13 ideas
| 21548 | The null class is the class with all the non-existents as its members [MacColl, by Lackey] |
| Full Idea: In 1905 the Scottish logician Hugh MacColl published a paper in which he argued that the null class in logic should be taken as the class with all the non-existents as its members. | |
| From: report of Hugh MacColl (Symbolic Reasoning [1905]) by Douglas Lackey - Intros to Russell's 'Essays in Analysis' p.95 | |
| A reaction: For the null object (zero) Frege just chose one sample concept with an empty extension. MacColl's set seems to have a lot of members, given that it is 'null'. How many, I wonder? Russell responded to this paper. |
| 2526 | Philosophers regularly confuse failures of imagination with insights into necessity [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The besetting foible of philosophers is mistaking failures of imagination for insights into necessity. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) |
| 2523 | That every mammal has a mother is a secure reality, but without foundations [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Naturalistic philosophers should look with favour on the finite regress that peters out without foundations or thresholds or essences. That every mammal has a mother does not imply an infinite regress. Mammals have secure reality without foundations. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: I love this thought, which has permeated my thinking quite extensively. Logicians are terrified of regresses, but this may be because they haven't understood the vagueness of language. |
| 2528 | Does consciousness need the concept of consciousness? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: You can't have consciousness until you have the concept of consciousness. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If you read enough Dennett this begins to sound vaguely plausible, but next day it sounds like an absurd claim. 'You can't see a tree until you have the concept of a tree?' When do children acquire the concept of consciousness? Are apes non-conscious? |
| 2525 | Maybe language is crucial to consciousness [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: I continue to argue for a crucial role of natural language in generating the central features of consciousness. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: 'Central features' might beg the question. Dennett does doubt the consciousness of animals (1996). As I stare out of my window, his proposal seems deeply counterintuitive. How could language 'generate' consciousness? Would loss of language create zombies? |
| 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. |
| 2527 | Unconscious intentionality is the foundation of the mind [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: It is on the foundation of unconscious intentionality that the higher-order complexities developed that have culminated in what we call consciousness. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right to me. Pace Searle, I have no problem with unconscious intentionality, and the general homuncular picture of low levels building up to complex high levels, which suddenly burst into the song and dance of consciousness. |
| 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. |
| 2530 | Could a robot be made conscious just by software? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: How could you make a robot conscious? The answer, I think, is to be found in software. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a commitment to strong AI, though Dennett is keen to point out that brains are the only plausible implementation of such software. Most find his claim baffling. |
| 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'. |
| 2524 | A language of thought doesn't explain content [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Postulating a language of thought is a postponement of the central problems of content ascription, not a necessary first step. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: If the idea of content is built on the idea of representation, then you need some account of what the brain does with its representations. |
| 2529 | Maybe there can be non-conscious concepts (e.g. in bees) [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Concepts do not require consciousness. As Jaynes says, the bee has a concept of a flower, but not a conscious concept. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Does the flower have a concept of rain? Rain plays a big functional role in its existence. It depends, alas, on what we mean by a 'concept'. |
| 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. |