Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Case for Closure', 'The Unimportance of Identity' and 'The Problem of Consciousness'

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14 ideas

2. Reason / E. Argument / 7. Thought Experiments
5515 Imaginary cases are good for revealing our beliefs, rather than the truth [Parfit]
     Full Idea: I believe it is worth considering imaginary cases (such as Teletransportation), as we can use them to discover, not what the truth is, but what we believe.
     From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.293)
     A reaction: The trouble is that we might say that IF I were suddenly turned into a pig, then I would come to believe in dualism, but that will not and cannot happen, because dualism is false. It seems essential to accept the natural possibility of the case.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
5516 Reduction can be by identity, or constitution, or elimination [Parfit, by PG]
     Full Idea: We can distinguish Identifying Reductionism (as in 'persons are bodies'), or Constitutive Reductionism (as in 'persons are distinct, but consist of thoughts etc.'), or Eliminative Reductionism (as in 'there are no persons, only thoughts etc.').
     From: report of Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.295) by PG - Db (ideas)
     A reaction: Constitutive Reductionism seems the most common one, as in 'chemistry just consists of lots of complicated physics'. He doesn't mention bridge laws, which are presumably only required in more complicated cases of constitutive reduction.
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 2. Common Sense Certainty
19553 Commitment to 'I have a hand' only makes sense in a context where it has been doubted [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: If I utter 'I know I have a hand' then I can only be reckoned a cooperative conversant by my interlocutors on the assumption that there was a real question as to whether I have a hand.
     From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2)
     A reaction: This seems to point to the contextualist approach to global scepticism, which concerns whether we are setting the bar high or low for 'knowledge'.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / c. Knowledge closure
19551 How can we know the heavyweight implications of normal knowledge? Must we distort 'knowledge'? [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: Those who deny skepticism but accept closure will have to explain how we know the various 'heavyweight' skeptical hypotheses to be false. Do we then twist the concept of knowledge to fit the twin desiderata of closue and anti-skepticism?
     From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], Intro)
     A reaction: [He is giving Dretske's view; Dretske says we do twist knowledge] Thus if I remember yesterday, that has the heavyweight implication that the past is real. Hawthorne nicely summarises why closure produces a philosophical problem.
19552 We wouldn't know the logical implications of our knowledge if small risks added up to big risks [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: Maybe one cannot know the logical consequences of the proposition that one knows, on account of the fact that small risks add up to big risks.
     From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 1)
     A reaction: The idea of closure is that the new knowledge has the certainty of logic, and each step is accepted. An array of receding propositions can lose reliability, but that shouldn't apply to logic implications. Assuming monotonic logic, of course.
19554 Denying closure is denying we know P when we know P and Q, which is absurd in simple cases [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: How could we know that P and Q but not be in a position to know that P (as deniers of closure must say)? If my glass is full of wine, we know 'g is full of wine, and not full of non-wine'. How can we deny that we know it is not full of non-wine?
     From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2)
     A reaction: Hawthorne merely raises this doubt. Dretske is concerned with heavyweight implications, but how do you accept lightweight implications like this one, and then suddenly reject them when they become too heavy? [see p.49]
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 1. Identity and the Self
5514 Psychologists are interested in identity as a type of person, but philosophers study numerical identity [Parfit]
     Full Idea: When psychologists discuss identity, they are typically concerned with the kind of person someone is, or wants to be (as in an 'identity crisis'). But when philosophers discuss identity, it is numerical identity they mean.
     From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.293)
     A reaction: I think it is important to note that the philosophical problem breaks down into two areas: whether I have numerical identity with myself over time, and whether other people have it. It may be that two different sets of criteria will emerge.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
5521 If my brain-halves are transplanted into two bodies, I have continuity, and don't need identity [Parfit]
     Full Idea: If the two halves of my brain are transplanted into different bodies just like mine, they cannot both be me, since that would make them the same person. ..But my relation to these two contains everything that matters, so identity is not what matters.
     From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.314)
     A reaction: I challenge his concept of what 'matters'. He has a rather solipsistic view of the problem, and I take Parfit to be a rather unsociable person, since his friends and partner will be keenly interested in the identities of the new beings.
5522 Over a period of time what matters is not that 'I' persist, but that I have psychological continuity [Parfit]
     Full Idea: We should revise our view about identity over time: what matters isn't that there will be someone alive who will be me; it is rather that there should be at least one living person who will be psychologically continuous with me as I am now.
     From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.316)
     A reaction: Parfit and Locke seem to agree on this, and it is no accident that they both like 'science fiction' examples. Apparently Parfit wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone threatened to cut his corpus callosum. I rate it as a catastrophe for my current existence.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 4. Split Consciousness
5519 It is fine to save two dying twins by merging parts of their bodies into one, and identity is irrelevant [Parfit]
     Full Idea: If I am largely paralysed, and my twin brother is dying of brain disease, then if the operation to graft my head onto his body is offered, I should accept the operation, and it is irrelevant whether this person would be me.
     From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.308)
     A reaction: Parfit notes that the brain is a particularly significant part of the process. The fact that I might cheerfully accept this offer without philosophical worries doesn't get rid of the question 'who is this person?' Who should they remain married to?
5520 If two humans are merged surgically, the new identity is a purely verbal problem [Parfit]
     Full Idea: If there is someone with my head and my brother's body, it is a merely verbal question whether that person will be me, and that is why, even if it won't be me, that doesn't matter. ..What matters is not identity, but the facts of which identity consists.
     From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.310)
     A reaction: It strikes me that from the subjective psychological point of view identity is of little interest, but from the objective external viewpoint (e.g. the forensic one) such questions are highly significant, and rightly so.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 4. Denial of the Self
5518 It doesn't matter whether I exist with half my components replaced (any more than an audio system) [Parfit]
     Full Idea: It is quite uninteresting whether, with half its components replaced, I have the same audio system, and also whether I exist if half of my body were simultaneously replaced.
     From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.302)
     A reaction: It is impossible to deny this, if the part replaced is not the brain. My doubt about Parfit's thesis is that while I may not care whether some modified thing is still me, my lawyers and the police might be very concerned.
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 6. Mysterianism
7388 McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines [Dennett on McGinn]
     Full Idea: McGinn invites his readers to join him in surrender: It's just impossible to imagine how software could make a conscious robot. Don't even try, he says. Other philosophical experiments (involving China) "work" by dissuading readers from imagining.
     From: comment on Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1
     A reaction: I agree with Dennett. If you don't try to imagine how robots might do it, you are also denied the right to try to imagine how brains might manage it. Admittedly this is hard, but good imagination needs study, effort, discussion, time, information...
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability
3185 Multiple realisability rules out hidden essences and experts as the source of water- and gold-concepts [McGinn]
     Full Idea: The multiple realisability emphasised by functionalists rules out the hidden essences (and the 'deferential' move in semantics) that one finds in the cases, for example, of "water" and "gold" emphasised by Kripke and Putnam.
     From: Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991], p.132)
     A reaction: Presumably if they are 'hidden', then the people to whom we 'defer' for our concepts can't actually know about the essences we are supposed to be discussing. You can mean essences without knowing them. Cf. Loch Ness Monster.