9 ideas
19743 | A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4) | |
A reaction: This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role? |
6176 | A mechanism can count as 'cognitive' whether it is in the brain or outside it [Clark/Chalmers, by Rowlands] |
Full Idea: If the operation of a brain implant inside the brain is a cognitive operation, why should it not count as a cognitive operation when it is outside the brain? There are many mechanisms which would count as cognitive if they were inside the subject. | |
From: report of A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.9 | |
A reaction: This argues for externalism of the vehicle of thought, rather than its content. The idea is that there is no significant difference between remembering a phone number and writing it on a bit of paper. I find it hard to disagree. |
19741 | If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2) | |
A reaction: In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong. |
19742 | Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3) | |
A reaction: This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'. |
19744 | If a person relies on their notes, those notes are parted of the extended system which is the person [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: If Otto relies on his notebook, what this comes to is that Otto himself is best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §5) | |
A reaction: You start to get giddy as you read this stuff. If two people constantly share a notebook, they begin to blend into one another. It inclines me towards a more 'animalist' view of the nature of a person or a self. |
22331 | Moral statements are imperatives rather than the avowals of emotion - but universalisable [Hare, by Glock] |
Full Idea: According to Hare's universal prescriptivism, moral statements are closer to imperatives than to avowals of emotion; their purpose is to guide action. But unlike imeperatives they are universalisable. | |
From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963]) by Hans-Johann Glock - What is Analytic Philosophy? 2.9 | |
A reaction: Why isn't 'everyone ought to support West Ham' a moral judgement? |
22484 | Universalised prescriptivism could be seen as implying utilitarianism [Hare, by Foot] |
Full Idea: Hare has suggested that a fairly tight form of utilitarianism can be obtained from universalised prescriptivism. | |
From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963]) by Philippa Foot - Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? p.191 | |
A reaction: All the benefits of Bentham, Kant and Hume, in one neat package! Since I take all three of them to be wrong about ethics, that counts against this idea. |
7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
6449 | The categorical imperative leads to utilitarianism [Hare, by Nagel] |
Full Idea: Hare has proposed that utilitarianism is the ultimate standard to which we are led by the categorical imperative. | |
From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963], p.123-4) by Thomas Nagel - Equality and Partiality | |
A reaction: It seems to me better to say that Kant starts (unwittingly) from something like utilitarianism, that is, an assumption that human happiness and welfare have some sort of intrinsic value that cannot be demonstrated. Otherwise evil can be universalised. |