79 ideas
| 3508 | Correspondence to the facts HAS to be the aim of enquiry [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It does not matter whether "true" does mean corresponds to the facts, because "corresponds to the facts" does mean corresponds to the facts, and any discipline that aims to describe how the world is aims for this correspondence. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.V) |
| 11115 | 'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116. |
| 10580 | Mathematics is both necessary and a priori because it really consists of logical truths [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics seems necessary because the real contents of mathematical statements are logical truths, which are necessary, and it seems a priori because logical truths really are a priori. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Abstract Objects: a Case Study [2002], 10) | |
| A reaction: Yablo says his logicism has a Kantian strain, because numbers and sets 'inscribed on our spectacles', but he takes a different view (in the present Idea) from Kant about where the necessity resides. Personally I am tempted by an a posteriori necessity. |
| 10579 | Putting numbers in quantifiable position (rather than many quantifiers) makes expression easier [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Saying 'the number of Fs is 5', instead of using five quantifiers, puts the numeral in quantifiable position, which brings expressive advantages. 'There are more sheep in the field than cows' is an infinite disjunction, expressible in finite compass. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Abstract Objects: a Case Study [2002], 08) | |
| A reaction: See Hofweber with similar thoughts. This idea I take to be a key one in explaining many metaphysical confusions. The human mind just has a strong tendency to objectify properties, relations, qualities, categories etc. - for expression and for reasoning. |
| 3473 | Reduction can be of things, properties, ideas or causes [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I find at least five different senses of "reduction" in the literature - ontological (genes/DNA), property ontological (heat/mean molecular energy), theoretical (gas laws/statistics), logical/definitional (average plumber), and causal (solids/molecules). | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.II) | |
| A reaction: A useful pointer towards some much needed clearer thought about reduction. It is necessary to cross reference this list against reductions which are either ontological or epistemological or linguistic. |
| 3532 | Solidity in a piston is integral to its structure, not supervenient [Maslin on Searle] |
| Full Idea: Searle's defence of causally efficacious supervenient mind won't work, because, unlike the mind, the solidity of a piston is not a distinct and separate phenomenon from its microstructure. | |
| From: comment on John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 7.6 | |
| A reaction: Searle struggles to find analogies for his position - and that, in my view, is highly significant in the philosophy of mind. If there is nothing else like your proposed theory, it is probably just human vainglory. |
| 3533 | Is supervenience just causality? [Searle, by Maslin] |
| Full Idea: For Searle the supervenience relation is just causality. | |
| From: report of John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 7.6 | |
| A reaction: 'Supervenience' seems, in that case, to be an irrelevant word, which was only used when the mind-body connection was a bit loose and mysterious. Mind is identical to brain, or a property of the brain. I like 'process of the brain'. |
| 10578 | We are thought to know concreta a posteriori, and many abstracta a priori [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Our knowledge of concreta is a posteriori, but our knowledge of numbers, at least, has often been considered a priori. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Abstract Objects: a Case Study [2002], 02) |
| 10577 | Concrete objects have few essential properties, but properties of abstractions are mostly essential [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Objects like me have a few essential properties, and numerous accidental ones. Abstract objects are a different story. The intrinsic properties of the empty set are mostly essential. The relations of numbers are also mostly essential. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Abstract Objects: a Case Study [2002], 01) |
| 3454 | Reality is entirely particles in force fields [Searle] |
| Full Idea: One can accept the obvious facts of physics, that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this proposal, with the cautious proviso that physics may discover further basic aspects to reality. The only obstacles to this view are possible divine and mental substances, neither of which is supported by adequate evidence. |
| 3471 | Some properties depend on components, others on their relations [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Some system features cannot be figured out just from the composition of the elements of the system and environmental relations; they have to be explained in terms of causal relations among the elements. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.I) | |
| A reaction: One must explain at the molecular level why an apple skin is both red and smooth. In the brain one must explain the movement of glucose and the contents of thoughts by their causal relations (I say). |
| 3472 | Fully 'emergent' properties contradict our whole theory of causation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The existence of any fully 'emergent' properties (that have a life of their own) violates even the weakest principle of the transitivity of causation. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.I) | |
