9 ideas
21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans. |
21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: There is still some hope for something like identity theory for sensations. But almost no one believes that strict identity theory will work for more complex mental states. Strict identity is stronger than type neurophysicalism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: It is so hard to express the problem. What needs to be explained? How can one bunch of neurons represent many different things? It's not like computing. That just transfers the data to brains, where the puzzling stuff happens. |
6649 | Chomsky now says concepts are basically innate, as well as syntax [Chomsky, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: Chomsky now contends that not only the syntax of natural language but also the concepts expressible in it have an innate basis. | |
From: report of Noam Chomsky (Chomsky on himself [1994]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.7 n25 | |
A reaction: This seems to follow Fodor, who has been mocked for implying that we have an innate idea of a screwdriver etc. Note that Chomsky says concepts have an innate 'basis'. This fits well with modern (cautious) rationalism, with which I am happy. |
21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of 'good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism') | |
A reaction: I take normativity not be the mere labelling of certain things as 'good', but as a way of responding to that fact, with some sort of motivation. |
21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Two explanations came forward in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Altruism is either 1) person-based reciprocal altruism, or 2) gene-based kin altruism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Darwin') | |
A reaction: Flanagan obviously thinks there is also 'genuine psychological atruism'. Presumably we don't explain mathematics or music or the desire to travel as either contracts or genetics, so we have other explanations available. |
21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative') | |
A reaction: Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing. |
21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding') | |
A reaction: I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated. |
19414 | Men are related to animals, which are related to plants, then to fossils, and then to the apparently inert [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Men are related to animals, these to plants, and the latter directly to fossils which will be linked in their turn to bodies which the senses and the imagination represent to us as perfectly dead and formless. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Varignon [1702], 1702) | |
A reaction: Leibniz would be a bit surprised to find the way in which this has turned out to be largely true, since he is basing it on his picture of a hierarchy of monads. Nevertheless, the idea that we are all related wasn't invented in 1859. |
21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Buddhism rejected the idea of a creator God, and the unchanging self [atman]. They accept the appearance-reality distinction, reward for virtue [karma], suffering defining our predicament, and that liberation [nirvana] is possible through wisdom. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Buddhism') | |
A reaction: [Compressed] Flanagan is an analytic philosopher and a practising Buddhist. Looking at a happiness map today which shows Europeans largely happy, and Africans largely miserable, I can see why they thought suffering was basic. |