94 ideas
| 2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be an emerging naturalist consensus that is Realist in ontology and epistemology, externalist in semantics, and computationalist in cognitive psychology, which nicely allows us to retain our understanding of ourselves as rational creatures. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: A psychology that can't make sense of such facts as that mental processes are typically truth-preserving is ipso facto dead in the water. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) |
| 2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §3) |
| 6653 | Syntactical methods of proof need only structure, where semantic methods (truth-tables) need truth [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Syntactical methods of proof (e.g.'natural deduction') have regard only to the formal structure of premises and conclusions, whereas semantic methods (e.g. truth-tables) consider their possible interpretations as expressing true or false propositions. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This is highly significant, because the first method of reasoning could be mechanical, whereas the second requires truth, and hence meaning, and hence (presumably) consciousness. Is full rationality possible with 'natural deduction'? |
| 6618 | A 'substance' is a thing that remains the same when its properties change [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: By 'substance', in the context of the mind, we mean a persisting object or thing which can undergo changes in its properties over time while remaining one and the same thing. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A neat account of the traditional philosophical notion of a substance. It invites the obvious question of how you know that a thing is the same if all of its properties seem to have changed (as with Descartes' wax). Epistemology discredits ontology. |
| 6635 | Causal theories of belief make all beliefs true, and can't explain belief about the future [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The causal theory of beliefs seems condemned to treat all beliefs as true, which is absurd, …and we do not want to say that tomorrow's rain 'causes' today's belief that it will rain tomorrow. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Fodor. A false belief might be caused by reality if one had one's internal wires crossed, and a belief about the future might be caused by events happening now. This theory is not dead. |
| 6619 | Perhaps 'I' no more refers than the 'it' in 'it is raining' [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the 'I' in 'I think' no more serves to pick out a certain object than does the 'it' in 'it is raining'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A nice example to remind us that not all English pronouns have genuine reference. You could reply that 'it' does refer, to the weather; or that you can switch to 'you think', but not to 'they/we are raining'. |
| 6643 | 'Ecological' approaches say we don't infer information, but pick it up directly from reality [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The 'ecological' approach to perception resists the idea that our brains have to construct information about our environment by inference from sensations, because the information is already present in the environment, available to well-tuned senses. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: The psychologist J.J.Gibson is the source of this view. This pushes us towards direct realism, and away from representative theories, which are based too much on problems arising from illusions (which are freak cases). Interesting. |
| 6638 | One must be able to visually recognise a table, as well as knowing its form [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A bare knowledge that tables have a particular form will not enable one to recognise a table visually, unless one knows how something with such a form typically appears or looks from a variety of different angles. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather significant point, if we are trying to work out how concepts and models operate in the process of perception. Lowe points out that with electrons, we have some knowledge of the form, but no capacity for recognition. |
| 6644 | Computationalists object that the 'ecological' approach can't tell us how we get the information [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Computational psychologists object to the 'ecological' approach to perception (with its externalist, direct realist picture), because it leaves us entirely in the dark as to how our senses 'pick up' information about the environment. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: I find myself siding with the computationalists, but then I have always favoured the representational view of perception among philosophers. Lowe comments that both approaches neglect actual experience. We construct models, e.g. of London. |
| 6647 | Comparing shapes is proportional in time to the angle of rotation [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: When two objects, one of them rotated, are compared, the length of time it takes the subjects to determine they are of the same shape is roughly proportional to the size of angle of rotation, ...which suggests analogue modes of representation. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: I consider this to be highly significant for our whole understanding of the mind, which I think of as a set of models organised like a database. Think about the weather, phenomenalism, London, the Renaissance, your leg. You play with models. |
| 6639 | The 'disjunctive' theory of perception says true perceptions and hallucinations need have nothing in common [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The 'disjunctive' theory of perception says that we have either veridical perception or else hallucination, but there is no common element in the form of a 'perceptual experience' which would be present in either case and merely caused in different ways. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: McDowell is associated with this view. It seems to be another attempt to get rid of sense-data. It seems odd, though, to say that a hallucination of a dagger has nothing in common at all with experience of real daggers. Why did hallucinations evolve? |
| 6640 | A causal theorist can be a direct realist, if all objects of perception are external [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A causal theorist can be a 'direct realist' in the sense that he can hold that the only objects of perception are external objects. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: There still seem to be problems with perceiving reflections, or very distant objects (the time-lag problem), or perceiving 'secondary' qualities. |
