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All the ideas for 'On What Grounds What', 'Consciousness: matter becomes imagination' and 'In Defence of Convention T'

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34 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 1. Nature of Metaphysics
Modern Quinean metaphysics is about what exists, but Aristotelian metaphysics asks about grounding [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is (such as properties, meanings and numbers). I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], Intro)
     A reaction: I find that an enormously helpful distinction, and support the Aristotelian view. Schaffer's general line is that what exists is fairly uncontroversial and dull, but the interesting truths about the world emerge when we grasp its structure.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems
If you tore the metaphysics out of philosophy, the whole enterprise would collapse [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Traditional metaphysics is so tightly woven into the fabric of philosophy that it cannot be torn out without the whole tapestry unravelling.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3)
     A reaction: I often wonder why the opponents of metaphysics still continue to do philosophy. I don't see how you address questions of ethics, or philosophy of mathematics (etc) without coming up against highly general and abstract over-questions.
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 6. Ockham's Razor
We should not multiply basic entities, but we can have as many derivative entities as we like [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Occam's Razor should only be understood to concern substances: do not multiply basic entities without necessity. There is no problem with the multiplication of derivative entities - they are an 'ontological free lunch'.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1)
     A reaction: The phrase 'ontological free lunch' comes from Armstrong. This is probably what Occam meant. A few extra specks of dust, or even a few more numbers (thank you, Cantor!) don't seem to challenge the principle.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 1. Mathematical Platonism / a. For mathematical platonism
If 'there are red roses' implies 'there are roses', then 'there are prime numbers' implies 'there are numbers' [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: We can automatically infer 'there are roses' from 'there are red roses' (with no shift in the meaning of 'roses'). Likewise one can automatically infer 'there are numbers' from 'there are prime numbers'.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1)
     A reaction: He similarly observes that the atheist's 'God is a fictional character' implies 'there are fictional characters'. Schaffer is not committing to a strong platonism with his claim - merely that the existence of numbers is hardly worth disputing.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding
Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Grounding should be taken as primitive, as per the neo-Aristotelian approach. Grounding is an unanalyzable but needed notion - it is the primitive structuring conception of metaphysics.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2)
     A reaction: [he cites K.Fine 1991] I find that this simple claim clarifies the discussions of Kit Fine, where you are not always quite sure what the game is. I agree fully with it. It makes metaphysics interesting, where cataloguing entities is boring.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / a. Nature of supervenience
Supervenience is just modal correlation [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Supervenience is mere modal correlation.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2)
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 7. Abstract/Concrete / a. Abstract/concrete
The cosmos is the only fundamental entity, from which all else exists by abstraction [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: My preferred view is that there is only one fundamental entity - the whole concrete cosmos - from which all else exists by abstraction.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1)
     A reaction: This looks to me like weak anti-realism - that there are no natural 'joints' in nature - but I don't think Schaffer intends that. I take the joints to be fundamentals, which necessitates that the cosmos has parts. His 'abstraction' is clearly a process.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 4. Category Realism
Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Maybe the categories are determined by the different grounding relations, ..so that categories just are the ways things depend on substances. ...Categories are places in the dependence ordering.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 1.3)
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 5. Universals as Concepts
Prior to language, concepts are universals created by self-mapping of brain activity [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Before language is present, concepts depend on the brain's ability to construct 'universals' through higher-order mapping of the activity of the brain's own perceptual and motor maps.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.15)
     A reaction: It should be of great interest to philosophers that one can begin to give a neuro-physiological account of universals. A physical system can be ordered as a database, and universals are the higher branches of a tree-structure of information.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / c. Wholes from parts
There exist heaps with no integral unity, so we should accept arbitrary composites in the same way [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: I am happy to accept universal composition, on the grounds that there are heaps, piles etc with no integral unity, and that arbitrary composites are no less unified than heaps.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1 n11)
     A reaction: The metaphysical focus is then placed on what constitutes 'integral unity', which is precisely the question which most interested Aristotle. Clearly if there is nothing more to an entity than its components, scattering them isn't destruction.
The notion of 'grounding' can explain integrated wholes in a way that mere aggregates can't [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: The notion of grounding my capture a crucial mereological distinction (missing from classical mereology) between an integrated whole with genuine unity, and a mere aggregate. x is an integrated whole if it grounds its proper parts.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 3.1)
     A reaction: That gives a nice theoretical notion, but if you remove each of the proper parts, does x remain? Is it a bare particular? I take it that it will have to be an abstract principle, the one Aristotle was aiming at with his notion of 'form'. Schaffer agrees.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / b. Impossible worlds
Belief in impossible worlds may require dialetheism [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: One motivation for dialetheism is the view that there are impossible worlds.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3)
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 2. Common Sense Certainty
'Moorean certainties' are more credible than any sceptical argument [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: A 'Moorean certainty' is when something is more credible than any philosopher's argument to the contrary.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1)
     A reaction: The reference is to G.E. Moore's famous claim that the existence of his hand is more certain than standard sceptical arguments. It sounds empiricist, but they might be parallel rational truths, of basic logic or arithmetic.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 4. Cultural relativism
Cultures have a common core of colour naming, based on three axes of colour pairs [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: We seem to have a set of colour axes (red-green, blue-yellow, and light-dark). Color naming in different cultures tend to have universal categories based on these axes, with a few derived or composite categories (e.g. orange, purple, pink, brown, grey).
