63 ideas
| 6161 | Structuralism is neo-Kantian idealism, with language playing the role of categories of understanding [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Structuralism is a form of neo-Kantian idealism, in which the job of creating Kant's phenomenal world has been taken over by language instead of forms of sensibility and categories of the understanding. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A helpful connection, which explains my aversion to any attempt at understanding the world simply by analysing language, either in its ordinary usage, or in its underlying logical form. |
| 22317 | Truth does not admit of more and less [Frege] |
| Full Idea: What is only half true is untrue. Truth does not admit of more and less. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (works [1890], CP 353), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 48 'Truth' | |
| A reaction: What about a measurement which is accurate to three decimal places? Maybe being 'close to' the truth is not the same as being 'more' true. The truth about a distance between two points is unknowable? |
| 13455 | Frege did not think of himself as working with sets [Frege, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Frege did not think of himself as working with sets. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 1 | |
| A reaction: One can hardly blame him, given that set theory was only just being invented. |
| 16895 | The null set is indefensible, because it collects nothing [Frege, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Frege regarded the null set as an indefensible entity from the point of view of iterative set theory. It collects nothing. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Apriority (with ps) 2 | |
| A reaction: The null set defines the possibility that something could be collected. At the very least, it introduces curly brackets into the language. |
| 3328 | Frege proposed a realist concept of a set, as the extension of a predicate or concept or function [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Contrary to Dedekind's anti-realism, Frege proposed a realist definition of a set as the extension of a predicate (or concept, or function). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.13 |
| 9179 | Frege frequently expressed a contempt for language [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege frequently expressed a contempt for language. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890], p.228) by Michael Dummett - Frege's Distinction of Sense and Reference p.228 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as exactly the right attitude for a logician to have. Russell seems to have agreed. Attitudes to vagueness are the test case. Over-ambitious modern logicians dream of dealing with vagueness. Forget it. Stick to your last. |
| 13473 | Frege thinks there is an independent logical order of the truths, which we must try to discover [Frege, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Frege thinks there is a single right deductive order of the truths. This is not an epistemic order, but a logical order, and it is our job to arrange our beliefs in this order if we can make it out. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 2 | |
| A reaction: Frege's dream rests on the belief that there exists a huge set of logical truths. Pluralism, conventionalism, constructivism etc. about logic would challenge this dream. I think the defence of Frege must rest on Russellian rooting of logic in nature. |
| 6163 | If bivalence is rejected, then excluded middle must also be rejected [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: If you reject the principle of bivalence (that a proposition is either determinately true or false), then statements are also not subject to the Law of Excluded Middle (P or not-P). | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I think Rowlands is wrong about this. Excluded Middle could be purely syntacti, or its semantics could be 'True or Not-True'. Only bivalent excluded middle introduces 'True or False'. Compare Idea 4752. |
| 6076 | For Frege, predicates are names of functions that map objects onto the True and False [Frege, by McGinn] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, a predicate does not refer to the objects of which it is true, but to the function that maps these objects onto the True and False; ..a predicate is a name for this function. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Colin McGinn - Logical Properties Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: McGinn says this is close to the intuitive sense of a property. Perhaps 'predicates are what make objects the things they are?' |
| 3319 | Frege gives a functional account of predication so that we can dispense with predicates [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The whole point of Frege's functional account of predication lies in its allowing us to dispense with all properties across the board. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.9 |
| 9871 | Frege always, and fatally, neglected the domain of quantification [Dummett on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege persistently neglected the question of the domain of quantification, which proved in the end to be fatal. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: The 'fatality' refers to Russell's paradox, and the fact that not all concepts have extensions. Common sense now says that this is catastrophic. A domain of quantification is a topic of conversation, which is basic to all language. Cf. Idea 9874. |
| 16884 | Basic truths of logic are not proved, but seen as true when they are understood [Frege, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: In Frege's view axioms are basic truth, and basic truths do not need proof. Basic truths can be (justifiably) recognised as true by understanding their content. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Knowing the Foundations 1 | |
| A reaction: This is the underpinning of the rationalism in Frege's philosophy. |