| 6645 | If blindsight shows we don't need perceptual experiences, the causal theory is wrong [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If we don't need to have perceptual experiences in order to see things (as 'blindsight' might suggest), the causal theory of perception cannot be correct. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: This is because the causal theory implies a chain of events culminating in experience as the last stage. There is no suggestion, though, that unconscious perception would be non-causal, as it bypasses all the problems about consciousness. |
| 6637 | How could one paraphrase very complex sense-data reports adverbially? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: How could one paraphrase the sense-datum report 'I am aware of a red square sense-datum to the right of a blue round sense-datum' in an adverbial way? 'I am appeared to redly and squarely and roundly and bluely'? | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: It is a nice question, but not an instant refutation of the adverbial theory. Vision may be a complex tangle of modes of seeing things, rather than a large collection of sense-data. As I look out of the window, how many sense-data do I experience? |
| 6667 | There are memories of facts, memories of practical skills, and autobiographical memory [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Memory of facts is quite different from memory of practical skills, and both are quite distinct from what is sometimes called personal or autobiographical memory. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: If we accept David Marshall's proposal (Idea 6668), then all of the mind is memory, of many different types, and so the above analysis will be much too simple. |
| 2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Premeditated cognitive management is possible if knowing the contents of one's thoughts would tell you what would make them true and what would cause you to have them. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I love the idea of 'cognitive management'. Since belief is fairly involuntary, I subject myself to the newspapers, books, TV and conversation which will create the style of beliefs to which I aspire. Why? |
| 6642 | Psychologists say illusions only occur in unnatural and passive situations [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Psychologists point out that illusions almost always occur in unnatural environments in which subjects are prevented from exploiting the natural interplay between perception and action. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: It has always struck me that philosophers make a great deal out of illusions, but I don't think I have ever had one. I don't know anyone who has seen a non-existent dagger. |
| 2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Experimentation is an occasional and more or less self-conscious exercise in what informal thinking does all the time without thinking about it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: A creature that knows what makes its thoughts true and what would cause it to have them, could therefore cause itself to have true thoughts. …This would explain why experimentation is so close to the heart of our cognitive style. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You can put yourself into a situation where you may be caused to believe that P. Putting a question to someone who is in the know is one species of this behaviour, and putting a question to Nature (an experiment) is another. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: To be in the audience for an experiment you have to believe what the experimenter believes about what the outcome would mean, but not necessarily what the outcome will be. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Theories function as links in the causal chains that run from environmental outcomes to the beliefs that they cause the inquirer to have. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 6641 | Externalists say minds depend on environment for their very existence and identity [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Externalism maintains that our minds 'reach out' into our physical environment, at least in the sense that our states of mind can depend for their very existence and identity upon what things that environment contains. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the externalist view. Does this mean that a brain in a vat would not have a mind? Does a photograph 'reach out' to its subject-matter? |
| 2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I hold that psychological laws are intentional, that semantics is purely informational, and that thinking is computation (and that it is possible to hold all of these assumptions at once). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: When he puts it baldly like that, it doesn't sound terribly persuasive. Thinking is 'computation'? Raw experience is irrelevant? What is it 'like' to spot an interesting connection between two propositions or concepts? It's not like adding 7 and 5. |
| 6617 | The main questions are: is mind distinct from body, and does it have unique properties? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy of mind seems to address the questions of whether the mind is distinct from the body, and whether the mind has properties, such as consciousness, which are unique to it. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Simple enough, but the modern debate seems to centre on the second question, which is here stated nice and clearly. Of course, wild garlic has a unique smell, but that doesn't quite qualify as a 'unique property'. Are the properties of mind unpredictable? |
| 6626 | 'Phenomenal' consciousness is of qualities; 'apperceptive' consciousness includes beliefs and desires [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: There is 'phenomenal' consciousness, which is what is distinctive of qualitative states of experience, and 'apperceptive' consciousness, which is awareness of all of one's mental states, including beliefs and desires. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced that this distinction is sharp enough to be useful, though I approve of trying to analyse the components of consciousness. Is there 'intentional' consciousness? Desires, and even beliefs, can have qualities. |
| 2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I think it is likely that we are the only creatures that can think about the contents of our thoughts. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a major idea. If you ask me the traditional question - what is the essential difference between us and other animals? - this is my answer (not language, or reason). We are the metathinkers. |
