9 ideas
| 18004 | We can't do philosophy without knowledge of types and categories [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: We are in the dark about the nature of philosophical problems and methods if we are in the dark about types and categories. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Categories [1938], p.189), quoted by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Magidor and others take this to be an assertion about language and logic, but I take it to be an assertion about reality. It is an early assertion of Schaffer's claim that ontology concerns the structure of existence, and not just what exists. |
| 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. |
| 22100 | Experienced time means no two mental moments are ever alike [Bergson] |
| Full Idea: If duration [experienced time] is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments in a life-story. | |
| From: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will [1889], p.220), quoted by Pete A.Y. Gunter - Bergson p.174 | |
| A reaction: This implies that we are intrinsically unpredictable, and there certainly can't be a regularity account of mental causation. The sense of time is said to make the self radically different from the rest of reality. Bergson later rejected dualism. |
| 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. |
| 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. |