| 3331 | If '5' is the set of all sets with five members, that may be circular, and you can know a priori if the set has content [Benardete,JA on Frege] |
| Full Idea: There is a suspicion that Frege's definition of 5 (as the set of all sets with 5 members) may be infected with circularity, …and how can we be sure on a priori grounds that 4 and 5 are not both empty sets, and hence identical? | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.14 |
| 16880 | Frege aimed to discover the logical foundations which justify arithmetical judgements [Frege, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Frege saw arithmetical judgements as resting on a foundation of logical principles, and the discovery of this foundation as a discovery of the nature and structure of the justification of arithmetical truths and judgments. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Knowing the Foundations Intro | |
| A reaction: Burge's point is that the logic justifies the arithmetic, as well as underpinning it. |
| 8689 | Eventually Frege tried to found arithmetic in geometry instead of in logic [Frege, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: After the problem with Russell's paradox, Frege did not publish for fourteen years, and he then tried to re-found arithmetic in Euclidean geometry, rather than in logic. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890], 3.4) by Michčle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: I take it that his new road would have led him to modern Structuralism, so I think he was probably on the right lines. Unfortunately Frege had already done enough for one good lifetime. |
| 5657 | Frege's logic showed that there is no concept of being [Frege, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Frege's quantificational logic vindicates Kant's insight that existence is not a predicate and leads to fallacies when treated as one; and we might also say, despite Hegel, that there is no concept of being. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.17 | |
| A reaction: I notice that Colin McGinn has questioned the value of quantificational logic. It is difficult to assert that 'there is no concept of x', if several people have written large books about it. |
| 6155 | Supervenience is a one-way relation of dependence or determination between properties [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is essentially a one-way relation of dependence or determination, …which holds, in the first instance, between properties. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This definition immediately shows why supervenient properties are in danger of being epiphenomenal (i.e. causally irrelevant). Carefully thought about the notion of a 'one-way' relation will, I think, make it more obscure rather than clearer. |
| 4938 | 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. |
| 6154 | It is argued that wholes possess modal and counterfactual properties that parts lack [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Some have argued that a mereological whole should not be identified with the sum of its parts on the grounds that the former possess certain properties - specifically modal and (perhaps) counterfactual properties - that the latter lacks. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced that modal and counterfactual claims should count as properties. If my pen is heated it melts (a property), but if my pen were intelligent it could do philosophy. Intelligence is a property, but the situation isn't. |
| 6157 | Tokens are dated, concrete particulars; types are their general properties or kinds [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Tokens are dated, concrete, particular occurrences or instances; types are the general properties that these occurrences exemplify or the kinds to which they belong. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It might be said that types are sets, of which tokens are the members. The question of 'general properties' raises the question of whether universals must exist to make kinds possible. |
| 3318 | Frege made identity a logical notion, enshrined above all in the formula 'for all x, x=x' [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: It was Frege who first made identity a logical notion, enshrining it above all in the formula (x) x=x. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.9 |
| 16885 | To understand a thought, understand its inferential connections to other thoughts [Frege, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Frege famously realised that understanding a thought requires understanding its inferential connections to other thoughts. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Knowing the Foundations 1 | |
| A reaction: If true, this is probably our greatest advance in grasping the concept of 'understanding' since Aristotle - but is it true? It is a striking and interesting idea, and central to the importance of Frege in modern analytic philosophy. |
| 6159 | Strong idealism is the sort of mess produced by a Cartesian separation of mind and world [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Neo-Kantian idealism, and the excesses of recent versions of it, are precisely the sort of mess one can get oneself into through an uncritical acceptance of the dichotomizing of mind and world along Cartesian internalist lines. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I am unconvinced that internalism about the mind (that its contents can be defined without reference to anything external) leads to this disastrous split. We don't have to abandon the links between an internal mind and the world. |
| 16887 | Frege's concept of 'self-evident' makes no reference to minds [Frege, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Frege's terms that translate 'self-evident' usually make no explicit reference to actual minds. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Knowing the Foundations 4 | |
| A reaction: This follows the distinction in Aquinas, between things that are intrinsically self-evident, and things that are self-evident to particular people. God, presumably, knows all of the former. |
