Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Mental Life of Some Machines', 'Philosophy of Logics' and 'Psychophysical supervenience'

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4 ideas

3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique

2572	Logical truth seems much less likely to 'correspond to the facts' than factual truth does [Haack]
	Full Idea: It is surely less plausible to suppose that logical truth consists in correspondence to the facts than that 'factual' truth does.
	From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.6)

3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / a. Tarski's truth definition

2570	The same sentence could be true in one language and meaningless in another, so truth is language-relative [Haack]
	Full Idea: The definition of truth will have to be, Tarski argues, relative to a language, for one and the same sentence may be true in one language, and false or meaningless in another.
	From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.5)

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 4. Intrinsic Properties

15456	Extrinsic properties, unlike intrinsics, imply the existence of a separate object [Kim, by Lewis]
	Full Idea: Kim suggest that 'extrinsic' properties are those that imply 'accompaniment' (coexisting with some wholly distinct contingent object), whereas 'intrinsic' properties are compatible with 'loneliness' (being un-accompanied).
	From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Psychophysical supervenience [1982], 9th pg) by David Lewis - Extrinsic Properties II
	A reaction: The aim of Kim and Lewis is to get the ontological commitment down to a minimum - in this case just to objects (and mysterious 'implications'!). I like nominalism, but you can't just deny properties. 'Loneliness' is extrinsic!

17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 2. Machine Functionalism

5495	Instances of pain are physical tokens, but the nature of pain is more abstract [Putnam, by Lycan]
	Full Idea: In machine functionalism, pain tokens (individual instances of pain) are identical with particular neurophysiological states, but pain itself, the kind, universal, or 'type', can be identified only with something more abstract.
	From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Mental Life of Some Machines [1967]) by William Lycan - Introduction - Ontology p.6
	A reaction: This is where the "what is it like?" question seems important. Pain doesn't seem like a physical object, or an abstract idea. Personally I think the former is more likely to be correct than the latter. Causation by pain is not like causation by gravity.