5 ideas
| 7522 | A full neural account of qualia will give new epistemic access to them, beyond private experience [Churchlands] |
| Full Idea: When the hidden neurophysiological structure of qualia (if there is any) gets revealed by unfolding research, then we will automatically gain a new epistemic access to qualia, beyond each person's native and exclusive capacity for internal discrimination. | |
| From: Churchland / Churchland (Recent Work on Consciousness [1997]) | |
| A reaction: Carefully phrased and hard to deny, but something is impenetrable. What experience does an insect have when it encounters ultra-violet light? Nothing remotely interesting about their qualia is likely to emerge from the study of insect brains. |
| 7521 | It is question-begging to assume that qualia are totally simple, hence irreducible [Churchlands] |
| Full Idea: One of the crucial premises of the antireductionists - concerning the intrinsic, nonrelational, metaphysical simplicity of our sensory qualia - is a question-begging and unsupported assumption. | |
| From: Churchland / Churchland (Recent Work on Consciousness [1997]) | |
| A reaction: This is a key point for reductionists, with emphasis on the sheer numbers of connections involved in a simple quale (I estimate a billion involved in one small patch of red). |
| 7523 | The qualia Hard Problem is easy, in comparison with the co-ordination of mental states [Churchlands] |
| Full Idea: The so-called Hard Problem (of qualia) appears to be one of the easiest, in comparison with the problems of short-term memory, fluid and directable attention, the awake state vs sleep, and the unity of consciousness. | |
| From: Churchland / Churchland (Recent Work on Consciousness [1997]) | |
| A reaction: Most of their version of the Hard Problems centre on personal identity, and the centralised co-ordination of mental events. I am inclined to agree with them. Worriers about qualia should think more about the complexity of systems of neurons. |
| 7825 | The politics of Leibniz was the reunification of Christianity [Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: The politics of Leibniz may be summed up in one word: theocracy. The specific agenda motivating much of his work was to reunite the Protestant and Catholic churches | |
| From: Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic [2007], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This would be a typical project for a rationalist philosopher, who thinks that good reasoning will gradually converge on the one truth. |
| 20486 | Only liberty, equality and sympathy can stand up to anti-social people [Kropotkin] |
| Full Idea: Liberty, equality and practical human sympathy are the only effective barriers we can oppose to the anti-social instincts of certain among us. | |
| From: Peter (Pyotr) Kropotkin (Law and Authority [1886], 1 'Anarchism'), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) | |
| A reaction: One might state it more succinctly as 'only the social can oppose the anti-social'. The dominance in society of essentially anti-social people seems to have become a major political fact in 2017, in the UK and the USA. |