| 16894 | An apriori truth is grounded in generality, which is universal quantification [Frege, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Generality for Frege is simply universal quantification; what makes a truth apriori is that its ultimate grounds are universally quantified. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Apriority (with ps) 2 |
| 4934 | 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. |
| 16882 | The building blocks contain the whole contents of a discipline [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate building blocks of a discipline contain, as it were in a nutshell, its whole contents. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (works [1890]), quoted by Tyler Burge - Frege on Knowing the Foundations 1 | |
| A reaction: [Burge gives a reference] I would describe this nutshell as the 'essence' of the subject, and it fits Aristotle's concept of an essence perfectly. Does it fit biology or sociology, in the way it might fit maths or logic? Think of DNA or cells in biology. |
| 6152 | Minds are rational, conscious, subjective, self-knowing, free, meaningful and self-aware [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The apparent features of mind which are not obviously physical include: rationality, thought, consciousness, subjectivity, infallible first-person knowledge, freedom, meaning and self-awareness. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: A helpful list, some of which can be challenged. Ryle challenges first-person infallibility. Hume challenges self-awareness. Quine challenges meaning. Lots of people (e.g. Spinoza) challenge freedom. The Churchlands seem to challenge consciousness. |
| 4924 | 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. |
| 6173 | Content externalism implies that we do not have privileged access to our own minds [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Content externalism threatens the idea of first-person authority in all its forms, and does so because it calls into question the idea that the access we have to our own mental states is privileged in the way required for such authority. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to respond by saying that since we clearly have privileged access to our own minds, that means there must be something wrong with content externalism. |
| 6174 | If someone is secretly transported to Twin Earth, others know their thoughts better than they do [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: If someone knew that a thinker had, without realising it, been transported to Twin Earth, they would almost certainly be a higher authority on the content of the thinker's thoughts than would the thinker. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: They would certainly be a higher authority on the truth of the thinker's thoughts, but only in the way that you might think I hold a diamond when I know it is a club. If the thinker believes it is H2O, the fact that it isn't is irrelevant to content. |
| 4932 | 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. |
| 4931 | 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? |
| 4923 | 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. |
| 4941 | 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. |
| 4930 | 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. |
| 4929 | 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. |
| 4940 | 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? |
| 4935 | 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'. |
| 4936 | 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. |
| 4939 | 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. |
| 4925 | 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. |
| 6158 | Supervenience of mental and physical properties often comes with token-identity of mental and physical particulars [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: One often finds a supervenience thesis concerning the relation between mental and physical properties combined with a token identity theory concerning the relation between mental and physical particulars. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This brings out the important clarifying point that supervenience is said to be between properties, not substances. The point is that supervenience will always cry out for an explanation, preferably a sensible one. |
| 4933 | 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. |
| 4928 | 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. |
| 4927 | 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. |
| 6168 | The content of a thought is just the meaning of a sentence [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The content of the thought that the sky is blue is simply the meaning of the sentence "The sky is blue". | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that it is logically impossible for a non-language-speaker, such as a chimpanzee, to think that the sky is the same colour as the water. If we allow propositions, we might be able to keep meanings without the sentences. |
| 4922 | 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. |
| 5793 | 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. |
| 4926 | 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. |
| 5816 | Frege said concepts were abstract entities, not mental entities [Frege, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Frege, rebelling against 'psychologism', identified concepts (and hence 'intensions' or meanings) with abstract entities rather than mental entities. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Hilary Putnam - Meaning and Reference p.119 | |
| A reaction: This, of course, assumes that 'abstract' entities and 'mental' entities are quite distinct things. A concept is presumably a mental item which has content, and the word 'concept' is simply ambiguous, between the container and the contents. |