| 6646 | The brain may have two systems for vision, with only the older one intact in blindsight [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Some physiologists maintain that the human brain is equipped with two different visual systems, an older one and a more recently evolved one, only the first of which is intact in blindsight subjects. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: Ramachandran (on TV) suggested that lizards lack the newer system, and therefore may not actually be conscious. The proposal of two systems seems to make nice sense of an odd phenomenon. We clearly have a non-conscious route to visual information. |
| 6665 | Persons are selves - subjects of experience, with reflexive self-knowledge [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that persons are selves - that is, they are subjects of experience which have the capacity to recognised themselves as being individual subjects of experience; selves possess reflexive self-knowledge. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: I would express this as 'a capacity for meta-thought'. I increasingly see that as the hallmark of homo sapiens, and the key quality I look for in assessing the intelligence of aliens. Very intelligent people are exceptionally self-aware. |
| 6670 | If my brain could survive on its own, I cannot be identical with my whole body [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If, as seems intuitively plausible, I could survive with my brain detached from the rest of my body, I most certainly cannot be identical with my whole body. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: A key mistake is to treat the notion of 'I' as all-or-nothing. My surviving brain is much more like me than my surviving kidney, but the notion of my brain saying to my family 'it's me in that jar over there' sounds wrong. It is a bit of me. |
| 6671 | It seems impossible to get generally applicable mental concepts from self-observation [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: It seems impossible for me to acquire perfectly general concepts of thought and feeling, applicable to other people as well as to myself, purely from some queer kind of mental self-observation, but this is what the observational model demands. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand the word 'queer' here, which seems part of an odd modern fashion for denigrating introspection. It is right, though, that the acquisition of general mental concepts from my mind seems to depend on analogy, which is a suspect method. |
| 6666 | All human languages have an equivalent of the word 'I' [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Every human language appears to have a word or expression equivalent to the English word 'I'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: If this is true (what is his evidence?) I take it to be very significant support for what I take to be obvious anyway, that the mind/brain has a central controlling core, which understands and decides, and which is the most valued part of us. |
| 2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The Cartesian view is that the interaction problem does arise, but is unsolvable because interaction is miraculous. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: A rather unsympathetic statement of the position. Cartesians might think that God could explain to us how interaction works. Cartesians are not mysterians, I think, but they see no sign of any theory of interaction. |
| 2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The question how mental representations could be both semantic, like propositions, and causal, like rocks, trees, and neural firings, is arguably just the interaction problem all over again. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Interesting way of presenting the problem. If you seem to be confronting the interaction problem, you have probably drifted into a bogus dualist way of thinking. Retreat, and reformulate you questions and conceptual apparatus, till the question vanishes. |
| 6625 | If qualia are causally inert, how can we even know about them? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The idea that 'qualia' exist but are causally inert is difficult to sustain: for if they are causally inert, how can we even know about them? | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: The brain might be a special case. I can't know about a 'causally inert' object in my kitchen, but I might know about it if in some way I AM that object. Personally, though, I think everything that exists is causally active. |
| 6621 | You can only identify behaviour by ascribing belief, so the behaviour can't explain the belief [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: One must already understand what it means to ascribe to someone a belief that it is raining in order to be able to generate the items on the list of rain-behaviour, so the list cannot be used to explain what it means to ascribe to someone such a belief. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: This is thought by many to be a decisive objection of behaviourism, because it makes the enterprise hopelessly circular. If I put up an umbrella when it was dry, you would probably infer that I believed it was raining. |
| 6654 | A computer program is equivalent to the person AND the manual [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A computer executing its program is not equivalent to the English-speaker in the Chinese Room, but to the combination of the English-speaker and the operation manual. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: Searle replies that there would be no understanding even if the person learned the manual off by heart. However, if we ask 'Is there any understanding of the universe in Newton's book?' the answer has to be 'yes'. So the manual contains understanding. |
| 6629 | Functionalism commits us to bizarre possibilities, such as 'zombies' [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism seems to commit us to bizarre possibilities, such as 'zombies'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: This goes with the tendency of functionalism to imply epiphenomenalism - that is, to make the intrinsic character of mental states irrelevant to thinking. I'd love to eavesdrop on two zombies in an art gallery. |
