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All the ideas for 'The Rationality of Science', 'Consciousness Explained' and 'works'

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44 ideas

1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 1. Aims of Science
We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.3)
The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: Once we move beyond investigating correlations between observables the question of what does or should guide our choice between alternative explanatory accounts becomes problematic.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IX.2)
For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: We are only justified in regarding scientific practice as the very paradigm of rationality if we can justify the claim that scientific change is rationally explicable.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.2)
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 2. Positivism
Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: The critics of positivism attacked the conception of a dichotomy between theory and observation.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4)
Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: For positivists it was taken that while theory change meant change in the meaning of theoretical terms, the meaning of observational terms was invariant under theory change.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4)
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 6. Verisimilitude
More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: If a theory is a better approximation to the truth, then it is likely that it will have greater predictive power.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VIII.8)
Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: We cannot explicate a useful notion of verisimilitude in terms of the number of truths and the number of falsehoods generated by a theory, because they are infinite.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.4)
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / a. Axioms for sets
Von Neumann defines each number as the set of all smaller numbers [Neumann, by Blackburn]
     Full Idea: Von Neumann defines each number as the set of all smaller numbers.
     From: report of John von Neumann (works [1935]) by Simon Blackburn - Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy p.280
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 8. Critique of Set Theory
Von Neumann wanted mathematical functions to replace sets [Neumann, by Benardete,JA]
     Full Idea: Von Neumann suggested that functions be pressed into service to replace sets.
     From: report of John von Neumann (works [1935]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.23
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / e. Ordinal numbers
Von Neumann defined ordinals as the set of all smaller ordinals [Neumann, by Poundstone]
     Full Idea: At age twenty, Von Neumann devised the formal definition of ordinal numbers that is used today: an ordinal number is the set of all smaller ordinal numbers.
     From: report of John von Neumann (works [1935]) by William Poundstone - Prisoner's Dilemma 02 'Sturm'
     A reaction: I take this to be an example of an impredicative definition (not predicating something new), because it uses 'ordinal number' in the definition of ordinal number. I'm guessing the null set gets us started.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / a. Dispositions
We can bring dispositions into existence, as in creating an identifier [Dennett, by Mumford]
     Full Idea: We can bring a real disposition into existence, as in Dennett's case of a piece of cardboard torn in half, so that two strangers can infallibly identify one another.
     From: report of Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], p.376) by Stephen Mumford - Dispositions 03.7 n37
     A reaction: Presumably human artefacts in general qualify as sets of dispositions which we have created.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 13. Nominal Essence
Words are fixed by being attached to similarity clusters, without mention of 'essences' [Dennett]
     Full Idea: We don't need 'essences' or 'criteria' to keep the meaning of our word from sliding all over the place; our words will stay put, quite firmly attached as if by gravity to the nearest similarity cluster.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 13.2)
     A reaction: Plausible, but essentialism (which may have been rejuventated by a modern theory of reference in language) is not about language. It is offering an explanation of why there are 'similarity clusters. Organisms are too complex to have pure essences.
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity
De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: A necessary truth is 'de re' if its necessity arises from the way the world is.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.6)
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / a. Beliefs
We must assess the truth of beliefs in identifying them [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: We cannot determine what someone's beliefs are independently of assessing to some extent the truth or falsity of the beliefs.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.4)
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / b. Primary/secondary
Light wavelengths entering the eye are only indirectly related to object colours [Dennett]
     Full Idea: The wavelengths of the light entering the eye are only indirectly related to the colours we see objects to be.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 12.2)
     A reaction: This is obviously bad news for naïve realism, but I also take it as good support for the primary/secondary distinction. I just can't make sense of anyone claiming that colour exists anywhere else except in the brain.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 6. Relativism Critique
Defeat relativism by emphasising truth and reference, not meaning [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: The challenge of incommensurability can be met once it is realised that in comparing theories the notions of truth and reference are more important than that of meaning.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.6)
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 1. Observation
A full understanding of 'yellow' involves some theory [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: A full grasp of the concept '…is yellow' involves coming to accept as true bits of theory; that is, generalisations involving the term 'yellow'.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.2)
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 5. Anomalies
All theories contain anomalies, and so are falsified! [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: According to Feyerabend all theories are born falsified, because no theory has ever been totally free of anomalies.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9)
The anomaly of Uranus didn't destroy Newton's mechanics - it led to Neptune's discovery [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: When scientists observed the motion of Uranus, they did not give up on Newtonian mechanics. Instead they posited the existence of Neptune.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9)
Anomalies are judged against rival theories, and support for the current theory [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: Whether to reject an anomaly has to be decided on the basis of the availability of a rival theory, and on the basis of the positive evidence for the theory in question.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9)
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 1. Scientific Theory
Why should it matter whether or not a theory is scientific? [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: Why should it be so important to distinguish between theories that are scientific and those that are not?