| 7307 | A thought is not psychological, but a condition of the world that makes a sentence true [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, a thought is not something psychological or subjective; rather, it is objective in the sense that it specifies some condition in the world the obtaining of which is necessary and sufficient for the truth of the sentence that expresses it. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 2.2 | |
| A reaction: It is worth emphasising Russell's anti-Berkeley point about 'ideas', that the idea is in the mind, but its contents are in the world. Since the contents are what matter, this endorses Frege, and also points towards modern externalism. |
| 7309 | Frege's 'sense' is the strict and literal meaning, stripped of tone [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Frege held that "and" and "but" have the same 'sense' but different 'tones' (note: they have the same truth tables); the sense of an expression is what a sentence strictly and literally means, stripped of its tone. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 2.6 | |
| A reaction: It seems important when studying Frege to remember what has been stripped out. In "he is a genius and he plays football", if you substitute 'but' for 'and', the new version says (literally?) something very distinctive about football. |
| 7312 | 'Sense' solves the problems of bearerless names, substitution in beliefs, and informativeness [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Frege's introduction of 'sense' was motivated by the desire to solve three problems: the problem of bearerless names, the problem of substitution in belief contexts, and the problem of informativeness. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 2.9 | |
| A reaction: A proposal which solves three problems sounds pretty good! These three problems can be used to test the counter-proposals of Russell and Kripke. |
| 7725 | 'P or not-p' seems to be analytic, but does not fit Kant's account, lacking clear subject or predicate [Frege, by Weiner] |
| Full Idea: 'It is raining or it is not raining' appears to true because of the general principle 'p or not-p', so it is analytic; but this does not fit Kant's idea of an analytic truth, because it is not obvious that it has a subject concept or a predicate concept. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Joan Weiner - Frege Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: The general progress of logic seems to be a widening out to embrace problem sentences. However, see Idea 7315 for the next problem that arises with analyticity. All this culminates in Quine's attack (e.g. Idea 1624). |
| 7316 | Analytic truths are those that can be demonstrated using only logic and definitions [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Frege (according to Quine) characterises analytic truths as those that can be demonstrated or proved using only logical laws and definitions as premises. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the big shift away from the Kantian version (predicate contained in the subject) towards a modern version, perhaps fixed by a truth table giving true for all values. |
| 6167 | Action is bodily movement caused by intentional states [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: An action is a bodily movement that is caused by intentional states such as beliefs, desires and so on. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: A useful definition, and clearly one that has no truck with attempts at giving behaviourist definitions of action. The definition of a 'moral action' needs to be built on this one. Particular types of belief and desire, presumably. |
| 6177 | Moral intuition seems unevenly distributed between people [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The faculty of moral intuition seems to be unevenly distributed between people. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This would be a good argument if it was thought that the source of moral intuitions was divine, but people vary enormously in their intuitions about maths, about character, about danger. If you believe in any intuition at all, you must accept its variety. |
| 4937 | 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..". |
| 6156 | The 17th century reintroduced atoms as mathematical modes of Euclidean space [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The seventeenth century revolution reintroduced the classical concept of the atom in somewhat new attire as an essentially mathematical entity whose primary qualities could be precisely quantified as modes or aspects of Euclidean space. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this very abstract view of atoms didn't last, once they began to identify specific physical atoms, such as oxygen. This view fits in with Newton's use of pure (abstract) points such as the 'centre of gravity'. |
| 6170 | Natural kinds are defined by their real essence, as in gold having atomic number 79 [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Part of what it means to be a natural kind is that they are defined by a real essence, a constitution that marks them out as the substance they are (as water is essentially H2O, and gold essentially has atomic number 79). | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: A 'real essence' would be the opposite of a 'conventional essence', which is just a human way of seeing things. |
| 6178 | It is common to see the value of nature in one feature, such as life, diversity, or integrity [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: In recent environmental philosophy it is common to see the value of nature identified with one or another natural feature of the environment: life, diversity, ecosystemic integrity and so on. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This thought seems to be asking for the Open Question argument. What is so good about life, or diversity? Our strongest intuition must be that the survival of the ecosystem, and whatever makes that possible, is the highest value. |
| 3307 | Frege put forward an ontological argument for the existence of numbers [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Frege put forward an ontological argument for the existence of numbers. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.4 |