56 ideas
| 4588 | There is no such thing as 'science'; there are just many different sciences [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as science; there are only sciences: physics, chemistry, meteorology, geology, biology, psychology, sociology. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A simple but nice point. It suggests that maybe each science has an entirely different method, and style of reasoning, experiment and explanation. Some have strict laws, others have 'ceteris paribus' laws. |
| 8083 | Boole applied normal algebra to logic, aiming at an algebra of thought [Boole, by Devlin] |
| Full Idea: Boole proposed to use the entire apparatus of a school algebra class, with operations such as addition and multiplication, methods to solve equations, and the like, to produce an algebra of thought. | |
| From: report of George Boole (The Laws of Thought [1854]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: The Stoics didn’t use any algebraic notation for their study of propositions, so Boole's idea launched full blown propositional logic, and the rest of modern logic followed. Nice one. |
| 7727 | Boole's notation can represent syllogisms and propositional arguments, but not both at once [Boole, by Weiner] |
| Full Idea: Boole introduced a new symbolic notation in which it was possible to represent both syllogisms and propositional arguments, ...but not both at once. | |
| From: report of George Boole (The Laws of Thought [1854], Ch.3) by Joan Weiner - Frege | |
| A reaction: How important is the development of symbolic notations for the advancement of civilisations? Is there a perfect notation, as used in logical heaven? |
| 8686 | Boole made logic more mathematical, with algebra, quantifiers and probability [Boole, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Boole (followed by Frege) began to turn logic from a branch of philosophy into a branch of mathematics. He brought an algebraic approach to propositions, and introduced the notion of a quantifier and a type of probabilistic reasoning. | |
| From: report of George Boole (The Laws of Thought [1854], 3.2) by Michčle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: The result was that logic not only became more mathematical, but also more specialised. We now have two types of philosopher, those steeped in mathematical logic and the rest. They don't always sing from the same songsheet. |
| 8729 | Intuitionists deny excluded middle, because it is committed to transcendent truth or objects [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Intuitionists in mathematics deny excluded middle, because it is symptomatic of faith in the transcendent existence of mathematical objects and/or the truth of mathematical statements. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: There are other problems with excluded middle, such as vagueness, but on the whole I, as a card-carrying 'realist', am committed to the law of excluded middle. |
| 22277 | Boole's method was axiomatic, achieving economy, plus multiple interpretations [Boole, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Boole's work was an early example of the axiomatic method, whereby intellectual economy is achieved by studying a set of axioms in which the primitive terms have multiple interpretations. | |
| From: report of George Boole (The Laws of Thought [1854]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 02 'Boole' | |
| A reaction: Unclear about this. I suppose the axioms are just syntactic, and a range of semantic interpretations can be applied. Are De Morgan's Laws interpretations, or implications of the syntactic axioms? The latter, I think. |
| 8763 | The number 3 is presumably identical as a natural, an integer, a rational, a real, and complex [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: It is surely wise to identify the positions in the natural numbers structure with their counterparts in the integer, rational, real and complex number structures. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: The point is that this might be denied, since 3, 3/1, 3.00.., and -3*i^2 are all arrived at by different methods of construction. Natural 3 has a predecessor, but real 3 doesn't. I agree, intuitively, with Shapiro. Russell (1919) disagreed. |
| 18249 | Cauchy gave a formal definition of a converging sequence. [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A sequence a1,a2,... of rational numbers is 'Cauchy' if for each rational number ε>0 there is a natural number N such that for all natural numbers m, n, if m>N and n>N then -ε < am - an < ε. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 7.2 n4) | |
| A reaction: The sequence is 'Cauchy' if N exists. |
| 8764 | Categories are the best foundation for mathematics [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: There is a dedicated contingent who hold that the category of 'categories' is the proper foundation for mathematics. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.3 n7) | |
| A reaction: He cites Lawvere (1966) and McLarty (1993), the latter presenting the view as a form of structuralism. I would say that the concept of a category will need further explication, and probably reduce to either sets or relations or properties. |
| 8762 | Two definitions of 3 in terms of sets disagree over whether 1 is a member of 3 [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Zermelo said that for each number n, its successor is the singleton of n, so 3 is {{{null}}}, and 1 is not a member of 3. Von Neumann said each number n is the set of numbers less than n, so 3 is {null,{null},{null,{null}}}, and 1 is a member of 3. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 645 - Zermelo could save Plato from the criticisms of Aristotle! These two accounts are cited by opponents of the set-theoretical account of numbers, because it seems impossible to arbitrate between them. |
| 8760 | Numbers do not exist independently; the essence of a number is its relations to other numbers [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The structuralist vigorously rejects any sort of ontological independence among the natural numbers; the essence of a natural number is its relations to other natural numbers. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to place the emphasis on ordinals (what order?) rather than on cardinality (how many?). I am strongly inclined to think that this is the correct view, though you can't really have relations if there is nothing to relate. |
| 8761 | A 'system' is related objects; a 'pattern' or 'structure' abstracts the pure relations from them [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A 'system' is a collection of objects with certain relations among them; a 'pattern' or 'structure' is the abstract form of a system, highlighting the interrelationships and ignoring any features they do not affect how they relate to other objects. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: Note that 'ignoring' features is a psychological account of abstraction, which (thanks to Frege and Geach) is supposed to be taboo - but which I suspect is actually indispensable in any proper account of thought and concepts. |
| 8744 | Logicism seems to be a non-starter if (as is widely held) logic has no ontology of its own [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that principles of arithmetic are derivable from the laws of logic runs against a now common view that logic itself has no ontology. There are no particular logical objects. From this perspective logicism is a non-starter. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This criticism strikes me as utterly devastating. There are two routes to go: prove that logic does have an ontology of objects (what would they be?), or - better - deny that arithmetic contains any 'objects'. Or give up logicism. |
| 8749 | Term Formalism says mathematics is just about symbols - but real numbers have no names [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Term Formalism is the view that mathematics is just about characters or symbols - the systems of numerals and other linguistic forms. ...This will cover integers and rational numbers, but what are real numbers supposed to be, if they lack names? | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Real numbers (such as pi and root-2) have infinite decimal expansions, so we can start naming those. We could also start giving names like 'Harry' to other reals, though it might take a while. OK, I give up. |
| 8750 | Game Formalism is just a matter of rules, like chess - but then why is it useful in science? [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Game Formalism likens mathematics to chess, where the 'content' of mathematics is exhausted by the rules of operating with its language. ...This, however, leaves the problem of why the mathematical games are so useful to the sciences. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This thought pushes us towards structuralism. It could still be a game, but one we learned from observing nature, which plays its own games. Chess is, after all, modelled on warfare. |
| 8752 | Deductivism says mathematics is logical consequences of uninterpreted axioms [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The Deductivist version of formalism (sometimes called 'if-thenism') says that the practice of mathematics consists of determining logical consequences of otherwise uninterpreted axioms. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [Hilbert is the source] More plausible than Term or Game Formalism (qv). It still leaves the question of why it seems applicable to nature, and why those particular axioms might be chosen. In some sense, though, it is obviously right. |
| 8753 | Critics resent the way intuitionism cripples mathematics, but it allows new important distinctions [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Critics commonly complain that the intuitionist restrictions cripple the mathematician. On the other hand, intuitionist mathematics allows for many potentially important distinctions not available in classical mathematics, and is often more subtle. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: The main way in which it cripples is its restriction on talk of infinity ('Cantor's heaven'), which was resented by Hilbert. Since high-level infinities are interesting, it would be odd if we were not allowed to discuss them. |
| 8731 | Conceptualist are just realists or idealist or nominalists, depending on their view of concepts [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: I classify conceptualists according to what they say about properties or concepts. If someone classified properties as existing independent of language I would classify her as a realist in ontology of mathematics. Or they may be idealists or nominalists. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: In other words, Shapiro wants to eliminate 'conceptualist' as a useful label in philosophy of mathematics. He's probably right. All thought involves concepts, but that doesn't produce a conceptualist theory of, say, football. |
| 8730 | 'Impredicative' definitions refer to the thing being described [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A definition of a mathematical entity is 'impredicative' if it refers to a collection that contains the defined entity. The definition of 'least upper bound' is impredicative as it refers to upper bounds and characterizes a member of this set. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The big question is whether mathematics can live with impredicative definitions, or whether they threaten to be viciously circular, and undermine the whole enterprise. |
| 4616 | A higher level is 'supervenient' if it is determined by lower levels, but has its own natural laws [Heil] |
| Full Idea: 'Supervenience' means lower-level objects and properties suffice for the higher level ones, but the higher level is distinct from its ground, which is reflected in the higher level being governed by distinct laws of nature. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary of Davidson's idea. It feels wrong to me. Can I create some 'new laws of nature' by combining things novelly in a laboratory so that a supervenient state emerges. Sounds silly to me. Must we invoke God to achieve this? |
| 4603 | Functionalists in Fodor's camp usually say that a genuine property is one that figures in some causal laws [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists in Fodor's camp usually say that a genuine property is one that figures in some causal laws. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The problem is that anything which can't figure in a causal law will therefore be undetectable, so we could only speculate about the existence of such properties, never know them. |
| 4617 | A stone does not possess the property of being a stone; its other properties make it a stone [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A predicate that does not designate a property could nevertheless hold true of an object in virtue of that object's properties. An object is a stone not in virtue of holding the property of being a stone, but because it possesses certain other properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Sounds simple but important, especially in relation to the mind. We are left with the problem of how to individuate a property, and the possibility of 'basic' properties. |
