24 ideas
2584 | Lobotomised patients can cease to care about a pain [Block] |
Full Idea: After frontal lobotomies, patients typically report that they still have pains, though the pains no longer bother them. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 83) | |
A reaction: I take this to be an endorsement of reductive physicalism, because what matters about pains is that they bother us, not how they feel, so frog pain could do the job, if it felt different from ours, but was disliked by the frog. |
2582 | A brain looks no more likely than anything else to cause qualia [Block] |
Full Idea: NO physical mechanism seems very intuitively plausible as a seat of qualia, least of all a brain. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 78) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure about "least of all", given the mind-boggling complexity of the brain's connections. Certainly, though, nothing in either folk physics or academic physics suggests that any physical object is likely to be aware of anything. |
2574 | Behaviour requires knowledge as well as dispositions [Block] |
Full Idea: A desire cannot be identified with a disposition to act, since the agent might not know that a particular act leads to the thing desired, and thus might not be disposed to do it. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
A reaction: One might have a disposition to act, but not in a particular way. "Something must be done". To get to the particular act, it seems that indeed a belief must be added to the desire. |
2576 | In functionalism, desires are internal states with causal relations [Block] |
Full Idea: According to functionalism, a system might have the behaviouristic input-output relations, yet not desire something, as this requires internal states with certain causal relations. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
A reaction: Such a system might be Putnam's 'superactor', who only behaves as if he desires something. Of course, the internal states might need more than just 'causal relations'. |
2575 | Functionalism is behaviourism, but with mental states as intermediaries [Block] |
Full Idea: Functionalism is a new incarnation of behaviourism, replacing sensory inputs with sensory inputs plus mental states, and replacing dispositions to act with dispositions plus certain mental states. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
A reaction: I think of functionalism as behaviourism which extends inside the 'black box' between stimulus and response. It proposes internal stimuli and responses. Consequently functionalism inherits some behaviourist problems. |
2583 | You might invert colours, but you can't invert beliefs [Block] |
Full Idea: It is hard to see how to make sense of the analog of color spectrum inversion with respect to non-qualitative states such a beliefs (where they are functionally equivalent but have different beliefs). | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 81) | |
A reaction: I would suggest that beliefs can be 'inverted', because there are all sorts of ways to implement a belief, but colour can't be inverted, because that depends on a particular brain state. It makes good sense to me... |
2578 | Could a creature without a brain be in the right functional state for pain? [Block] |
Full Idea: If pain is a functional state, it cannot be a brain state, because creatures without brains could realise the same Turing machine as creatures with brains. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 70) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being a poorly grounded claim. There may be some hypothetical world where brainless creatures implement all our functions, but from here brains look the only plausible option. |
2585 | Not just any old functional network will have mental states [Block] |
Full Idea: If there are any fixed points in the mind-body problem, one of them is that the economy of Bolivia could not have mental states, no matter how it is distorted. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 86) | |
A reaction: It is hard to disagree with this, but then it can hardly be a serious suggestion that anyone could see how to reconfigure an economy so that it mapped the functional state of the human brain. This is not a crucial problem. |
2586 | In functionalism, what are the special inputs and outputs of conscious creatures? [Block] |
Full Idea: In functionalism, it is very hard to see how there could be a single physical characterization of the inputs and outputs of all and only creatures with mentality. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 87) | |
A reaction: It would be theoretically possible if the only way to achieve mentality was to have a particular pattern of inputs and outputs. I don't think, though, that 'mentality' is an all-or-nothing concept. |
2579 | Physicalism is prejudiced in favour of our neurology, when other systems might have minds [Block] |
Full Idea: Physicalism is a chauvinist theory: it withholds mental properties from systems that in fact have them. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 71) | |
A reaction: This criticism interprets physicalism too rigidly. There may be several ways to implement a state. My own view is that other systems might implement our functions, but they won't experience them in a human way. |
2577 | Simple machine-functionalism says mind just is a Turing machine [Block] |