| A reaction: When Searle talks like this, he sounds like a thoroughgoing reductive physicalist (but is he really?). Any philosopher of mind who uses the word 'emergence' must say EXACTLY what they mean by it. |
| 11116 | Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it. |
| 11117 | Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence. |
| 11119 | De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5) |
| 11118 | Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff. |
| 11108 | Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds. |
| 11111 | Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic. |
| 11105 | We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11107 | If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11106 | If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11112 | Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11109 | If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one. |
| 11113 | Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien! |
| 11110 | We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 3490 | Beliefs only make sense as part of a network of other beliefs [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To have one belief or desire, I have to have a whole network of other beliefs and desires. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.I) |
| 3491 | Beliefs are part of a network, and also exist against a background [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We need to postulate a network of beliefs, and also a background of capacities that are not themselves part of the network. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.I) |
| 3482 | Perception is a function of expectation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Psychologists have a lot of evidence to show that perception is a function of expectation. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.I.7) |
| 3493 | Memory is mainly a guide for current performance [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We should think of memory as a mechanism for generating current performance, including conscious thoughts and actions, on the basis of past experience. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.III) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be falling into the fallacy of causal and functional theories, which Searle normally dislikes. If memory serves to aid current performance, that doesn't say what memory IS, any more than a foot is defined by walking. |
| 3463 | We don't have a "theory" that other people have minds [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Except when doing philosophy there is no "problem" of other minds, because we do not hold a "hypothesis" or "belief" or "supposition" that other people are conscious. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 3.IV) | |
| A reaction: Our commitment to other minds is so deep-ingrained that it is a candidate for one of Hume's 'natural beliefs', or even (a step further) for an innate idea. Babies have an innate recognition of faces, so why can't an expectation of a mind be hard-wired? |
| 3457 | Other minds are not inferred by analogy, but are our best explanation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If we inferred other minds simply from behaviour, we would conclude that radios are conscious; it is rather the combination of behaviour with knowledge of the causal underpinnings of behaviour. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.V.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to think that Searle has said the last word on the fairly uninteresting problem of other minds. Dualism generates a deep privacy problem, and analogy is a flawed argument, but best explanation is exactly what we rely on. |
| 3480 | We experience unity at an instant and across time [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We experience 'horizontal unity' in the organisation of conscious experiences through short stretches of time, and 'vertical unity' in simultaneous awareness of diverse features of our experience. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.I.2) | |
| A reaction: See Betjeman's poem "On the Ninth Green at St Enedoc". The brain is an information-unification machine, and 'I' am located at the crossroads where these unifications meet. Analysis of mind is good for us, but so is reunification afterwards. |
| 3479 | The mind experiences space, but it is not experienced as spatial [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Although we experience objects both spatially and temporally, our consciousness itself is not experienced as spatial, though it is experienced as temporally extended. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: This observation was made by Descartes. This seems to require that I experience objects spatially, AND experience my consciousness. Do I experience the time passing, as well as the river moving? Einstein says if it is in time, it must be in space. |
| 3470 | Conscious creatures seem able to discriminate better [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Apparently it is just a fact of biology that organisms that have consciousness have, in general, much greater powers of discrimination than those that do not. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.III) | |
| A reaction: This presupposes knowledge of which creatures are conscious. Clearly colour vision gives more information than monochrome vision. But presumably a computer could process more visual information than I could see. It doesn't have a fovea centralis. |
