5 ideas
3663 | How can you contemplate Platonic entities without causal transactions with them? [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Platonism has the attendant problem of how we can succeed in thinking about and referring to entities we can have no causal transactions with. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Phil of Mathematics: why nothing works [1979], Modalism) |
7876 | Even if we identify pain with neural events, we can't explain why those neurons cause that feeling [Levine, by Papineau] |
Full Idea: Materialists identify pain with the firing of nociceptive-specific neurons in the parietal cortex. Even so, Levine argues, we will still lack any explanation of why nociceptive-specific neurons yield pain. | |
From: report of Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
A reaction: [Proposed by Levine in 1983] I don't think we need to instantly go dualist when faced with this, but we may all eventually have to concede a bit of mysterianism. The explanation may be holistic (and hence hopelessly complex). |
7877 | Only phenomenal states have an explanatory gap; water is fully explained by H2O [Levine, by Papineau] |
Full Idea: Levine says the explanatory gap is peculiar to phenomenal states. Once water has been identified with H2O, or temperature with mean kinetic energy, we do not continue to ask why H2O yields water, or why mean kinetic energy yields temperature. | |
From: report of Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
A reaction: Everything is mysterious if you think about if for long enough. What about a representational gap? Why do those neurons represent that tree (if the neurons aren't tree-shaped)? To understand qualia, we must understand the whole brain, I suspect. |
7878 | Materialism won't explain phenomenal properties, because the latter aren't seen in causal roles [Papineau on Levine] |
Full Idea: We cannot give materialist explanations of why brain yields phenomenal properties because phenomenal concepts are not associated with descriptions of causal roles in the same way as pre-theoretical terms in other areas of science. | |
From: comment on Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
A reaction: I think Papineau has part of the answer, and I certainly like his notion of Conceptual Dualism, but if qualia are physical, there must be a physical account of how they acquire their properties. I think the whole brain needs to be understood first. |
19216 | Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson] |
Full Idea: A proposition about an item exists only if that item exists... how could something be the proposition that that dog is barking in circumstances in which that dog does not exist? | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Necessary Existents [2002], p.240), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Propositions | |
A reaction: This is a view of propositions I can't make sense of. If I'm under an illusion that there is a dog barking nearby, when there isn't one, can I not say 'that dog is barking'? If I haven't expressed a proposition, what have I done? |