| 4612 | Complex properties are just arrangements of simple properties; they do not "emerge" as separate [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Complex properties do not "emerge"; they are nothing "over and above" the properties of the simple constituents duly arranged. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I am glad to see someone challenging the concept of 'emergence', which strikes me as incoherent. Small properties add up to macro-properties (like 'steep', or 'square'). |
| 4615 | Complex properties are not new properties, they are merely new combinations of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: New combinations of properties are just that: new combinations, not new properties. (This is not to reject complex properties, but only to reaffirm that complex properties are nothing over and above their constituents suitably arranged). | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I wish I could be so confidence, but no one seems quite sure what a property is. Are they defined causally, or as 'qualities'? If the latter, what is a quality? Are there basic properties? Can properties merge to form a new one? |
| 4587 | From the property predicates P and Q, we can get 'P or Q', but it doesn't have to designate another property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If P and Q are predicates denoting properties, we can construct a disjunctive predicate ('P or Q'). But it is not clear that this gives us any right whatever to suppose that 'P or Q' designates a property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, needed to disentangle our ontology from our language, and realise that they are separate. Properties are natural; predicates are conventional. |
| 4611 | The supporters of 'tropes' treat objects as bundles of tropes, when I think objects 'possess' properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I resist the term 'trope' as it has become common for the proponents of tropes to regard objects as "bundles" of tropes. This turns tropes into something too much resembling parts of objects for my taste. .I think an object is a possessor of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply a belief in 'substance', which is an intrinsically dodgy concept, but something has to exist. Keep ontology and epistemology separate! We can only know bundles of properties. |
| 4592 | If you can have the boat without its current planks, and the planks with no boat, the planks aren't the boat [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If a boat can continue to exist after the planks that currently make it up have ceased to exist, and if the planks could continue to exist when the boat does not, then a boat cannot be identified with the planks that make it up at a given time. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems obvious, but it opposes Locke's claim that the particles of an object are its identity. Does this mean identities are entirely in our heads, and not a feature of nature? I want to resist that. |
| 4586 | You can't embrace the formal apparatus of possible worlds, but reject the ontology [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We should be suspicious of anyone who embraces the formal apparatus of possible worlds while rejecting the ontology. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: What matters is that good philosophy should not duck the ontological implications of any apparatus. If only embracing the 'ontology of possible worlds' were a simple matter. What makes one world 'close' to another? |
| 4591 | Idealism explains appearances by identifying appearances with reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Idealism explains appearances by identifying appearances with reality. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Nicely put. There is a certain intellectual integrity about idealism, but it is still mad. The overall picture seems to me incoherent if we don't assume that appearances are bringing us close to reality (without ever quite getting there). |
| 8725 | Rationalism tries to apply mathematical methodology to all of knowledge [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Rationalism is a long-standing school that can be characterized as an attempt to extend the perceived methodology of mathematics to all of knowledge. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Sometimes called 'Descartes's Dream', or the 'Enlightenment Project', the dream of proving everything. Within maths, Hilbert's Programme aimed for the same certainty. Idea 22 is the motto for the opposition to this approach. |
| 4610 | Different generations focus on either the quality of mind, or its scientific standing, or the content of thought [Heil] |
| Full Idea: One generation addresses the qualitative aspect of mentality, the next focuses on its scientific standing, its successor takes up the problem of mental content, then the cycle starts all over again… | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints the three interlinked questions. We seem to be currently obsessed with the quality of experience (the 'Hard Question'), but the biggest questions is how the three aspects fit together. If there are three necessities here, they must coexist. |
| 4618 | If minds are realised materially, it looks as if the material laws will pre-empt any causal role for mind [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If a mental property is realised by a material property, then it looks as though its material realiser pre-empts any causal contribution on the part of the realised mental property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This has a beautiful simplicity about it. I can see how some very odd phenomena might suddenly appear out of a physical combination, but not how entirely new causal laws can be created. |
| 4621 | Whatever exists has qualities, so it is no surprise that states of minds have qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Whatever exists has qualities, so it is no surprise that states of minds have qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If only I knew what a 'quality' was. Do combinations have qualities in addition to the qualities of the components? A pair of trees, a pile of sand, a mass of neurons. |
