Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Good and Evil', 'The Intrinsic Quality of Experience' and 'Does Consciousness Exist?'

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4 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / e. Cause of consciousness

9286	Consciousness is not a stuff, but is explained by the relations between experiences [James]
	Full Idea: Consciousness connotes a kind of external relation, and not a special stuff or way of being. The peculiarity of our experiences, that they not only are, but are known, is best explained by their relations to one another, the relations being experiences.
	From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], §3)
	A reaction: This view has suddenly caught people's interest. It might be better than the higher/lower relationship, which seems to leave the basic problem untouched. Does a whole network of relations between experiences gradually 'add up' to consciousness?

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / b. Qualia and intentionality

8130	Qualities of experience are just representational aspects of experience ('Representationalism') [Harman, by Burge]
	Full Idea: Harman defended what came to be known as 'representationalism' - the view that qualitative aspects of experience are nothing other than representational aspects.
	From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Intrinsic Quality of Experience [1990]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.459
	A reaction: Functionalists like Harman have a fairly intractable problem with the qualities of experience, and this may be clutching at straws. What does 'represent' mean? How is the representation achieved? Why that particular quale?

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism

9285	'Consciousness' is a nonentity, a mere echo of the disappearing 'soul' [James]
	Full Idea: 'Consciousness' is the name of a nonentity. ..Those who cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy. ..I deny that it stands for an entity, but it does stand for a function.
	From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], Intro)
	A reaction: This kind of view is often treated as being preposterous, but I think it is correct. No one is denying the phenomenology, but it is the ontology which is at stake. Either you are a substance dualist, or mind must be eliminated as an 'entity'.

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / a. Form of the Good

22489	'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot]
	Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'.
	From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro
	A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it.