Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Roots of Reference', 'Coherence: The Price is Right' and 'Does Consciousness Exist?'

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10 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence

17596	Coherence problems have positive and negative restraints; solutions maximise constraint satisfaction [Thagard]
	Full Idea: A coherence problem is a set of elements connected by positive and negative restraints, and a solution consists of partitioning the elements into two sets (accepted and rejected) in a way that maximises satisfaction of the constraints.
	From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.42)
	A reaction: I'm enthusiastic about this, as it begins to clarify the central activity of epistemology, which is the quest for best explanations.

17597	Coherence is explanatory, deductive, conceptual, analogical, perceptual, and deliberative [Thagard]
	Full Idea: I propose that there are six main kinds of coherence: explanatory, deductive, conceptual, analogical, perceptual, and deliberative. ...Epistemic coherence is a combination of the first five kinds, and ethics adds the sixth.
	From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.43)
	A reaction: Wonderful. Someone is getting to grips with the concept of coherence, instead of just whingeing about how vague it is.

17598	Explanatory coherence needs symmetry,explanation,analogy,data priority, contradiction,competition,acceptance [Thagard]
	Full Idea: Informally, a theory of explanatory coherence has the principles of symmetry, explanation, analogy, data priority, contradiction, competition and acceptance.
	From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.44)
	A reaction: [Thagard give a concise summary of his theory here] Again Thagard makes a wonderful contribution in an area where most thinkers are pessimistic about making any progress. His principles are very plausible.

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 6. Verisimilitude

17602	Verisimilitude comes from including more phenomena, and revealing what underlies [Thagard]
	Full Idea: A scientific theory is progressively approximating the truth if it increases its explanatory coherence by broadening to more phenomena and deepening by investigating layers of mechanisms.
	From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.46)

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived

14296	Dispositions are physical states of mechanism; when known, these replace the old disposition term [Quine]
	Full Idea: Each disposition, in my view, is a physical state or mechanism. ...In some cases nowadays we understand the physical details and set them forth explicitly in terms of the arrangement and interaction of small bodies. This replaces the old disposition.
	From: Willard Quine (The Roots of Reference [1990], p.11), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Dispositions 01.3
	A reaction: A challenge to the dispositions and powers view of nature, one which rests on the 'categorical' structural properties, rather than the 'hypothetical' dispositions. But can we define a mechanism without mentioning its powers?

14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 1. Scientific Theory

17601	Neither a priori rationalism nor sense data empiricism account for scientific knowledge [Thagard]
	Full Idea: Both rationalists (who start with a priori truths and make deductions) and empiricists (starting with indubitable sense data and what follows) would guarantee truth, but neither even begins to account for scientific knowledge.
	From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.46)
	A reaction: Thagard's answer, and mine, is inference to the best explanation, but goes beyond both the a priori truths and the perceptions.

14. Science / C. Induction / 6. Bayes's Theorem

17600	Bayesian inference is forced to rely on approximations [Thagard]
	Full Idea: It is well known that the general problem with Bayesian inference is that it is computationally intractable, so the algorithms used for computing posterior probabilities have to be approximations.
	From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.45)
	A reaction: Thagard makes this sound devastating, but then concedes that all theories have to rely on approximations, so I haven't quite grasped this idea. He gives references.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 3. Best Explanation / a. Best explanation

17599	The best theory has the highest subjective (Bayesian) probability? [Thagard]
	Full Idea: On the Bayesian view, the best theory is the one with the highest subjective probability, given the evidence as calculated by Bayes's theorem.
	From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.45)

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / e. Cause of consciousness

9286	Consciousness is not a stuff, but is explained by the relations between experiences [James]
	Full Idea: Consciousness connotes a kind of external relation, and not a special stuff or way of being. The peculiarity of our experiences, that they not only are, but are known, is best explained by their relations to one another, the relations being experiences.
	From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], §3)
	A reaction: This view has suddenly caught people's interest. It might be better than the higher/lower relationship, which seems to leave the basic problem untouched. Does a whole network of relations between experiences gradually 'add up' to consciousness?

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism

9285	'Consciousness' is a nonentity, a mere echo of the disappearing 'soul' [James]
	Full Idea: 'Consciousness' is the name of a nonentity. ..Those who cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy. ..I deny that it stands for an entity, but it does stand for a function.
	From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], Intro)
	A reaction: This kind of view is often treated as being preposterous, but I think it is correct. No one is denying the phenomenology, but it is the ontology which is at stake. Either you are a substance dualist, or mind must be eliminated as an 'entity'.