| 3486 | Unconscious thoughts are those capable of causing conscious ones [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The ontology of the unconscious consists in objective features of the brain capable of causing subjective conscious thoughts. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.II.7) | |
| A reaction: As it stands, this definition would fit a brain tumour. I think Searle is wrong. There is no sharp line between conscious and non-conscious brain events. Research has surely made it clear that dim brain events directly intrude into my conscious states. |
| 3503 | Consciousness results directly from brain processes, not from some intermediary like information [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There are brain processes and consciousness, but nothing in between; no rule following, information processing, unconscious inferences, mental models, language of thought or universal grammar. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.II) | |
| A reaction: The core of Searle's view. He likes to call consciousness a 'property' of brains. Edelman says consciousness IS a brain process. Essentially I agree with Searle. An unusual physical object can produce consciousness, but mere 'rules' etc. cannot. |
| 3465 | Either there is intrinsic intentionality, or everything has it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If you deny the distinction between intrinsic and derived ('as-if') intentionality, then it follows that everything in the universe has intentionality (for example, stones seem to want to fall). | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 3.IV) | |
| A reaction: Searle makes this claim because he always takes mental phenomena like intentionality or consciousness to be all-or-nothing - and he's wrong. He refuses to acknowledge non-conscious intentional states - and he's wrong again. |
| 3484 | Water flowing downhill can be described as if it had intentionality [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Water flowing downhill can be described AS IF it had intentionality: it tries to get to the bottom by seeking the line of least resistance through information processing and calculation… | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.II.1) | |
| A reaction: John Searle could be described as if he had intentionality, as his neurons chart their way through the information and desires that flood them. I am wary of his all-or-nothing approach to intentionality. |
| 3489 | Intentional phenomena only make sense within a background [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Intentional phenomena such as meanings, understandings, interpretations, beliefs, desires, and experiences only function within a set of Background capacities that are not themselves intentional. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.I) | |
| A reaction: Why would the background not be intentional? Presumably the background is a set of beliefs about, or images of, how the world is taken to be. |
| 3494 | Intentionality is defined in terms of representation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Intentionality is defined in terms of representation. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.III) | |
| A reaction: Sounds okay, but representation of a tree (say) can be understood in imagistic terms, whereas extremely abstract concepts are a bit baffling. Then we realise that we conceive trees in that way as well, not as images. |
| 3481 | Consciousness is essential and basic to intentionality [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I claim that only a being that could have conscious intentional states could have intentional states at all, and every unconscious intentional state is at least potentially conscious. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.I.5) | |
| A reaction: The alternative to this is that robots and lower animals might have non-conscious states which are about something, because they process useful information but are unaware of it. If so, parts of the human mind might do the same, as in blindsight. |
| 4088 | Pain is not intentional, because it does not represent anything beyond itself [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If I am conscious of a pain, the pain is not intentional, because it does not represent anything beyond itself. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Crane quotes this to challenge it. Pain may be about apparent damage to the body. Pains are certainly informative. |
| 3467 | Neither introspection nor privileged access makes sense [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We have the visual metaphor of introspection, and the spatial metaphor of privileged access, but neither one works because I am the thing being viewed, and I am the space being entered. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.II) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a good warning against reliance on analogies when dealing with the unique problem of self-knowledge, though the phrase 'hall-of-mirrors' draws assent from most people concerning that topic. |
| 3483 | Introspection is just thinking about mental states, not a special sort of vision [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If by "introspection" we mean simply thinking about our own mental states, then there is no objection to introspection, but if we mean a special capacity like vision of looking inwards, there is no such capacity. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.II.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg the question of how we can be aware of our mental states in order to think about them. One might image that some animals have mental states, but are quite unaware that they have them, because they are totally focused on content. |
| 3468 | I cannot observe my own subjectivity [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I cannot observe my own subjectivity. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear what Searle is complaining about. He knows very clearly that there is a subjective aspect to his life - so how does he know that fact? There must be something supporting this widely held belief. |
| 3469 | Mind and brain don't interact if they are the same [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There is no "link" between consciousness and the brain, any more than there is a link between the liquidity of water and the H2O molecules. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.III) | |
| A reaction: We say of some properties that 'x is F', and of others that 'x has F', and of others that 'x is F because of y' (as in a knife having sharpness because it is thin and hard). Consciousness might fit the third case just as well as the first. |
| 3487 | Without internal content, a zombie's full behaviour couldn't be explained [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There could be no intentional zombie, because (unlike with a conscious agent) there simply is no fact of the matter as to exactly which aspectual shapes its alleged intentional states have. Is it seeking water or H2O? | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.III) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response to this is behaviourist talk of 'dispositions'. The dispositions of scientist when seeking water and when seeking H2O are different. Zombies behave identically to us, so their intentional states have whatever is needed to do the job. |
| 3458 | Mental states only relate to behaviour contingently, not necessarily [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I believe that the relation of mental states to behaviour is purely contingent. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.V.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree, though it will depend on where you draw the line between mental states and behaviour. Since there have never been two identical states since the beginning of time, it is a little hard to test this one. |
| 3485 | Wanting H2O only differs from wanting water in its mental component [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If a person exhibits water-seeking behaviour, they also exhibit H2O-seeking behaviour, so there is no way the behaviour itself, without reference to a mental component, can constitute wanting water rather than H2O. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.II.4) | |
| A reaction: What about the behaviour of responding to the discovery that this stuff isn't actually H2O? Or the disposition to choose the real thing rather than ersatz water? An interesting comment, though. |
| 3461 | Functionalists like the externalist causal theory of reference [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism has been rejuvenated by being joined to externalist causal theories of reference. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 2.VIII) | |
| A reaction: This, however, seems to be roughly the reason why Putnam gave up his functionalist theory. See Ideas 2332 and 2071. However the causal network of mind can incorporate environmental features. |
| 3496 | A program for Chinese translation doesn't need to understand Chinese [Searle] |
| Full Idea: A computer, me for example, could run the steps in the program for some mental capacity, such as understanding Chinese, without understanding a word of Chinese. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.II) | |
| A reaction: I don't think this is true. I could recite a bit of Chinese without comprehension, but giving flexible answers to complex questions isn't plausible just by gormlessly implementing a procedure. |
| 3499 | Computation presupposes consciousness [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Most of the works I have seen in the computational theory of the mind commit some variation on the homunculus fallacy. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.VI) | |
| A reaction: This will be because there is an unspoken user for the inner computer. But see Fodor's view (Idea 2506). The key idea here is Dennett's: that not all regresses are vicious. My mind controller isn't like all of me. |
| 3501 | If we are computers, who is the user? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If the brain is a digital computer, we are still faced with the question 'Who is the user?' | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.VI) | |
| A reaction: A very nice question. Our whole current concept of a computer involves the unmentioned user. We don't have to go all mystical about persons, though. Robots aren't logically impossible. |
| 3456 | Consciousness is a brain property as liquidity is a water property [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is a higher-level or emergent property of the brain, but only in the sense that solidity is an emergent property of water when it is ice, and liquidity when it melts. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to know which side Searle is on. These examples are highly reductive, and make him a thoroughgoing reductive physicalist (with which I agree). |
| 3453 | Property dualism is the reappearance of Cartesianism [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Opponents of materialism tend to embrace "property dualism", thus accepting the Cartesian apparatus that I had thought long discredited. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be precisely the current situation. Cartesian dualism is thoroughly marginalised (but still whimpering in the corner), and the real battle is between physicalism and property dualism. The latter is daft. |
| 3455 | Property dualists tend to find the mind-body problem baffling [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Property dualists (e.g. Nagel and McGinn) think that the mind-body problem is frightfully difficult, perhaps altogether insoluble. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.I) | |
