Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'What Mary Didn't Know' and 'What is it like to be a bat?'

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9 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / b. Essence of consciousness
An organism is conscious if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism [Nagel]
     Full Idea: An organism only has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism.
     From: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974], p.166)
     A reaction: It is hard to argue with this, but one should push on and ask what features of its consciousness make it such that there is a 'what it is like'. What is it like to have a subconscious mind, or be deeply asleep, or drive while daydreaming?
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / a. Nature of qualia
I say Mary does not have new knowledge, but knows an old fact in a new way [Perry on Jackson]
     Full Idea: I say Mary knows an old fact in a new way, but I do not find a new bit of knowledge and a new fact.
     From: comment on Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §7.3
     A reaction: This seems roughly the right way to attack Jackson's 'knowledge argument', by asking exactly what he means by 'knowledge'. It is hard to see how 'qualia' can be both the means of acquiring knowledge, and the thing itself.
Is it unfair that physicalist knowledge can be written down, but dualist knowledge can't be [Perry on Jackson]
     Full Idea: Jackson seems to imply that it isn't fair that all physicalist knowledge can be written down, but not all dualist knowledge can be.
     From: comment on Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §7.5
     A reaction: This pinpoints a problem for the 'Mary' example - that Mary's new sight of colour is claimed as 'knowledge', and yet the whole point is that it cannot be expressed in propositions (which seems to leave it as 'procedural' or 'acquaintance' knowledge).
Mary knows all the physical facts of seeing red, but experiencing it is new knowledge [Jackson]
     Full Idea: Mary knows all the physical facts. ..It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black and white room .. she will learn what it is like to see something red.
     From: Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986], §1.4)
     A reaction: Jackson is begging the question. A new physical event occurs when the red wavelength stimulates Mary's visual cortex for the first time. For an empiricist raw experience creates knowledge, so it can't BE knowledge. Does Mary acquire a new concept?
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 7. Zombies
Can we describe our experiences to zombies? [Nagel]
     Full Idea: The goal of an objective phenomenology would be to describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences.
     From: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974], p.179)
     A reaction: This seems a bizarre expectation. We can already explain visual experience to the blind up to a point, but no one is dreaming of an "objective phenomenology" which will give blind people total understanding, just by reading about it in braille.
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 6. Mysterianism
Nagel's title creates an impenetrable mystery, by ignoring a bat's ways that may not be "like" anything [Dennett on Nagel]
     Full Idea: Nagel's title invites us to ignore all the different ways in which bats might accomplish their cunning feats without its "being like" anything for them. We create an impenetrable mystery for ourselves if we assume that Nagel's title makes sense.
     From: comment on Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Kinds of Minds Ch.6
     A reaction: This could well be correct about bats, but the question applies to humans as well, and we can't deny that "what it is like" is a feature of some creatures' realities. On the fringes of our own consciousness there are mental events that are "like" nothing.
We can't be objective about experience [Nagel]
     Full Idea: If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us further away from it.
     From: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974], p.174)
     A reaction: We can, however, talk to one another about our subjectivity, and compare notes, and such 'inter-subjectivity' may be one approach to objectivity. We must concede Nagel's point, but we also miss something about a stone if we must remain outside of it.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / d. Explanatory gap
Physicalism should explain how subjective experience is possible, but not 'what it is like' [Kirk,R on Nagel]
     Full Idea: A physicalist account of conscious experience must explain how it is possible for a physical system to be a conscious subject, but not 'what it is like' for some organism.
     From: comment on Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §4.2
     A reaction: You can't entirely evade Nagel's challenge. We are trying to discover the 'neural correlate of consciousness', which will explain why we are conscious, but we also want to know why we experience green for one wavelength, and red for another.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
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').