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13)
     A reaction: This confirms my view of all supposed relativism: that there are degrees of cultural and individual relativism possible, but it is daft to think this goes all the way down, as nature has 'joints', and our minds are part of nature.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
A conscious human being rapidly reunifies its mind after any damage to the brain [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: It seems that after a massive stroke or surgical resection, a conscious human being is rapidly "resynthesised" or reunified within the limits of a solipsistic universe that, to outside appearances, is warped and restricted.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 3)
     A reaction: Note that there are two types of 'unity of mind'. This comment refers to the unity of seeing oneself as a single person, rather than the smooth unbroken quality of conscious experience. I presume that there is no point in a mind without the first unity.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 8. Brain
A conscious state endures for about 100 milliseconds, known as the 'specious present' [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: The 'specious present' (William James), a rough estimate of the duration of a single conscious state, is of the order of 100 milliseconds, meaning that conscious states can change very rapidly.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12)
     A reaction: A vital feature of our subjective experience of time. I wonder what the figure is for a fly? It suggests that conscious experience really is like a movie film, composed of tiny independent 'frames' of very short duration.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / b. Essence of consciousness
Consciousness is a process (of neural interactions), not a location, thing, property, connectivity, or activity [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Consciousness is neither a thing, nor a simple property. ..The conscious 'dynamic core' of the brain is a process, not a thing or a place, and is defined in terms of neural interactions, not in terms of neural locations, connectivity or activity.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12)
     A reaction: This must be of great interest to philosophers. Edelman is adamant that it is not any specific neurons. The nice question is: what would it be like to have your brain slowed down? Presumably we would experience steps in the process. Is he a functionalist?
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / c. Parts of consciousness
The three essentials of conscious experience are privateness, unity and informativeness [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: The fundamental aspects of conscious experience that are common to all its phenomenological manifestations are: privateness, unity, and informativeness.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 3)
     A reaction: Interesting, coming from neuroscientists. The list strikes me as rather passive. It is no use having good radar if you can't make decisions. Privacy and unity are overrated. Who gets 'informed'? Personal identity must be basic.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / d. Purpose of consciousness
Consciousness can create new axioms, but computers can't do that [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Conscious human thought can create new axioms, which a computer cannot do.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.17)
     A reaction: A nice challenge for the artificial intelligence community! I don't understand their confidence in making this assertion. Nothing in Gödel's Theorem seems to prevent the reassignment of axioms, and Quine implies that it is an easy and trivial game.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / e. Cause of consciousness
Consciousness arises from high speed interactions between clusters of neurons [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Our hypothesis is that the activity of a group of neurons can contribute directly to conscious experience if it is part of a functional cluster, characterized by strong interactions among a set of neuronal groups over a period of hundreds of milliseconds.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12)
     A reaction: This is their 'dynamic core' hypothesis. It doesn't get at the Hard Questions about consciousness, but this is a Nobel prize winner hot on the trail of the location of the action. It gives support to functionalism, because the neurons vary.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / a. Nature of intentionality
Dreams and imagery show the brain can generate awareness and meaning without input [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Dreaming and imagery are striking phenomenological demonstrations that the adult brain can spontaneously and intrinsically produce consciousness and meaning without any direct input from the periphery.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.11)
     A reaction: This offers some support for Searle's claim that brain's produce 'intrinsic' (rather than 'derived') intentionality. Of course, one can have a Humean impressions/ideas theory about how the raw material got there. We SEE meaning in our experiences.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories
Physicists see information as a measure of order, but for biologists it is symbolic exchange between animals [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Physicists may define information as a measure of order in a far-from-equilibrium state, but it is best seen as a biological concept which emerged in evolution with animals that were capable of mutual symbolic exchange.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.17)
     A reaction: The physicists' definition seems to open the road to the possibility of non-conscious intentionality (Dennett), where the biological view seems to require consciousness of symbolic meanings (Searle). Tree-rings contain potential information?
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / c. Explaining qualia
The sensation of red is a point in neural space created by dimensions of neuronal activity [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: The pure sensation of red is a particular neural state identified by a point within the N-dimensional neural space defined by the integrated activity of all the group of neurons that constitute the dynamic core.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13)
     A reaction: This hardly answers the Hard Question (why experience it? why that experience?), but it is interesting to see a neuroscientist fishing for an account of qualia. He says three types of neuron firing generate the dimensions of the 'space'.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body
The self is founded on bodily awareness centred in the brain stem [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Structures in the brain stem map the state of the body and its relation to the environment, on the basis of signals with proprioceptive, kinesthetic, somatosensory and autonomic components. We may call these the dimensions of the proto-self.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13)
     A reaction: It seems to me that there is no free will, but moral responsibility depends on the existence of a Self, and philosophers had better fight for it (are you listening, Hume?). Fortunately neuroscientists seem to endorse it fairly unanimously.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 2. Self as Social Construct
A sense of self begins either internally, or externally through language and society [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Two extreme views on the development of the self are 'internalist' and 'externalist'. The first starts with a baby's subjective experience, and increasing differentiation as self-consciousness develops. The externalist view requires language and society.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.15)
     A reaction: Edelman rightly warns against this simple dichotomy, but if I have to vote, it is for internalism. I take a sense of self as basic to any mind, even a slug's. What is a mind for, if not to look after the creature? Self makes sensation into mind.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
Brains can initiate free actions before the person is aware of their own decision [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Libet concluded that the cerebral initiation of a spontaneous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is, before there is any recallable awareness that a decision to act has already been initiated cerebrally.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 6)
     A reaction: We should accept this result. 'Free will' was always a bogus metaphysical concept (invented, I think, because God had to be above natural laws). A person is the source of responsibility, and is the controller of the brain, but not entirely conscious.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability
Consciousness is a process, not a thing, as it maintains unity as its composition changes [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: The conscious 'dynamic core' of the brain can maintain its unity over time even if its composition may be constantly changing, which is the signature of a process as opposed to a thing.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12)
     A reaction: This is the functionalists' claim that the mind is 'multiply realisable', since different neurons can maintain the same process. 'Process' strikes me as a much better word than 'function'. These theories capture passive mental life better than active.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 3. Modularity of Mind
Brain complexity balances segregation and integration, like a good team of specialists [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: A theoretical analysis of complexity suggests that neuronal complexity strikes an optimum balance between segregation and integration, which fits the view of the brain as a collection of specialists who talk to each other a lot.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.11)
     A reaction: This is a theoretical point, but comes from a leading neuroscientist, and seems to endorse Fodor's modularity proposal. For a philosopher, one of the issues here is how to reconcile the segregation with the Cartesian unity and personal identity of a mind.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 4. Language of Thought
Information-processing views of the brain assume the existence of 'information', and dubious brain codes [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: So-called information-processing views of the brain have been criticized because they typically assume the existence in the world of previously defined information, and often assume the existence of precise neural codes for which there is no evidence.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.11)
     A reaction: Fodor is the target here. Searle is keen that 'intrinsic intentionality' is required to see something as 'information'. It is hard to see how anything acquires significance as it flows through a mechanical process.
18. Thought / C. Content / 6. Broad Content
Consciousness involves interaction with persons and the world, as well as brain functions [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: We emphatically do not identify consciousness in its full range as arising solely in the brain, since we believe that higher brain functions require interactions both with the world and with other persons.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Pref)
     A reaction: Would you gradually lose higher brain functions if you lived entirely alone? Intriguingly, this sounds like a neuroscientist asserting the necessity for broad content in order to understand the brain.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / a. Origin of concepts
Concepts and generalisations result from brain 'global mapping' by 'reentry' [Edelman/Tononi, by Searle]
     Full Idea: When you get maps all over the brain signalling to each other by reentry you have what Edelman calls 'global mapping', and this allows the system not only to have perceptual categories and generalisation, but also to coordinate perception and action.
     From: report of G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000]) by John Searle - The Mystery of Consciousness Ch.3
     A reaction: This is the nearest we have got to a proper scientific account of thought (as opposed to untested speculation about Turing machines). Something like this account must be right. A concept is a sustained process, not a static item.
Concepts arise when the brain maps its own activities [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: We propose that concepts arise from the mapping by the brain itself of the activity of the brain's own areas and regions.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 9)
     A reaction: Yes. One should add that the brain appears to be physically constructed with the logic of a filing system, which would mean that our concepts were labels for files within the system. Nature generates some of the files, and thinking creates the others.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 5. Fregean Semantics
A theory of meaning comes down to translating sentences into Fregean symbolic logic [Davidson, by Macey]
     Full Idea: For a theory of meaning for a fragment of natural language, what Davidson requires, in effect, is that the sentences be translatable into the language of Frege's symbolic logic.
     From: report of Donald Davidson (In Defence of Convention T [1973]) by David Macey - Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory
     A reaction: This assumes the adequacy of Fregean logic, which seems unlikely. Is this the culmination of Leibniz's dream of a fully logical language - so that anything that won't fit into our logical form is ruled (logical positivist style) as meaningless?
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / b. Fact and value
Systems that generate a sense of value are basic to the primitive brain [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Early and central in the development of the brain are the dimensions provided by value systems indicating salience for the entire organism.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13)
     A reaction: This doesn't quite meet Hume's challenge to find values in the whole of nature, but it matches Charles Taylor's claim that for humans values are knowable a priori. Conditional values can be facts of the whole of nature. "If there is life, x has value..".