Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'The Nature of Mental States' and 'The Mystery of Consciousness'

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25 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
Reduction is either by elimination, or by explanation [Searle]
Eliminative reduction needs a gap between appearance and reality, as in sunsets [Searle]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 3. Types of Properties
A property is 'emergent' if it is caused by elements of a system, when the elements lack the property [Searle]
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
Explanation of how we unify our mental stimuli into a single experience is the 'binding problem' [Searle]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / a. Consciousness
A system is either conscious or it isn't, though the intensity varies a lot [Searle]
Consciousness has a first-person ontology, which only exists from a subjective viewpoint [Searle]
There isn't one consciousness (information-processing) which can be investigated, and another (phenomenal) which can't [Searle]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind
Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / a. Nature of qualia
The use of 'qualia' seems to imply that consciousness and qualia are separate [Searle]
16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker]
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 2. Potential Behaviour
Dispositions need mental terms to define them [Putnam]
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 4. Behaviourism Critique
Total paralysis would mean that there were mental states but no behaviour at all [Putnam]
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 1. Functionalism
Functional states correlate with AND explain pain behaviour [Putnam]
Functionalism is compatible with dualism, as pure mind could perform the functions [Putnam]
Is pain a functional state of a complete organism? [Putnam]
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 7. Chinese Room
I now think syntax is not in the physics, but in the eye of the beholder [Searle]
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 1. Reductionism critique
Consciousness has a first-person ontology, so it cannot be reduced without omitting something [Searle]
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 3. Property Dualism
Temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy, but they are two different concepts [Putnam]
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 4. Emergentism
There is non-event causation between mind and brain, as between a table and its solidity [Searle]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
The pattern of molecules in the sea is much more complex than the complexity of brain neurons [Searle]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / a. Physicalism critique
If tree rings contain information about age, then age contains information about rings [Searle]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability
Neuroscience does not support multiple realisability, and tends to support identity [Polger on Putnam]
If humans and molluscs both feel pain, it can't be a single biological state [Putnam, by Kim]
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / a. Nature of emotions
Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch]