belief, and no two people would ever agree on concepts. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It is far more plausible to say language is a bit on the holistic side. Total holism is mad. |
| 3209 | Causal theories of reference (by 'dubbing') don't eliminate meanings in the heads of dubbers [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Causal histories may have some role to play in a theory of reference, but the chain of causation requires internal characterisations at each stage, and the original dubber had one thing rather than another in mind when dubbing. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: The modern view of direct reference seems to prefer social context rather than a complete causal chain. |
| 3210 | If meaning and reference are based on causation, then virtually everything has meaning [Rey] |
| Full Idea: What is special about meaning? If meaning and reference are just the result of causal chains, almost everything will mean something, since almost everything is reliably caused by something. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 9.2.2) | |
| A reaction: It would be insane to think that all causal events produced meanings. It is probably better not to mention causation at all when discussing meaning. |
| 3149 | Referential Opacity says truth is lost when you substitute one referring term ('mother') for another ('Jocasta') [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Referential Opacity says you cannot preserve truth if you substitute one referring term for another ('Oedipus desires Jocasta', 'Oedipus desires his mother'). | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.5.6) | |
| A reaction: ….That is, in the context of expressing a propositional attitude. 'Oedipus desired his mother' was true. This idea requires some ignorance on the part of the person expressing the thought. |
| 3169 | A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then' [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Bifurcated logical particles (either/or, if/then) are in principle beyond the power of any local chaining device to build sentences. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: True in natural languages, but not in formal ones? If P then either if-Q-then-R or if-S-then-T. Is that chaining? If rain, then if light then puddles, or if heavy then floods. Hm. |
| 3221 | Our desires become important when we have desires about desires [Rey] |
| Full Idea: What gives people's desires certain moral importance is the fact that they have desires about those desires. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 11.1) | |
| A reaction: from Frankfurt |
| 14032 | Totality has no edge; an edge implies a contrast beyond the edge, and there can't be one [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: The totality is unlimited. For what is limited has an extreme; but an extreme is seen in contrast to something else, so that since it has no extreme it has no limit. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 41) | |
| A reaction: I presume that the 'limit' is the edge, and the 'extreme' is what is beyond the edge. Why could not the extreme be nothingness, which then contrast dramatically with what exists? |
| 14033 | Bodies are unlimited as well as void, since the two necessarily go together [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: The number of bodies and the magnitude of the void are unlimited. If void were unlimited, and bodies limited, bodies move in scattered fashion with no support of checking collisions; in limited void, unlimited bodies would not have a place to be in. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 42) | |
| A reaction: Seems good. The point is that without collisions, bodies would not stop relative to one another, and combine to form the objects we perceive. Of course if the started off (anathema!) stuck together, they may not have dispersed yet. |
| 14034 | There exists an infinity of each shape of atom, but the number of shapes is beyond our knowledge [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: For each type of shape there is an unlimited number of similar atoms, but with respect to the differences they are not simply unlimited but ungraspable. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 42) | |
| A reaction: Epicurus's view of the nature of atoms rests on his empiricism, so while he can reason from experience to how they must be, he admits (impressively) his ignorance of the full facts. He has arguments for the unlimited number. |
| 14035 | Atoms just have shape, size and weight; colour results from their arrangement [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: There are not even any qualities in atoms, except shape and size and weight; their colour changes according to the arrangement of the atoms. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 44 schol) | |
| A reaction: [This is quoted by a 'scholiast' - an early writer quoting from Epicurus's '12 Basic Principles'] He appears to have got this one wrong, as it is evidently the type of atom, as well as the arrangement, which contributes to the colour. |
| 14038 | There cannot be unlimited division, because it would reduce things to non-existence [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: One must eliminate unlimited division into smaller pieces (to avoid making everything weak and being forced in our comprehensive grasps of compound things to exhaust the things which exist by reducing them to non-existence). | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 56) | |
| A reaction: A basic argument for atoms, but it seems to rest on Zenonian paradoxes about infinite subdivision. An infinite subdivision of a unit doesn't seem to turn it into zero. |
| 14049 | We aim to know the natures which are observed in natural phenomena [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Blessedness lies in knowing the natures which are observed in meteorological phenomena. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 78) | |
| A reaction: This pursuit of 'natures' seems to be at the heart of scientific essentialism. Epicurus demonstrates his proposal, by offering speculations about the natures of all sorts of phenomena (esp. in 'Letter to Pythocles'). |
| 14043 | The void cannot interact, but just gives the possibility of motion [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: The void can neither act nor be acted upon but merely provides the possibility of motion through itself for bodies. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 67) | |
| A reaction: Epicurus follows this with the anti-dualist Idea 14042, but he is at least offering the notion of something which exists without powers of causal interaction. Does space undermine the causal criterion for existence? |
| 14031 | Space must exist, since movement is obvious, and there must be somewhere to move in [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: If there did not exist that which we call void and space and intangible nature, bodies would not have any place to be in or move through, as they obviously do move. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 40) | |
| A reaction: The observation that 'they obviously do move' must be aimed at followers of Parmenides. The idea of the void seems to contain a Newtonian commitment to absolute space. |
| 14036 | There are endless cosmoi, some like and some unlike this one [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: There is an unlimited number of cosmoi, and some are similar to this one and some are dissimilar. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 45) |