| 6623 | Functionalism can't distinguish our experiences in spectrum inversion [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: It seems that functionalism can recognise no difference between my colour experiences and yours, in the case of spectrum inversion, suggesting that it fails to characterise colour experience adequately, by omitting its qualitative character. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a standard objection to functionalism, but then it is an objection to most other theories as well. Even dualism just offers a mystery as to why experiences have qualities. Observing a patch of red involves about three billion brain connections. |
| 6628 | Functionalism only discusses relational properties of mental states, not intrinsic properties [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism has nothing positive to say about the intrinsic properties of mental states, only something about their relational properties. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me highly significant. All references to function (e.g. in Aristotle) invite the question of what enables something to have that function. Maybe the core question of philosophy of mind is whether mental states are intrinsic or relational. |
| 6622 | Non-reductive physicalism accepts token-token identity (not type-type) and asserts 'supervenience' of mind and brain [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The rejection of type-type identity and acceptance of token-token identity is referred to as 'non-reductive physicalism', and is usually link with the idea that mental state types are not identical with physical state types, but 'supervene' on them. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary of the view (built on the arguments of Davidson) which has also become known as 'property dualism'. Personally I regard it as dangerous nonsense. If two things 'supervene' on one another, the first question to ask is: why? |
| 2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Type physicalism is, roughly, the doctrine that psychological kinds are identical to neurological kinds. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App A n.1) | |
| A reaction: This gets my general support, leaving open the nature of 'kinds'. Presumably the identity is strict, as in 'Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus'. It seems unlikely that if you and I think the 'same' thought, that we have strictly identical brain states. |
| 6634 | Physicalists must believe in narrow content (because thoughts are merely the brain states) [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Physicalists will, it seems, be committed to the notion of narrow content, because if a person and their counterpart are neurological duplicates, they must exemplify the same mental state types, and thus possess beliefs with the same contents. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: Very important. How many philosophers currently believe in both wide content and reductive physicalism? However, if content is physical brain-plus-environment, we might reply that the whole package must be identical for same content. Cf Idea 7884! |
| 6630 | Eliminativism is incoherent if it eliminates reason and truth as well as propositional attitudes [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Eliminative materialism may be accused of incoherence, insofar as is threatens to eliminate reason and truth along with the propositional attitudes. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: Lowe does not enlarge on this intriguing suggestion. I don't see a threat to truth, if brain events represent the outer world, as they can do it more or less well. Logic is built on truth. Reason grows out of logic. Evidence seems okay… Hm. |
| 2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: What Hume didn't see was that the causal and representational properties of mental symbols have somehow to be coordinated if the coherence of mental life is to be accounted for. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly the idea that it all somehow becomes magic at the point where the brain represents the world is incoherent - but it is a bit magical. How can the whole of my garden be in my brain? Weird. |
| 6648 | Some behaviourists believe thought is just suppressed speech [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Some behaviourists have held the view that thinking just is, in effect, suppressed speech. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: He cites J.B.Watson. This would imply that infants and animals can't think. Introspecting my own case, I don't believe it. When I am navigating through a town, for example, I directly relate to my mental map; I see little sign of anything verbal. |
| 2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Propositional attitudes are really three-place relations, between a creature, a proposition, and a mode of presentation (which are sentences of Mentalese). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'really'! Why do we need a creature? Isn't 'hoping it will rain' a propositional attitude which some creature may or may not have? Fodor wants it to be physical, but it's abstract? |
| 2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Mentalism isn't gratuitous; you need it to explain rationality. Mental causation buys you behaviours that are unlike reflexes in at least three ways: they're autonomous, they're productive, and they're experimental. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: He makes his three ways sound all-or-nothing, which is (I believe) the single biggest danger when thinking about the mind. "Either you are conscious, or you are not..." |
| 6651 | People are wildly inaccurate in estimating probabilities about an observed event [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: In the 'cab problem' (what colour was the cab in the accident?) most people estimate an 80% probability of it being a blue cab, but Bayes' Theorem calculates the probability at 41%, suggesting people put too much faith in eyewitness testimony. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: For details of the 'cab problem', see Lowe p.200. My suspicion is that people get into a tangle when confronted with numbers in a theoretical situation, but are much better at it when faced with a real life problem, like 'who ate my chocolate?' |
| 6652 | 'Base rate neglect' makes people favour the evidence over its background [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: 'Base rate neglect' (attending to the witness or evidence, and ignoring background information) is responsible for doctors exaggerating the significance of positive results in diagnosis of relatively rare medical conditions. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be one of the clearest cases where people's behaviour is irrational, though I suspect that people are much more rational about things if the case is simple and non-numerical. However, people are very credulous about wonderful events. |
