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All the ideas for 'works', 'Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness' and 'Of the standard of taste'

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6 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle

15941	For intuitionists excluded middle is an outdated historical convention [Brouwer]
	Full Idea: From the intuitionist standpoint the dogma of the universal validity of the principle of excluded third in mathematics can only be considered as a phenomenon of history of civilization, like the rationality of pi or rotation of the sky about the earth.
	From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]), quoted by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite VI.2
	A reaction: [Brouwer 1952:510-11]

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / h. Reals from Cauchy

18247	Brouwer saw reals as potential, not actual, and produced by a rule, or a choice [Brouwer, by Shapiro]
	Full Idea: In his early writing, Brouwer took a real number to be a Cauchy sequence determined by a rule. Later he augmented rule-governed sequences with free-choice sequences, but even then the attitude is that Cauchy sequences are potential, not actual infinities.
	From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 6.6
	A reaction: This is the 'constructivist' view of numbers, as espoused by intuitionists like Brouwer.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind

2957	Brain bisection suggests unity of mind isn't all-or-nothing [Nagel, by Lockwood]
	Full Idea: Nagel argues (because of brain bisection experiments) that we should jettison our commonsense assumption that the unity of consciousness is an all-or-nothing affair.
	From: report of Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971]) by Michael Lockwood - Mind, Brain and the Quantum p.84
	A reaction: It seems wrong to call it 'commonsense'. It is an assumption that precedes any judgement, but if you rapidly grasp that your mind is in your brain, it becomes common sense that you can cut lumps out of your mind.

16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 4. Presupposition of Self

3285	We may be unable to abandon personal identity, even when split-brains have undermined it [Nagel]
	Full Idea: As a result of the evidence of split-brains, it is possible that the ordinary, simple idea of a single person will come to seem quaint some day, …but we may be unable to abandon the idea, no matter what we discover.
	From: Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971], p.164)
	A reaction: I'm not sure what grounds you can have for a claim that we can't abandon our current view of selves, even when the new reality will be utterly different. Rather conservative? I would expect future concepts to roughly match future reality.

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude

18552	Forget about beauty; just concentrate on the virtues of delicacy and discernment admired in critics [Hume, by Scruton]
	Full Idea: Hume suggest we get away from the fruitless discussion of beauty, and simply concentrate on the qualities we admire, and ought to admire, in a critic - qualities such as delicacy and discernment.
	From: report of David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 6
	A reaction: We might wonder how you can admire 'discernment' without some view of the thing being discern, which is in danger of being beauty. How do you judge delicacy and discernment without judging the objects of the critic's taste? Mere authority?

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 3. Taste

6608	Strong sense, delicate sentiment, practice, comparisons, and lack of prejudice, are all needed for good taste [Hume]
	Full Idea: Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to the valuable character of having 'taste'.
	From: David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.6
	A reaction: I agree entirely with this, but then I am a very politically incorrect elitist when it comes to taste. It just seems screamingly obvious that professional wine-tasters have a better appreciation of wine than me, and so on for the rest of the arts.