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IV.3)
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 5. Commensurability
If theories are really incommensurable, we could believe them all [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: If theories are genuinely incommensurable why should I be faced with the problem of choosing between them? Why not believe them all?
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.1)
14. Science / C. Induction / 1. Induction
Brains are essentially anticipation machines [Dennett]
     Full Idea: All brains are, in essence, anticipation machines.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 7.2)
     A reaction: This would necessarily, I take it, make them induction machines. So brains will only evolve in a world where induction is possible, which is one where there a lot of immediately apprehensible regularities.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / a. Consciousness
We can't draw a clear line between conscious and unconscious [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Even in our own case, we cannot draw the line separating our conscious mental states from our unconscious mental states.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 14.2)
     A reaction: This strikes me as being a simple and self-evident truth, which anyone working on the brain takes for granted, but an awful lot of philosophers (stuck somewhere in the seventeenth century) can't seem to grasp.
Perhaps the brain doesn't 'fill in' gaps in consciousness if no one is looking. [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Perhaps the brain doesn't actually have to go to the trouble of "filling in" anything with "construction" - for no one is looking.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 5.4)
     A reaction: This a very nice point, because claims that the mind fills in in various psychological visual tests always has the presupposition of a person (or homunculus?) which is overseeing the visual experiences.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / e. Cause of consciousness
Conscious events can only be explained in terms of unconscious events [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 14.4)
     A reaction: This sounds undeniable, so it seems to force a choice between reductive physicalism and mysterianism. Personally I think there must be an explanation in terms of non-conscious events, even if humans are too thick to understand it.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 3. Privacy
We can know a lot of what it is like to be a bat, and nothing important is unknown [Dennett]
     Full Idea: There is at least a lot that we can know about what it is like to be a bat, and Nagel has not given us a reason to believe there is anything interesting or theoretically important that is inaccessible to us.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 14.2)
     A reaction: I agree. If you really wanted to identify with the phenomenology of bathood, you could spend a lot of time in underground caves whistling with your torch turned off. I can't, of course, be a bat, but then I can't be my self of yesterday.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / c. Explaining qualia
"Qualia" can be replaced by complex dispositional brain states [Dennett]
     Full Idea: "Qualia" can be replaced by complex dispositional states of the brain.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 14.1)
     A reaction: 'Dispositional' reveals Dennett's behaviourist roots (he was a pupil of Ryle). Fodor is right that physicalism cannot just hide behind the word "complexity". That said, the combination of complexity and speed might add up to physical 'qualia'.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 6. Inverted Qualia
We can't assume that dispositions will remain normal when qualia have been inverted [Dennett]
     Full Idea: The goal of the experiment was to describe a case in which it was obvious that the qualia would be inverted while the reactive dispositions would be normalized. But the assumption that one could just tell is question-begging.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 12.4)
     A reaction: It certainly seems simple and plausible that if we inverted our experience of traffic light colours, no difference in driver behaviour would be seen. However, my example, of a conversation in a gallery of abstract art, seems more problematic.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 7. Blindsight
In peripheral vision we see objects without their details, so blindsight is not that special [Dennett]
     Full Idea: If a playing card is held in peripheral vision, we can see the card without being able to identify its colours or its shapes. That's normal sight, not blindsight, so we should be reluctant on those grounds to deny visual experience to blindsight subjects.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 11.4)
     A reaction: This is an important point in Dennett's war against the traditional all-or-nothing view of mental events. Nevertheless, blindsight subjects deny all mental experience, while picking up information, and peripheral vision never seems like that.
Blindsight subjects glean very paltry information [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Discussions of blindsight have tended to ignore just how paltry the information is that blindsight subjects glean from their blind fields.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 11.4)
     A reaction: This is a bit unfair, because blindsight has mainly pointed to interesting speculations (e.g. Idea 2953). Nevertheless, if blindsight with very high information content is actually totally impossible, the speculations ought to be curtailed.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 4. Presupposition of Self
People accept blurred boundaries in many things, but insist self is All or Nothing [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Many people are comfortable taking the pragmatic approach to night/day, living/nonliving and mammal/premammal, but get anxious about the same attitude to having a self and not having a self. It must be All or Nothing, and One to a Customer.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 13.2)
     A reaction: Personally I think I believe in the existence of the self, but I also agree with Dennett. I greatly admire his campaign against All or Nothing thinking, which is a relic from an earlier age. A partial self could result from infancy or brain damage.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / c. Self as brain controller
The psychological self is an abstraction, not a thing in the brain [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Like the biological self, the psychological or narrative self is an abstraction, not a thing in the brain.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 13.1)
     A reaction: Does Dennett have empirical evidence for this claim? It seems to me perfectly possible that there is a real thing called the 'self', and it is the central controller of the brain (involving propriotreptic awareness, understanding, and will).