| A reaction: Nagel's problem is that our concepts aren't up to it; McGinn's is that the very structure of our minds isn't up to it. My view is that the difficulty is the complexity we are up against, not the ontology. |
| 3475 | Property dualism denies reductionism [Searle] |
| Full Idea: What is property dualism but the view that there are irreducible mental properties? | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.III) | |
| A reaction: Being red and being square are separate, but they are both entailed by the material basis, and hence are reducible. Properties may not link directly, but they must link indirectly. |
| 3476 | Mind and brain are supervenient in respect of cause and effect [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Mind is supervenient on brain in the following respect: type-identical neurophysiological causes have type-identical mentalistic effects. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: An interesting statement of what might be meant by 'supervenience'. Searle's version implies necessity in the link (but not identity). I take him to imply that a zombie is impossible. |
| 3477 | If mind-brain supervenience isn't causal, this implies epiphenomenalism [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There are constitutive and causal notions of supervenience. Kim claims that mental events have no causal role, and merely supervene on brain events which do (which implies epiphenomenalism). But it seems obvious that mind is caused by brain. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think the whole discussion is doomed to confusion because it is riddled with a priori dualism. There is no all-or-nothing boundary between 'mind' and 'brain'. Kim's views have changed. |
| 3531 | Mental events can cause even though supervenient, like the solidity of a piston [Searle] |
| Full Idea: That mental features supervene on neuronal features in no way diminishes their causal efficacy. The solidity of the piston is supervenient on its molecular structure, but this does not make solidity epiphenomenal. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: Searle's examples never seem to quite fit what he is saying. Molecules and solidity are supervenient because they are identical (solidity is the presence of certain molecules). Solidity doesn't have causal powers that molecules lack. |
| 3478 | Upwards mental causation makes 'supervenience' irrelevant [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Once you recognise the existence of bottom-up, micro to macro forms of causation, the notion of supervenience no longer does any work in philosophy. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if the notion of supervenience ever did any work. Davidson only fished up the word because none of the normal relationships between things seemed to apply (and he was wrong about that). |
| 3466 | Consciousness seems indefinable by conditions or categories [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We can't define "consciousness" by necessary and sufficient conditions, or by the Aristotelian method of genus and differentia. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.I) | |
| A reaction: We may not be able to 'define' it, but we can 'characterise' it. The third approach to definition is a catalogue of essential properties, which might tail off rather vaguely. |
| 3500 | Can the homunculus fallacy be beaten by recursive decomposition? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The idea (of Dennett and others) is that recursive decomposition will eliminate the homunculi. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.VI) | |
| A reaction: Lycan is the best exponent of this view, which I like. My brain clearly has a substantial homunculus which I call my PA; it regularly reminds of what I have to do in an hour's time. I am sure it is composed of smaller brain components working as a team. |
| 9317 | Searle argues that biology explains consciousness, but physics won't explain biology [Searle, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| Full Idea: Searle appears to argue that phenomenal consciousness is explained in biological terms, but that biological properties are irreducible to purely (micro)physical ones. | |
| From: report of John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992]) by U Kriegel / K Williford - Intro to 'Self-Representational Consciousness' n1 | |
| A reaction: Searle is very hard to pin down, and this account suggests the reason very clearly - because he is proposing something which is bizarrely implausible. The reduction of biology-to-physics looks much more likely than consciousness-to-biology. |
| 3474 | If mind is caused by brain, does this mean mind IS brain? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I hold a view of mind/brain relations that is a form of causal reduction (mental features are caused by biological processes), but does this imply ontological reduction? (…No!) | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.II.5) | |
| A reaction: What exactly is his claim? Presumably 'causal reduction' implies identity of (philosophical) substance. This seems to imply 'emergence' in a rather old-fashioned and dramatic way, though elsewhere Searle denies this. |
| 3497 | If mind is multiply realisable, it is possible that anything could realise it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The same principle that implies multiple realisability would seem to imply universal realisability. …Any object whatever could have syntactical ascriptions made to it. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.V) | |