| 4623 | Propositional attitudes are not the only intentional states; there is also mental imagery [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers have thought that intentional states are exhausted by propositional attitudes, but what about mental imagery? You may have propositional attitudes to food, but I would wager that most of your thoughts about it are imagistic. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Seems right. If I encounter an object by which I am bewildered, I may form no propositions at all about it, but I can still contemplate the object. |
| 4626 | The widespread externalist view says intentionality has content because of causal links of agent to world [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The prevailing 'externalist' line on intentionality regards intentional states of mind as owing their content (what they are of, or about) to causal relations agents bear to the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This goes back to Putnam's Twin Earth. 'Meanings aren't in the head'. I may defer to experts about what 'elm' means, but I may also be arrogantly wrong about what 'juniper' means. |
| 4622 | Error must be possible in introspection, because error is possible in all judgements [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Error, like truth, presupposes judgement. Judgements you make about your conscious states are distinct from those states. This leaves room for error. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This sounds very neat. The reply would have to be that a lot of introspection is not judgement, but direct perception of self-evident facts and truths. I agree with Heil. |
| 4590 | If causation is just regularities in events, the interaction of mind and body is not a special problem [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If causal relations boil down to nothing more than regularities (as Hume suggests), then it is a mistake to regard the absence of a mechanism or causal link between mental events and material events as a special problem. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: So critics of Descartes who were baffled by interaction, were actually sniffing Hume's wholesale scepticism about necessary causation. Even so, physical conjunction is more tangible than spiritual conjunction. |
| 4614 | Disposition is a fundamental feature of reality, since basic particles are capable of endless possible interactions [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If there are elementary particles, then they are certainly capable of endless interactions beyond those in which they actually engage. Everything points to dispositionality being a fundamental feature of our world. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that my ontology has to include something called a 'disposition'. Dispositions are the consequence of how things are. Are there passive dispositions? |
| 4595 | No mental state entails inevitable behaviour, because other beliefs or desires may intervene [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Any attempt to say what behaviour follows from a given state of mind can be shown to be false by producing an example in which the state of mind is present but, owing to the addition of new beliefs and desires, the behaviour does not follow. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The objection seems misplaced against eliminative behaviourism, because there are held to be no mental states to correlate with the behavior. There is just behaviour, some times the same, sometimes different. |
| 4599 | Hearts are material, but functionalism says the property of being a heart is not a material property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Although your heart is a material object, the property of being a heart is, if we accept the functionalist picture, not a material property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably functional properties are not physical because they are multiply realisable. The property of being a heart is more like a theoretical flow diagram than it is like a muscle. That word 'property' again… |
| 4624 | If you are a functionalist, there appears to be no room for qualia [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you are a functionalist, there appears to be no room for qualia. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The problem is not that qualia must be denied, but that there is strong pressure to class them as epiphenomena. However, a raw colour can have a causal role (e.g. in an art gallery). Best to say (with Chalmers?) that functions cause qualia? |
| 4601 | Higher-level sciences cannot be reduced, because their concepts mark boundaries invisible at lower levels [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The categories definitive of a given science mark off boundaries that are largely invisible within science at lower levels. That is why there is, in general, no prospect of reducing a higher-level science to a science at some lower level. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds slick, but I am unconvinced. Molecules only exist at the level of chemistry, but they are built up out of physics, and the 'boundaries' could be explained in physics, if you had the knowledge and patience. |
| 4602 | Higher-level sciences designate real properties of objects, which are not reducible to lower levels [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The categories embedded in a higher-level science (psychology, for instance) designate genuine properties of objects, which are not reducible to properties found in sciences at lower levels. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This isn't an argument against reductionism. It is obviously true that someone with a physics degree won't make a good doctor. It's these wretched 'property' things again. Is 'found repulsive by me' a property terrorists? |
| 4593 | 'Property dualism' says mind and body are not substances, but distinct families of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: 'Property dualism' is the view according to which the mental and the physical are not distinguishable kinds of substance, but distinct families of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2 n) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling to make sense of properties being in distinct families. If it is like smells and colours, it doesn't say much, and if the difference is more profound then it begins to look like old-fashioned dualism in disguise. |
