43 ideas
| 8093 | Seek wisdom rather than truth; it is easier [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
| A reaction: A nice challenge to the traditional goal of philosophy. The idea that we should 'seek truth' only seems to have emerged during the Reformation. The Greeks may well never have dreamed of such a thing. |
| 8095 | We must think with our entire body and soul [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body and soul. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1798) | |
| A reaction: Not just that thinking must be a whole-hearted activity, but that the very contents of our thinking will be better if it arises out of being a physical creature, and not just a disembodied reasoner. Maybe the bowels are not needed to analyse set theory. |
| 8107 | The love of certainty holds us back in metaphysics [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: What stops or holds us back in metaphysics is a love of certainty. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1814) | |
| A reaction: This is a prominent truth from the age of Descartes, but may have diminished in the twenty-first century. The very best metaphysicians (e.g. Aristotle and Lewis) always end in a trail of dots when things become unsure. |
| 8099 | The truths of reason instruct, but they do not illuminate [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: There are truths that instruct, perhaps, but they do not illuminate. In this class are all the truths of reasoning. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: A rather romantic view, which strikes me as false. An inspiring truth can suddenly collapse when you see why it must be false. Equally a line of reasoning can lead to a truth which need becomes an illumination. |
| 8098 | Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: Presumably sceptics about the existence of objective truth must also be sceptical about the possibility of such a God. I think Joubert is close to the nature of truth here. It is a remote and barely imaginable ideal. |
| 6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Eventually set theory will have to be either naturalised or rejected, if a thoroughgoing physicalism is to be maintained. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I regard Platonism as a form of naturalism (though a rather bold and dramatic one). The central issue seems to be the ability of the human main/brain to form 'abstract' notions about the physical world in which it lives. |
| 6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Institutional types are irreducible, though I assume that institutional tokens are reducible in the sense of strict identity, all the way down to the subatomic level. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems a promising distinction, as the boundaries of 'institutions' disappear when you begin to reduce them to lower levels (cf. Idea 4601), and yet plenty of institutions are self-evidently no more than physics. Plants are invisible as physics. |
| 6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: If types cannot be reduced to more physical levels, this is not an embarrassment, as long as our institutional categories, our physiological categories, and our physical categories are just alternative groupings of the same tokens. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a self-evident truth about a car engine, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply equally to a brain. Lycan's identification of the type as the thing which cannot be reduced seems a promising explanation of much confusion among philosophers. |
| 6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: One space-time slice may be occupied by a collection of molecules, a metal strip, a key, an allower of entry to hotel rooms, a facilitator of adultery, and a destroyer souls. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Desdemona's handkerchief is a nice example. This sort of remark seems to be felt by some philosophers to be heartless wickedness, and yet it so screamingly self-evident that it is impossible to deny. |
| 6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.0) | |
| A reaction: A passing remark in a discussion of functionalism about the mind, but I find it appealing. Causation is basic to materialistic metaphysics, and it creates networks of regular causes. It leaves open the essentialist question of WHY it has that role. |
| 6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Personally I favour direct realism regarding secondary qualities, and identify greenness with some complex microphysical property exemplified by green physical objects. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: He cites D.M.Armstrong (1981) as his source. Personally I find this a bewildering proposal. Does he think there is greenness in grass AS WELL AS the emission of that wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation? Is greenness zooming through the air? |
| 8101 | To know is to see inside oneself [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: To know: it is to see inside oneself. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: Extreme internalism about justification! Personally I am becoming convinced that 'know' (unlike 'believe' and 'true') is an entirely social concept. Fools spend a lot of time instrospecting; wise people ask around, and check in books. |
| 6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Intentionality comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree. A footprint is 'about' a foot, in the sense of containing concentrated information about it. Can we, though, envisage a higher degree than human thought? Is there a maximum degree? Everything is 'about' everything, in some respect. |
| 6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The teleological view begins to explain intentionality, and in particular allows brain states and events to have false intentional content; causal and nomological theories of intentionality tend to falter on this last task. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly if you say thought is 'caused' by the world, false thought become puzzling. I'm not sure I understand the rest of this, but it is an intriguing remark about a significant issue… |
| 6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal experience of pain has components - it is a complex, consisting (perhaps) of urges, desires, impulses, and beliefs, probably occurring at quite different levels of institutional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true, and offers the reductionist a strategy for making inroads into the supposed irreducable and fundamental nature of qualia. What's it like to be a complex hierarchically structured multi-functional organism? |