| 6655 | The 'Frame Problem' is how to program the appropriate application of general knowledge [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The 'Frame Problem' in artificial intelligence is how to write a program which not only embodies people's general knowledge, but specifies how that knowledge is to be applied appropriately, when circumstances can't be specified in advance. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: As Lowe observes, this is a problem, but not necessarily an impossibility. There should be a way to symbolically map the concepts of knowledge onto the concepts of perception, just as we must do. |
| 6657 | Computers can't be rational, because they lack motivation and curiosity [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Lack of motivation and curiosity are perhaps the most fundamental reason for denying that computers could be, in any literal sense, rational beings. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why programmers couldn't move those two priorities to the top of the list in the program. When you switch on a robot, its first words could be 'Teach me something!', or 'Let's do something interesting!' Every piece of software has priorities. |
| 6656 | The Turing test is too behaviourist, and too verbal in its methods [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The Turing test is open to the objection that it is inspired by behaviourist assumptions and focuses too narrowly on verbal evidence of intelligence. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This is part of the objection that the test exhibits human chauvinism, and robots and aliens are wasting their time trying to pass it. You need human behaviour, especially speech, to do well. Inarticulate people can exhibit high practical intelligence. |
| 6636 | The naturalistic views of how content is created are the causal theory and the teleological theory [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The leading naturalistic theories of what it is that confers a specific content upon a given attitudinal state are the causal theory, and the teleological theory, both of which contain serious difficulties. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: 'Causal' theories (Fodor) say the world directly causes content; 'teleological' theories (Millikan, Papineau) are based on the evolutionary purpose of content for the subject. I agree that neither seems adequate… |
| 2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: There isn't any XYZ, and there couldn't be any, and so we don't have to worry about it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: Jadeite and Nephrite are real enough, which are virtually indistinguishable variants of jade. You just need Twin Jewellers instead of Twin Earths. We could build them, and employ twins to work there. |
| 6633 | Twin Earth cases imply that even beliefs about kinds of stuff are indexical [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The implication of considerations of Twin Earth cases is that even beliefs about the properties of kinds of stuff are implicitly indexical, or context-dependent, in character. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: This is a significant connection, between debates about the nature of indexicals (such as 'I' and 'this') and externalism about content generally. Is there no distinction between objective reference and contextual reference? |
| 2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: We need the idea of broad content to make sense of the fact that thoughts have the truth-conditions that they do. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be (as Dummett points out) a potential circularity here, as you can hardly know the truth-conditions of something if you don't already know its content. |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If the words of 'Swamp Man' (spontaneously created, with concepts) are about XYZ on Twin Earth, it is not because he's causally connected to the stuff, but because XYZ would cause his 'water' tokens (in the absence of H2O). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App B) | |
| A reaction: The sight of the Eiffel tower causes my 'France' tokens, so is my word "France" about the Eiffel Tower? What would cause my 'nothing' tokens? |
| 2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you know quite a lot about what would cause you to have it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure where this fits into the great jigsaw of the mind, but it strikes me as an acute and important observation. The truth of a thought is not essential to make you have it. Ask Othello. |
| 2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I assume intentional content reduces (in some way) to information. …The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not the way that it is related to other thoughts. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: Does this make Fodor a 'weak' functionalist? The 'strong' version would say a thought is merely a location in a flow diagram, but Fodor's 'mentalism' includes a further 'content' in each diagram box. |
| 2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Semantics, according to the informational view, is mostly about counterfactuals; what counts for the identity of my concepts is not what I do distinguish but what I could distinguish if I cared to (even using instruments and experts). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: We all differ in our discriminations (and awareness of expertise), so our concepts would differ, which is bad news for communication (see Idea 223). The view has some plausibility, though. |
| 2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: It is the essence of semantic externalism that there is nothing that you have to believe, there are no inferences that you have to accept, to have the concept 'elm'. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: [REMINDER: broad content is filed in 18.C.7, under 'Thought' rather than under language. That is because I am a philospher of thought, rather than of language. |
| 2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: It is the causal connection between the state of the world and the contents of beliefs that the reduction of meaning to information is designed to insure. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why characterising the contents of a belief in terms of its information has to amount to a 'reduction'. A cup of tea isn't reduced to tea. Connections imply duality. |
| 2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you thereby know what would make the thought true. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: The truthmaker might by physically impossible, and careful thought might show it to be contradictory - but that wouldn't destroy the meaning. |