| 4597 | Early identity theory talked of mind and brain 'processes', but now the focus is properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The early identity theorists talked of identifying mental processes with brain processes, but I am now proposing it as a theory about properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Since a process is presumably composed of more basic ontological ingredients, this is presumably a good move, but there is still a vagueness about the whole concept of a 'property'. |
| 4609 | It seems contradictory to be asked to believe that we can be eliminativist about beliefs [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some have argued that eliminativism about propositional attitudes is self-refuting. If no one believes anything, then how could we believe the eliminativist thesis? | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Sounds slick, but it doesn't strike me as a big problem. Presumably you don't 'believe' eliminativism. You treat some of your brain processes as if they fell into the fictional category of 'belief'. |
| 4596 | The appeal of the identity theory is its simplicity, and its solution to the mental causation problem [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The identity theory is preferable to dualism since 1) if mental events are neurological, it is easy to explain causal relations between them, and 2) if we can account for mental phenomena by reference to brains and their properties, we don't need minds. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: One might add that it fits into the overall scientific world, and permits the possible closure of physics. The challenge is that identity theory must 'save the phenomena'. |
| 4598 | Functionalists emphasise that mental processes are not to be reduced to what realises them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The functionalists' point is that higher-level properties like being in pain or computing the sum of 7 and 5 are not to be identified with ("reduced to") or mistaken for their realisers. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I take it that functionalist minds can't be reduced because they are abstractions rather than physical entities. Nevertheless, the implied ontology seems to be entirely physical, and hence in some sense reductionist. |
| 4619 | 'Multiple realisability' needs to clearly distinguish low-level realisers from what is realised [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Proponents of multiple realisability regard it as vital to distinguish realised, higher-level properties from their lower-level realisers. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: So that the very idea of 'multiple realisability' begs the question. Minds are private, so it is never clear what has been realised, especially in non-linguistic brains. |
| 4620 | Multiple realisability is not a relation among properties, but an application of predicates to resembling things [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Multiple realisability is not a relation among properties; it is the phenomenon of predicates applying to objects in virtue of distinct, though pertinently similar, properties possessed by those objects. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The analogies for multiple realisability usually involve functions rather than properties or predicates (different types of corkscrew). Pain or belief in danger are not just 'predicates'. |
| 4594 | A scientist could know everything about the physiology of headaches, but never have had one [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a neuroscientist who is intimately familiar with the physiology of headaches, but who has never actually experienced a headache. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A more realistic version of Frank Jackson's 'Mary'. Doctors need to know that headaches are unpleasant; what they actually feel like seems irrelevant (epiphenomenal). What's it like to only have two pairs of shoes? |
| 4625 | Is mental imagery pictorial, or is it propositional? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A fierce debate has raged between proponents of 'pictorial' conceptions of imagery (Kosslyn) and those who take imagery to be propositional (Pylyshyn). | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This may not be a simple dilemma. Pure pictorial imagery seem possible (abstract patterns) and pure propositions are okay (maths), but in most thought they are inextricable. The image is the proposition (a nuclear cloud). |
| 4607 | Folk psychology and neuroscience are no more competitors than cartography and geology are [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Folk psychology and neuroscience are not competitors, any more than cartography and geology are competitors. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems true enough, unless someone like Fodor claims that the correct way to do neuroscience is to try to explicate folk psychology categories in terms of brain function. Folk psychology is fine for folk. |
| 4605 | Truth-conditions correspond to the idea of 'literal meaning' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I intend the notion of truth-conditions to correspond to what I have called 'literal meaning'. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Yes. If I identify myself to you by saying "the spam is in the fridge", that always has a literal meaning (which we assemble from the words), as well as connotation in this particular context. |
| 4606 | To understand 'birds warble' and 'tigers growl', you must also understand 'tigers warble' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is something puzzling about the notion that someone could understand the sentences "birds warble" and "tigers growl", yet have no idea what the sentence "tigers warble" meant. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: True enough, but this need not imply the full thesis of linguistic holism. Words are assembled like bricks. I know tigers might warble, but stones don't. Might fish warble? Or volcanoes? I must know that 'birds warble' is not a tautology. |
| 4604 | If propositions are abstract entities, how do human beings interact with them? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who takes propositions to be abstract entities owes the rest of us an account of how human beings could interact with such things. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes this sound impossible, but that would mean that all abstraction is impossible, and there are no such things as ideas and concepts. In the end something has to be miraculous, so let it be our ability to think about abstractions. |