| 6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: It is just arbitrary to choose a level of nature a priori as the locus of qualia, even though we can agree that high levels (such as behaviourism) and low-levels (such as the subatomic) can be ruled out as totally improbable. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Very good. People scream 'qualia!' whenever the behaviour level or the atomic level are proposed as the locations of the mind, but the suggestion that they are complex, and are spread across many functional levels in the middle sounds good. |
| 8094 | The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of the imagination, I love this one. I suspect that imagination, which was marginalised by Descartes, is actually the single most important aspect of thought (in slugs as well as humans). Abstraction requires imagination. |
| 6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: By interacting causally, Cartesian dualism seems to violate the conservation laws of physics (concerning matter and energy). This seems testable, and afferent and efferent pathways disappearing into thin air would suggest energy is not conserved. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It would seem to be no problem as long as outputs were identical in energy to inputs. If the experiment could actually be done, the result might astonish us. |
| 6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Evolution has proceeded in all other known species by increasingly complex configurations of molecules and organs, which support primitive psychologies; our human psychologies are more advanced, but undeniably continuous with lower animals. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find the evolution objection to dualism highly persuasive. I don't see how anyone can take evolution seriously and be a dualist. If there is a dramatic ontological break at some point, a plausible reason would be needed for that. |
| 6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Old joke: two Behaviourists meet in the street, and the first says,"You're fine; how am I?" | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], n1.6) | |
| A reaction: This invites the response that introspection is uniquely authoritative about 'how we are', but this has been challenged quite a lot recently, which pushes us to consider whether these stupid behaviourists might actually have a good point. |
| 6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Analytical functionalists', who hold that meanings of mental terms are determined by the causal roles associated with them by 'folk psychology', deny themselves appeals to lower levels of functional organisation. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably folk psychology can fit into the kind of empirical methodology favoured by behaviourists, whereas 'lower levels' are going to become rather speculative and unscientific. |
| 6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The functionalist must find a level of characterisation of mental states that is not so abstract or behaviouristic as to rule out the possibility of inverted spectrum etc., nor so specific and structural as to fall into chauvinism. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: If too specific then animals and aliens won't be able to implement the necessary functions; if the theory becomes very behaviouristic, then it loses interest in the possibility of an inverted spectrum. He is certainly right to hunt for a middle ground. |
| 6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Even the software/hardware distinction as it is literally applied within computer science is philosophically unclear. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is true, and very important for functionalist theories of the mind. Even very volatile software is realised in 'hard' physics, and rewritable discs etc blur the distinction between 'programmable' and 'hardwired'. |
| 6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am taking mental types to form a small subclass of teleological types occurring for the most part at a high level of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to say that he understand teleology in evolutionary terms. There is always a gap between how you characterise or individuate something, and what it actually is. To say spanners are 'a small subclass of tools' is not enough. |
| 6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Highly teleological characterisations, unlike naïve and explicated mental characterisations, have the virtue of shading off fairly smoothly into (more) brutely physical ones. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Thus the purpose of a car engine, and a spark plug, and the spark, and the temperature, and the vibration of molecules show a fading away of the overt purpose, disappearing into the pointless activity of electrons and quantum levels. |
| 6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Neuron' may be understood as a physiological term or a functional term, so even the Identity Theorist is a Functionalist - one who locates mental entities at a very low level of abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a striking observation, and somewhat inclines me to switch from identity theory to functionalism. If you ask what is the correct level of abstraction, Lycan's teleological-homuncular version refers you to all the levels. |
| 6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am explicating the mental in a reductive way, by reducing mental characterizations to homuncular institutional ones, which are teleological characterizations at various levels of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the germ of a very good physicalist account of the mind. More is needed than a mere assertion about what the mind reduces to at the very lowest level; this offers a decent account of the descending stages of reduction. |
| 6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Teleological functionalism helps us to understand the nature of biological and psychological laws, particularly in the face of Davidsonian scepticism about the latter. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I doubt the existence of psycho-physical laws, but only because of the vast complexity. They would be like the laws of weather. 'Psycho-physical' laws seem to presuppose some sort of dualism. |
| 6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Quite possibly a Martian's humanoid behaviour is prompted by his having sensations somewhat unlike ours, despite his superficial behavioural similarities to us. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this firmly refutes the multiple realisability objection to type-type physicalism. Mental events are individuated by their phenomenal features (known only to the user), and by their causal role (publicly available). These are separate. |
