|
18933
|
Not-Being obviously doesn't exist, and the five modes of Being are all impossible [Gorgias, by Diog. Laertius]
|
|
Full Idea:
I. Nothing exists. a) Not-Being does not exist. b) Being does not exist as everlasting, as created, as both, as One, or as Many. II. If anything does exist, it is incomprehensible. III. If existence is comprehensible, it is incommunicable.
|
|
From:
report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE], B03) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09
|
|
A reaction:
[Also Sextus Empiricus, Against Logicians I.65-] For Part I he works through all the possible modes of being he can think of, and explains why none of them are possible. It is worth remembering that Gorgias loved rhetoric, not philosophy!
|
|
19743
|
A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers]
|
|
Full Idea:
Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is.
|
|
From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4)
|
|
A reaction:
This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role?
|
|
19741
|
If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers]
|
|
Full Idea:
If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.
|
|
From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2)
|
|
A reaction:
In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong.
|
|
19742
|
Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers]
|
|
Full Idea:
Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
|
|
From:
A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3)
|
|
A reaction:
This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'.
|
|
9866
|
Gorgias says rhetoric is the best of arts, because it enslaves without using force [Gorgias, by Plato]
|
|
Full Idea:
Gorgias insists that the art of persuasion is superior to all others because it enslaves all the rest, with their own consent, not by force, and is therefore by far the best of all the arts.
|
|
From:
report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Plato - Philebus 58a
|
|
A reaction:
A nice point, and it is not unreasonable to rank the arts in order of their power. To enchant, without achieving agreement, and to speak truth without persuading, are both very fine, but there is something about success that cannot be gainsaid.
|