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 2. Self as Social Construct
Selves are not soul-pearls, but artefacts of social processes [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Selves are not independently existing soul-pearls, but artefacts of the social processes that create us, and, like other such artefacts, subject to sudden shifts in status.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 13.2)
     A reaction: "Soul-pearls" is a nice phrase for the Cartesian view, but there can something between soul-pearls and social constructs. Personally I think the self is a development of the propriotreptic (body) awareness that even the smallest animals must possess.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 3. Narrative Self
We tell stories about ourselves, to protect, control and define who we are [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control and self-definition is telling stories, and more particularly concocting and controlling the story we tell others - and ourselves - about who we are.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 13.1)
     A reaction: This seems to suggest that there is someone who wants to protect themselves, and who wants to tell the stories, and does tell the stories. No one can deny the existence of this autobiographical element in our own identity.
We spin narratives about ourselves, and the audience posits a centre of gravity for them [Dennett]
     Full Idea: The effect of our string of personal narratives is to encourage the audience to (try to) posit a unified agent whose words they are, about whom they are: in short, to posit a centre of narrative gravity.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 13.1)
     A reaction: What would be the evolutionary advantage of getting the audience to posit a non-existent self, instead of a complex brain? It might be simpler than that, since we say of a bird "it wants to do x". What is "it"? Some simple thing, like a will.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 4. Denial of the Self
The brain is controlled by shifting coalitions, guided by good purposeful habits [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Who's in charge of the brain? First one coalition and then another, shifting in ways that are not chaotic thanks to good meta-habits that tend to entrain coherent, purposeful sequences rather than an interminable helter-skelter power grab.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 8.1)
     A reaction: This is probably the best anti-ego account available. Dennett offers our sense of self as a fictional autobiography, but the sense of a single real controller is very powerful. If I jump at a noise, I feel that 'I' have lost control of myself.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 6. Epiphenomenalism
If an epiphenomenon has no physical effects, it has to be undetectable [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Psychologists mean a by-product by an 'epiphenomenon', ...but the philosophical meaning is too strong: it yields a concept of no utility whatsoever. Since x has no physical effects (according to the definition), no instrument can detect it.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 12.5)
     A reaction: Well said! This has always been my half-formulated intuition about the claim that the mind (or anything) might be totally epiphenomenal. All a thing such as the reflection on a lake can be is irrelevant to the functioning of that specified system.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 8. Dualism of Mind Critique
Dualism wallows in mystery, and to accept it is to give up [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 2.4)
     A reaction: Some things, of course, might be inherently mysterious to us, and we might as well give up. The big dualist mystery is the explanation of how such different substances can interact. How do two physical substances manage to interact?
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 6. Homuncular Functionalism
All functionalism is 'homuncular', of one grain size or another [Dennett]
     Full Idea: All varieties of functionalism can be viewed as 'homuncular' functionalism of one grain size or another.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 9.2)
     A reaction: This seems right, as any huge and complex mechanism (like a moon rocket) will be made up of some main systems, then sub-systems, then sub-sub-sub.... This assumes that there are one or two overarching purposes, which there are in people.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism
Visual experience is composed of neural activity, which we find pleasing [Dennett]
     Full Idea: All visual experience is composed of activities of neural circuits whose very activity is innately pleasing to us.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 12.6)
     A reaction: This is the nearest I can find to Dennett saying something eliminativist. It seems to beg the question of who 'us' refers to, and what is being pleased, and how it is 'pleased' by these neural circuits. The Hard Question?
It is arbitrary to say which moment of brain processing is conscious [Dennett]
     Full Idea: If one wants to settle on some moment of processing in the brain as the moment of consciousness, this has to be arbitrary.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 5.3)
     A reaction: Seems eliminativist, as it implies that all that is really going on is 'processing'. But there are two senses of 'arbitrary' - that calling it consciousness is arbitrary (wrong), or thinking that mind doesn't move abruptly into consciousness (right).
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / c. Reasons as causes
Explaining an action is showing that it is rational [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: To explain an action as an action is to show that it is rational.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.2)
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 2. Natural Purpose / b. Limited purposes
Originally there were no reasons, purposes or functions; since there were no interests, there were only causes [Dennett]
     Full Idea: In the beginning there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing had so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all. The explanation is simple: there was nothing that had interests.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 7.2)
     A reaction: It seems reasonable to talk of functions even if the fledgling 'interests' are unconscious, as in a leaf. Is a process leading to an end an 'interest'? What are the 'interests' of a person who is about to commit suicide?