13 ideas
| 14617 | Predicates can't apply to what doesn't exist [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can be predicated of something which does not exist. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Merely Possible Propositions [2010], p.28) | |
| A reaction: [He says he is 'agreeing with Plantinga' on this] This seems very puzzling, as you can obviously say that dragons do not exist, but they breathe fire. Why can't you attach predicates to hypothetical objects? |
| 23513 | Single neurons can carry out complex functions [Seth] |
| Full Idea: It is increasingly apparent that even single neurons are capable of carrying out highly complex functions all by themselves. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.1 n) | |
| A reaction: Bang goes the simple connectionist account of consciousness. |
| 23514 | The cerbellum has a huge number of neurons, but little involvement in consciousness [Seth] |
| Full Idea: The cerebellum [at the back] has about four times as many neurons as the rest of the brain put together, but seems barely involved in consciousness. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.2) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if it also has four times as many connections? |
| 23516 | Maybe a system is conscious if the whole generates more information than its parts [Seth] |
| Full Idea: The main claim of Tononi's 'integrated information theory' is that a system is conscious to the extent that its whole generates more information than its parts. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.3) | |
| A reaction: Seth seems to present this as an 'interesting' proposal. I find it unlikely that consciousness could be explain in terms of information, or that a machine constructed on this principle would thus become conscious. (Databases pass this test). |
| 3488 | Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle] |
| Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V | |
| A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can. |
| 23519 | The self is embodied, perspectival, volitional, narrative and social [Seth, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The elements of a self are 1) embodied - related directly to the body, 2) perspectival - having a viewpoint, 3) volitional - being an agent, 4) narrative - aware of past and future, and 5) social - as others perceive me. | |
| From: report of Anil Seth (Being You [2021], III.8) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: [summarised] Seth says there are distinctive emotions associated with each of these aspects of the self. This list is very helpful, as a discouragement for anyone who wants to pick one of these as the sole true nature of the self. |
| 5689 | Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it. |
| 23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'. |
| 23518 | Modern AI is mostly machine-based pattern recognition [Seth] |
| Full Idea: Much of today's AI is best described as sophisticated machine-based pattern recognition. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], IV.13) | |
| A reaction: Personally I wouldn't want to underestimate the extent to which human intelligence is also pattern recognition (across time as well as in space). |
| 14616 | A 'Russellian proposition' is an ordered sequence of individual, properties and relations [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: A 'Russellian proposition' is an ordered sequence containing the individual, along with properties and relations. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Merely Possible Propositions [2010], p.22) | |
| A reaction: Since Russell took properties and relations to be features of reality, this made the whole proposition a feature of reality. This is utterly different from what I understand by the word 'proposition', which is a feature of thought, not of the world. |
| 23517 | Volition is felt as doing what you want, with possible alternatives, and a source from within [Seth] |
| Full Idea: The experience of volition is defined by 1) the feeling that I am doing what I want to do, 2) that I could have done otherwise, and 3) that voluntary actions seem to come from within. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], III.11) | |
| A reaction: Note that these can all be cited without reference to their feeling 'free'. |
| 23515 | Human exceptionalism plagues biology, and most other human thinking [Seth] |
| Full Idea: Human exceptionalism has repeatedly plagued biology, and has darkened the history of human thought everywhere. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.2) | |
| A reaction: I increasingly agree with this, as much in philosophy as in biology. We really need to get used to our place in evolution. |
| 22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II | |
| A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process. |