| 8103 | A thought is as real as a cannon ball [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: A thought is a thing as real as a cannon ball. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
| A reaction: Nice. The realisation of a thought can strike someone as if they have been assaulted, and hearing some remarks can be as bad as being stabbed. That is quite apart from political consequences. Joubert is good on the physicality of thinking. |
| 8100 | Where does the bird's idea of a nest come from? [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the nest in the bird's mind, where does it come from? | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a very striking example in support of innate ideas. Most animal behaviour can be explained as responses to stimuli, but the bird seems to hold a model in its mind while it collects its materials. |
| 8096 | He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1799) | |
| A reaction: A rather crucial distinction in the world of hedonism. There seems something sincere about someone who pursues pleasure body and soul, and something fractured about the pursuit of pleasure without real commitment. The split seems possible. |
| 8104 | What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1802) | |
| A reaction: A lovely test question for aspiring young hedonists! It doesn't follow at all that we will despise past pleasures. The judgement may be utilitarian - that we regret the pleasures that harmed others, but love the harmless ones. Shame is social. |
| 8097 | Virtue is hard if we are scorned; we need support [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: It would be difficult to be scorned and to live virtuously. We have need of support. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: He seems to have hit on what I take to be one of the keys to Aristotle: that virtue is a social matter, requiring both upbringing and a healthy culture. But we can help to create that culture, as well as benefiting from it. |
| 8106 | In raising a child we must think of his old age [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: In raising a child we must think of his old age. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1809) | |
| A reaction: Very nice, and Aristotle would approve. If educators think much about the future, it rarely extends before the child's first job. We should be preparing good grand-parents, as well as parents and employees. Educate for retirement! |
| 6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who says that key concepts, such as those concerning the mind, should come 'in degrees' wins my instant support. A whole car engine requires a very teleological explanation, the spark in the sparkplug far less so. |
| 8404 | Explain single events by general rules, or vice versa, or probability explains both, or they are unconnected [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Some think singular causal claims should be explained in terms of general causal claims; some think the order should be reversed; some think a third thing (e.g. objective probability) will explain both; and some think they are only loosely connected. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: I think Ducasse gives the best account, which is the second option, of giving singular causal claims priority. Probability (Mellor) strikes me as a non-starter, and the idea that they are fairly independent seems rather implausible. |
| 8401 | Physical laws are largely time-symmetric, so they make a poor basis for directional causation [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: It is sometimes pointed out that (perhaps with a few minor exceptions) the fundamental physical laws are completely time-symmetric. If so, then if one is inclined to found causation on fundamental physical law, it isn't evident how directionality gets in. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: All my instincts tell me that causation is more fundamental than laws, and that directionality is there at the start. That, though, raises the nice question of how, if causation explains laws, the direction eventually gets left OUT! |
| 8400 | Identifying cause and effect is not just conventional; we explain later events by earlier ones [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: It is not just that the earlier member of a cause-effect pair is conventionally called the cause; it is also connected with other temporal asymmetries that play an important role in our practices. We tend to explain later events in terms of earlier ones. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: We also interfere with the earlier one to affect the later one, and not vice versa (Idea 8363). I am inclined to think that attempting to explain the direction of causation is either pointless or hopeless. |
| 8402 | The only reason for adding the notion of 'cause' to fundamental physics is directionality [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Although it is true that the notion of 'cause' is not needed in fundamental physics, even statistical physics, still directionality considerations don't preclude this notion from being consistently added to fundamental physics. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: This only makes sense if the notion of cause already has directionality built into it, which I think is correct. The physicist might reply that they don't care about directionality, but the whole idea of an experiment seems to depend on it (Idea 8363). |
| 6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: An object is specifically physical if it figures in explanations and descriptions of features of ordinary non-living matter, as in current physics; it is more generally physical if it is simply located in space-time. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: This gives a useful distinction when trying to formulate a 'physicalist' account of the mind, where type-type physicalism says only the 'postulates of physics' can be used, whereas 'naturalism' about the mind uses the more general concept. |
| 8105 | We can't exactly conceive virtue without the idea of God [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: If we exclude the idea of God, it is impossible to have an exact idea of virtue. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1808) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that an 'exact' idea is impossible even with an idea of God. This is an interesting defence of the importance of God in moral thinking, but it only requires the concept of a supreme being, and not belief. |
| 8102 | We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be rather true at the present time, when a wave of anti-religious books is sweeping through our culture. Presumably this remark used to be true of ancient paganism, but it died away. Christianity, though, is very personal. |