13 ideas
3509 | Externalism may be the key idea in philosophical naturalism [Papineau] |
Full Idea: Some people view an externalist approach to epistemology as the essence of philosophical naturalism. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], Intro) | |
A reaction: I suspect philosophers avoid psychology and mental events, simply because they are elusive. Externalism is a theory about justification, and independent of naturalism as a metaphysic. |
14802 | Physical and psychical laws of mind are either independent, or derived in one or other direction [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The question about minds is whether 1) physical and psychical laws are independent (monism, my neutralism), 2) the psychical laws derived and physical laws primordial (materialism), 3) physical law is derived, psychical law primordial (idealism). | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Architecture of Theories [1891], p.321) | |
A reaction: I think you are already in trouble when you start proposing that there are two quite distinct sets of laws, and then worry about how they are related. Assume unity, and only separate them when the science forces you to (which it won't). |
3513 | How does a dualist mind represent, exist outside space, and be transparent to itself? [Papineau] |
Full Idea: Even dualists must explain how the mind represents things, but then their mind-stuff has so many special powers already (being outside space but in time, being transparent to itself etc.) that one more scarcely seems worth worrying about. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 3.1 n1) | |
A reaction: I share the exasperation. It is hard to see how a dualist could even begin to formulate a theory about HOW the mind does so many different things. Could Descartes get a research grant for it? Would we understand God if he tried to explain it to us? |
3514 | Functionalism needs causation and intentionality to explain actions [Papineau] |
Full Idea: The functionalist approach to the mind needs to invoke assumptions about what desires are for and beliefs are about, in order to infer what agents will do. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 3.2) | |
A reaction: Isn't the idea that you discover what desires are for and what beliefs are about by examining their function, and what the agent does? Which end should we start? |
3511 | Supervenience requires all mental events to have physical effects [Papineau] |
Full Idea: The argument for supervenience rests on the principle that any mental difference must be capable of showing itself in differential physical consequences. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 1.8) | |
A reaction: With our current knowledge of the brain, to assume anything less than this sort of correlation would be crazy. |
3510 | Epiphenomenalism is supervenience without physicalism [Papineau] |
Full Idea: Supervenience is a necessary condition for physicalism, but it is not sufficient. Epiphenomenalism rules out mental variation without physical variation, but says mental properties are quite distinct from physical properties. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 1.2) | |
A reaction: I take full epiphenomenalism about mind to be incoherent, and not worth even mentioning (see Idea 7379). Papineau seems to be thinking of so-called property dualism (which may also be incoherent!). |
3515 | Knowing what it is like to be something only involves being (physically) that thing [Papineau] |
Full Idea: Physicalism does not deny that there are conscious experiences, nor that 'it is like something to have them'. The claim is only that this is nothing different from what it is to be a physical system of the relevant kind. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 4.2) | |
A reaction: The implication is that no physicalist is an extreme eliminativist about consciousness, which seems to be correct. We all concede that weather exists, but have a reductive view of it. The key question is whether mind is reducible to physics. |
3512 | If a mental state is multiply realisable, why does it lead to similar behaviour? [Papineau] |
Full Idea: If functionalism implies that there is nothing physically in common among the realisations of a given mental state, then there is no possibility of any uniform explanation of why they all give rise to a common physical result. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 2.2) | |
A reaction: This is the well known interaction problem for dualism. The standard reply is to accept interaction as a given (with no apparent explanation). A miracle, if you like. |
3516 | The Private Language argument only means people may misjudge their experiences [Papineau] |
Full Idea: I take the moral of the Private Language argument to be that there must be room for error in people's judgements about their experiences, not that those judgements must necessarily be expressed in a language used by a community. | |
From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 4.4 n10) | |
A reaction: These two readings don't seem to be in conflict, and the argument must have something to say about the communal nature of thought expressed in language. Language imposes introspection on us? |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
14800 | The world is full of variety, but laws seem to produce uniformity [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Exact law obviously never can produce heterogeneity out of homogeneity; and arbitrary heterogeneity is the feature of the universe the most manifest and characteristic. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Architecture of Theories [1891], p.319) | |
A reaction: This is the view of laws of nature now associated with Nancy Cartwright, but presumably you can explain the apparent chaos in terms of the intersection of vast numbers of 'laws'. Or, better, there aren't any laws. |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |
14801 | Darwinian evolution is chance, with the destruction of bad results [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Darwinian evolution is evolution by the operation of chance, and the destruction of bad results. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Architecture of Theories [1891], p.320) | |
A reaction: The 'destruction of bad results' is a much better slogan for Darwin that Spencer's 'survival of the fittest'. It is, of course, a rather unattractive God who makes progress by endlessly destroying huge quantities of failed (but living) experiments. |