Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Folk Psychology', 'The Blank Slate' and 'A Dictionary of Philosophy'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

16 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
7508 Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker]
     Full Idea: Good reductionism (also called 'hierarchical reductionism') consists not of replacing one field of knowledge with another, but of connecting or unifying them.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.4)
     A reaction: A nice simple clarification. In this sense I am definitely a reductionist about mind (indeed, about everything). There is nothing threatening to even 'spiritual' understanding by saying that it is connected to the brain.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / a. Sense-data theory
6455 Maybe 'sense-data' just help us to talk about unusual perceptual situations [Lacey]
     Full Idea: One possibility is that talk of sense-data is a mere linguistic convenience, providing a noun for talking about appearances, as when seeing a red object in sodium light (when it looks grey).
     From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196)
     A reaction: The term seems to have been coined to deal with situations where there is a gap between appearance and presumed reality, as in illusions. Maybe illusions prove the existence of sense-data, rather than it being a 'convenient' term.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / b. Nature of sense-data
6454 Where do sense-data begin or end? Can they change? What sort of thing are they? [Lacey]
     Full Idea: It is hard to individuate sense-data, saying where one ends and the next begins, and hard to say whether they can change; are they substances, qualities, events, or what?
     From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196)
     A reaction: The problem is not that these questions are unanswerable. The answer seems to be either that they are physical and external, or that they are mental and internal, and that there is no ontological space for them between the two.
6453 Some claim sense-data are public, and are parts of objects [Lacey]
     Full Idea: Sometimes it is said that sense-data are public, and parts either of objects or of the surfaces of objects.
     From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196)
     A reaction: This suggests two drastically different theories, one making sense-data into mental events, the other placing them in the 'external' world. The latter theory can dovetail them with the physics, but then why would we need them?
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 2. Associationism
7510 Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker]
     Full Idea: Connectionists do not, of course, believe that the mind is a blank slate, but they do believe in the closest mechanistic equivalent, a general purpose learning device.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: This shows the closeness of connectionism to Hume's associationism (Idea 2189), which was just a minimal step away from Locke's mind as 'white paper' (Idea 7507). Pinker is defending 'human nature', but connectionism has a point.
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 4. Memory
7513 Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker]
     Full Idea: Are memories stored in protein sequences, in new neurons or synapses, or in changes in the strength of existing synapses?
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: This seems to be a neat summary of current neuroscientific thinking about memory. If you are thinking that memory couldn't possibly be so physical, don't forget the mind-boggling number of events involved in each tiny memory. See Idea 6668.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
7509 Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The roundworm only has 959 cells, and 302 neurons in a fixed wiring diagram; it eats, mates, approaches and avoids certain smells, and that's about it. This makes it obvious that human 'free' behaviour comes from our complex biological makeup.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: I find this a persuasive example. Three hundred trillion neurons cannot possibly produce behaviour which is more than broadly predictable, and then it is the environment and culture that make it predictable, not the biology.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
7511 Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The appeal of neural networks is that they automatically generalize their training to similar new items. If one has been trained to think tigers eat frosted flakes, it will generalise that lions do too, because it knows tigers as sets of features.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5)
     A reaction: This certainly is appealing, because it offers a mechanistic account of abstraction and universals, which everyone agrees are central to proper thinking.
7512 There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG]
     Full Idea: Connectionist networks have difficulty with the kind/individual distinction (ducks/this duck), with compositionality (relations), with quantification (reference of 'all'), with recursion (embedded thoughts), and the categorical reasoning (exceptions).
     From: report of Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) by PG - Db (ideas)
     A reaction: [Read Pinker p.80!] These are essentially all the more sophisticated aspects of logical reasoning that Pinker can think of. Personally I would be reluctant to say a priori that connectionism couldn't cope with these things, just because they seem tough.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology
7518 If folk psychology gives a network of causal laws, that fits neatly with functionalism [Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: The portrait of folk psychology as a network of causal laws dovetailed neatly with the emerging philosophy of mind called functionalism.
     From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], II)
     A reaction: And from the lower levels functionalism is supported by the notion that the brain is modular. Note the word 'laws'; this implies an underlying precision in folk psychology, which is then easily attacked. Maybe the network is too complex for simple laws.
7519 Many mental phenomena are totally unexplained by folk psychology [Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology fails utterly to explain a considerable variety of central psychological phenomena: mental illness, sleep, creativity, memory, intelligence differences, and many forms of learning, to cite just a few.
     From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], III)
     A reaction: If folk psychology is a theory, it will have been developed to predict behaviour, rather than as a full-blown psychological map. The odd thing is that some people seem to be very bad at folk psychology.
7520 Folk psychology never makes any progress, and is marginalised by modern science [Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology has not progressed significantly in the last 2500 years; if anything, it has been steadily in retreat during this period; it does not integrate with modern science, and its emerging wallflower status bodes ill for its future.
     From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], III)
     A reaction: [compressed] However, while shares in alchemy and astrology have totally collapsed, folk psychology shows not the slightest sign of going away, and it is unclear how it ever could. See Idea 3177.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
7505 Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker]
     Full Idea: To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Pref)
     A reaction: The point is that modern liberal thinking says everything is nurture (which can be changed), not nature (which can't). Virtue theory, of which I am a fan, requires a concept of human nature, as the thing which can attain excellence in its function.
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 2. Life
7516 In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker]
     Full Idea: In 1828 Friedrich Wöhler showed [by synthesising urea in the laboratory] that the stuff of life is not a magical, pulsating gel, but ordinary compounds following the laws of chemistry.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.3)
     A reaction: Wöhler synthesised urea in the laboratory.
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
7515 All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The overwhelming evidence is that the process of evolution, far from being intelligent and purposeful, is wasteful and cruel.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.7)
     A reaction: This is why opponents should reject evolution totally, rather than compromise with it. Stick to a 6000-year-old world, fossils sent to test our faith, and species created in a flash (with no pain or waste).
7514 Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker]
     Full Idea: The originator of 'intelligent design' (the biochemist Michael Behe) takes every phenomenon whose evolutionary history has not yet been figured out, and chalks it up to design by default.
     From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.7)
     A reaction: This seems to summarise the strategy very nicely. The theory essentially exploits the 'wow!' factor. The bigger the wow! the more likely it is that it was created by God. But research has been eroding our wows steadily for four hundred years.