| 2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If what you are thinking depends on all of what you believe, then nobody ever thinks the same thing twice. …That is why so many semantic holists (Quine, Putnam, Rorty, Churchland, probably Wittgenstein) end up being semantic eliminativists. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
| A reaction: If linguistic holism is nonsense, this is easily settled. What I say about breakfast is not changed by reading some Gibbon yesterday. |
| 2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that Frege cases [knowing Jocasta but not mother] show that reference doesn't determine sense, and Twin cases [knowing water but not H2O] show that sense doesn't determine reference. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) | |
| A reaction: How about 'references don't contain much information', and 'descriptions may not fix what they are referring to'? Simple really. |
| 2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Broad semantic theories generally hold that the basic semantic properties of thoughts are truth and denotation. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
| A reaction: I think truth and denotation are the basic semantic properties, but I am dubious about whole-hearted broad semantic theories, so I seem to have gone horribly wrong somewhere. |
| 2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You need an externalist semantics to explain why the contents of beliefs should have anything to do with how the world is. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Since externalist semantics only emerged in the 1970s, that implies that no previous theory had any notion that language had some connection to how the world is. Eh? |
| 6632 | The same proposition provides contents for the that-clause of an utterance and a belief [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: We use the same that-clause ('that snow is white') to specify the contents of both a person's utterances and of their beliefs, because it is the same proposition. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly to say 'he believes that we should declare war' seems to refer to something non-linguistic, but it doesn't demonstrate that anything concrete or real is being referred to. It may be an abstract account of dispositions and desires. |
| 6631 | If propositions are abstract entities, how can minds depend on their causal powers? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If propositions are abstract entities, more like the objects of mathematics, it seems mysterious that states of mind should depend for their causal powers upon the propositions which allegedly constitute their 'contents'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], 70) | |
| A reaction: Compare standard objections to Platonic Forms (e.g. Idea 3353). You can't believe in abstract propositions, but be a reductive physicalist about the mind. So propositions are dynamic brain structures. Easy. |
| 6659 | The three main theories of action involve the will, or belief-plus-desire, or an agent [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The two alternatives to volitionism in explaining action are (firstly) certain complexes of belief and desire, and (secondly) causation by an agent. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: A helpful framework. A key test case seems to that of trying to perform an action and failing (e.g. through paralysis), and this goes against the whole 'agent' being the most basic concept. One also needs room for reasons, and this supports volitionism. |
| 6661 | Libet gives empirical support for the will, as a kind of 'executive' mental operation [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Libet's experiments (on conscious and non-conscious choice) seem to provide empirical support for the concept of 'volition', conceived as a special kind of 'executive' mental operation. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Despite the strictures of Hobbes (Idea 2362) and Williams (Idea 2171), the will strikes me as a genuine item, clearly observable by introspection, and offering the best explanation of human behaviour. I take it to be part of the brain's frontal lobes. |
| 6662 | We feel belief and desire as reasons for choice, not causes of choice [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: When we choose how to act in the light of our beliefs and desires, we do not feel our choices to be caused by them, but we conceive of them as giving us reasons to choose. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: I agree, though this 'feeling' could be a delusion, and we certainly don't need to start talking about a 'free' will. The best account of action seems to be that the will operates on the raw material of beliefs and desires. The will is our 'decision box'. |
| 6663 | People's actions are explained either by their motives, or their reasons, or the causes [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: When we ask why people act in the ways that they do, we are sometimes enquiring into people's motives, at other times we want to uncover their reasons, and at others we want to know the causes of their actions. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Helpful distinctions. Any one of these explanations might be collapsed into the others. Kantians, utilitarians and contractarians can study reasons, nihilists can study causes, and virtue theorists I take to be concerned with motives. |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go. |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments. |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher. |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything? |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling. |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though! |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'. |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians. |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets. |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process. |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new. |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to. |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'. |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes. |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away. |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities. |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'. |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels. |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do? |