Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Troubles with Functionalism', 'Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge' and 'Fragments on My Philosophical Development'

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19 ideas

1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
All worthwhile philosophy is synthetic theorizing, evaluated by experience [Papineau]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
Our best theories may commit us to mathematical abstracta, but that doesn't justify the commitment [Papineau]
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 9. A Priori from Concepts
A priori knowledge is analytic - the structure of our concepts - and hence unimportant [Papineau]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
Intuition and thought-experiments embody substantial information about the world [Papineau]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / a. Nature of qualia
Lobotomised patients can cease to care about a pain [Block]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / c. Explaining qualia
A brain looks no more likely than anything else to cause qualia [Block]
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 2. Potential Behaviour
Behaviour requires knowledge as well as dispositions [Block]
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 1. Functionalism
In functionalism, desires are internal states with causal relations [Block]
Functionalism is behaviourism, but with mental states as intermediaries [Block]
You might invert colours, but you can't invert beliefs [Block]
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 8. Functionalism critique
Could a creature without a brain be in the right functional state for pain? [Block]
Not just any old functional network will have mental states [Block]
In functionalism, what are the special inputs and outputs of conscious creatures? [Block]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability
Physicalism is prejudiced in favour of our neurology, when other systems might have minds [Block]
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / b. Turing Machines
Simple machine-functionalism says mind just is a Turing machine [Block]
A Turing machine, given a state and input, specifies an output and the next state [Block]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
Verificationism about concepts means you can't deny a theory, because you can't have the concept [Papineau]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax
Intuition may say that a complex sentence is ungrammatical, but linguistics can show that it is not [Block]
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / i. Absolute virtues
Egoism is the only evil, love the only good; genuine love produces all the other virtues [Feuerbach]