Full Idea: In the simplest Turing-machine version of functionalism (Putnam 1967), mental states are identified with the total Turing-machine state, involving a machine table and its inputs and outputs. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 70) | |
A reaction: This obviously invites the question of why mental states would be conscious and phenomenal, given that modern computers are devoid of same, despite being classy Turing machines. |
2580 | A Turing machine, given a state and input, specifies an output and the next state [Block] |
Full Idea: In a Turing machine, given any state and input, the machine table specifies an output and the next state. …To have full power the tape must be infinite in at least one direction, and be movable in both directions. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 71) | |
A reaction: In retrospect, the proposal that this feeble item should be taken as a model for the glorious complexity and richness of human consciousness doesn't look too plausible. |
2581 | Intuition may say that a complex sentence is ungrammatical, but linguistics can show that it is not [Block] |
Full Idea: Linguistics rejects (on theoretical grounds) the intuition that the sentence "the boy the girl the cat bit scratched died" is ungrammatical. | |
From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 78) | |
A reaction: Once we have disentangled it, we practical speakers have no right to say it is ungrammatical. It isn't only theory. The sentence is just stylistically infelicitous. |
5901 | Is 'productive of happiness' the definition of 'right', or the cause of it? [Ross on Bentham] |
Full Idea: Bentham has not made up his mind whether he thinks that 'right' means 'productive of the general happiness', or that being productive of the general happiness is what makes acts right (and he would have thought the difference unimportant). | |
From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
A reaction: The issue is whether rightness exists as a concept separate from happiness. I take it Bentham would vote for the first reading, as he has no interest in what is right, apart from increasing happiness. |
5934 | Of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure, only intensity and duration matter [Ross on Bentham] |
Full Idea: Most of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure refer to further pleasures, or are irrelevant to the pleasure; we are left with intensity and duration as the characteristics on which depend the value of a pleasure qua pleasure, and there is nothing to add. | |
From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §VI | |
A reaction: I agree. When Bentham produces his list he seems to be trying to add a bogus enrichment to what is really a rather crude and basic notion of the aim of life. Your simple hedonist appears to only desire high intensity and long duration. |
3777 | Pleasure and pain control all human desires and duties [Bentham] |
Full Idea: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. | |
From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.1) | |
A reaction: Ridiculous. Both halves are false. We pursue things for other reasons, and to deny this makes his idea a tautology. Deep ecology has nothing to do with human pleasure or pain. |
3554 | Bentham thinks happiness is feeling good, but why use morality to achieve that? [Annas on Bentham] |
Full Idea: It is easy to fall into Bentham's mindless assumption that happiness must be a specific state of feeling good about something, but it is mysterious why anyone would think morality a good strategy for achieving this. | |
From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.7 |
3781 | The value of pleasures and pains is their force [Bentham] |
Full Idea: It behoves the legislator to understand the force of pleasures and pains, which is their value. | |
From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], IV.1) |
3778 | The community's interest is a sum of individual interests [Bentham] |
Full Idea: The interest of the community is the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it. | |
From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.4) |
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. |
20280 | Large mature animals are more rational than babies. But all that really matters is - can they suffer? [Bentham] |
Full Idea: A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational animal than an infant of a day, or even a month, old. But suppose they be otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? | |
From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], XVIII 1 n), quoted by Peter Singer - Practical Ethics 03 | |
A reaction: This is certainly an inspiring, and even shocking question, which never seems to have been so directly asked before in the entire history of European thought. Awesome. |
3779 | Unnatural, when it means anything, means infrequent [Bentham] |
Full Idea: Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent. | |
From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.14 n8.9) |
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. |
3780 | We must judge a thing morally to know if it conforms to God's will [Bentham] |
Full Idea: It is necessary to know first whether a thing is right in order to know from thence whether it be conformable to the will of God. | |
From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.18) |