Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Fragments', 'Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness' and 'The Thesis that Mathematics is Logic'

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5 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 3. If-Thenism
10066 Putnam coined the term 'if-thenism' [Putnam, by Musgrave]
     Full Idea: Putnam coined the term 'if-thenism'.
     From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Thesis that Mathematics is Logic [1967]) by Alan Musgrave - Logicism Revisited §5 n
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 5. Reason for Existence
16007 I assume existence, rather than reasoning towards it [Kierkegaard]
     Full Idea: I always reason from existence, not towards existence.
     From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.40)
     A reaction: Kierkegaard's important premise to help show that theistic proofs for God's existence don't actually prove existence, but develop the content of a conception. [SY]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 2. Nature of Necessity
16013 Nothing necessary can come into existence, since it already 'is' [Kierkegaard]
     Full Idea: Can the necessary come into existence? That is a change, and everything that comes into existence demonstrates that it is not necessary. The necessary already 'is'.
     From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.74)
     A reaction: [SY]
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
2957 Brain bisection suggests unity of mind isn't all-or-nothing [Nagel, by Lockwood]
     Full Idea: Nagel argues (because of brain bisection experiments) that we should jettison our commonsense assumption that the unity of consciousness is an all-or-nothing affair.
     From: report of Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971]) by Michael Lockwood - Mind, Brain and the Quantum p.84
     A reaction: It seems wrong to call it 'commonsense'. It is an assumption that precedes any judgement, but if you rapidly grasp that your mind is in your brain, it becomes common sense that you can cut lumps out of your mind.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 4. Presupposition of Self
3285 We may be unable to abandon personal identity, even when split-brains have undermined it [Nagel]
     Full Idea: As a result of the evidence of split-brains, it is possible that the ordinary, simple idea of a single person will come to seem quaint some day, …but we may be unable to abandon the idea, no matter what we discover.
     From: Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971], p.164)
     A reaction: I'm not sure what grounds you can have for a claim that we can't abandon our current view of selves, even when the new reality will be utterly different. Rather conservative? I would expect future concepts to roughly match future reality.