| A reaction: This leads to rather weak reductio objections to functionalism. Logically there may be no restriction on how to implement a mind, but naturally there are very tight restrictions. Stick to neurons seems the best strategy. |
| 3462 | We don't postulate folk psychology, we experience it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We do not postulate beliefs and desires to account for anything; we simply experience conscious beliefs and desires. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 2 App) | |
| A reaction: Searle is too fond of reporting what we 'simply' know. Beliefs and desires are pushed forward by a cultural tradition. What I actually experience is a confusion, always laced with emotion. |
| 3498 | Computation isn't a natural phenomenon, it is a way of seeing phenomena [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Computational states are not discovered within the physics, they are assigned to the physics. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.V) | |
| A reaction: The key idea in Searle's later thinking, with which I have some sympathy. There always seems to be a sneaky dualism buried deep in Searle's physicalism. Computation is very high-level physics. |
| 3492 | Content is much more than just sentence meaning [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Sentence meaning radically underdetermines the content of what is said. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.II) | |
| A reaction: We have body language, and we have tone, and we have context, and we have speaker's and listener's meanings. I take sentence meaning to be the basis which makes the rest possible. |
| 3464 | There is no such thing as 'wide content' [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe in the existence of 'wide content'. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 3.IV) | |
| A reaction: I sort of agree, but if I accept the rulings of experts (e.g. that water is really H2O), I am admitting that what I mean may not be in my head. |
| 3506 | We explain behaviour in terms of actual internal representations in the agent [Searle] |
| Full Idea: In intentional explanations of behaviour patterns in the behaviour are explained by the fact that the agent has a representation of that very pattern in its intentional apparatus, which functions causally in the production of the behaviour. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.IV) | |
| A reaction: Problem cases would be where someone's behaviour doesn't come out quite as planned (e.g. the sentence spoken failed to match the proposition intended), and panic behaviour. |
| 3451 | Meaning is derived intentionality [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Meaning is derived intentionality. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: That still leaves something very difficult to explain - how the intentionality of mental events can be 'transferred' to symbolic forms which can exist outside the mind. |
| 3450 | Philosophy of language is a branch of philosophy of mind [Searle] |
| Full Idea: On my view, the philosophy of language is a branch of the philosophy of mind. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Inclined to agree with this. Intentionality and meaning are virtually the same thing. The role of language in thought has been grossly overrated in modern philosophy. |
| 3507 | Universal grammar doesn't help us explain anything [Searle] |
| Full Idea: No further predictive or explanatory power is added by saying that there is in addition a level of deep unconscious rules of universal grammar. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.IV) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that neuroscientists would be very interested in this prediction, if it were convincing enough. Nothing to stop us from trying to infer the nature of something which is beyond our reach. |
| 3495 | Shared Background makes translation possible, though variation makes it hard [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Difference in local Backgrounds make translation from one language to another difficult; the commonality of deep Background makes it possible at all. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.V) | |
| A reaction: That is a very good observation about what is normally swept under the one umbrella of the 'principle of charity'. Quine exaggerated the local, and Davidson exaggerated the deep. |
| 3505 | The function of a heart depends on what we want it to do [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If the only thing that interested us about the heart was that it made a thumping noise, we would have a completely different conception of its "functioning", and correspondingly of heart disease. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.III) | |
| A reaction: Ditto if we were only interested in ears as support for earrings, but that would seriously miss the point of ears. The intrinsic function is the reason for its existence. |
| 3504 | Chemistry entirely explains plant behaviour [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Variable secretions of auxin account for a plant's behaviour in following the sun, without any extra hypothesis of purpose, teleology, or intentionality. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.II) |
| 3502 | Mind involves fighting, fleeing, feeding and fornicating [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Our conscious life involves the famous "four f's", fighting, fleeing, feeding and fornicating. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.I) |
| 3459 | You can only know the limits of knowledge if you know the other side of the limit [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To know the limits of knowledge, we would have to know both sides of the limit. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.V.6) |