30 ideas
3123 | Science is in the business of carving nature at the joints [Segal] |
3125 | Psychology studies the way rationality links desires and beliefs to causality [Segal] |
15941 | For intuitionists excluded middle is an outdated historical convention [Brouwer] |
18247 | Brouwer saw reals as potential, not actual, and produced by a rule, or a choice [Brouwer, by Shapiro] |
7508 | Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker] |
3105 | Is 'Hesperus = Phosphorus' metaphysically necessary, but not logically or epistemologically necessary? [Segal] |
3106 | If claims of metaphysical necessity are based on conceivability, we should be cautious [Segal] |
7510 | Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker] |
7513 | Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker] |
3113 | The success and virtue of an explanation do not guarantee its truth [Segal] |
7509 | Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker] |
7511 | Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker] |
7512 | There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG] |
3112 | Folk psychology is ridiculously dualist in its assumptions [Segal] |
3108 | If 'water' has narrow content, it refers to both H2O and XYZ [Segal] |
3110 | Humans are made of H2O, so 'twins' aren't actually feasible [Segal] |
3124 | Externalists can't assume old words refer to modern natural kinds [Segal] |
3117 | Concepts can survive a big change in extension [Segal] |
3104 | Must we relate to some diamonds to understand them? [Segal] |
3103 | Maybe content involves relations to a language community [Segal] |
3111 | Externalism can't explain concepts that have no reference [Segal] |
3109 | If content is external, so are beliefs and desires [Segal] |
3116 | Maybe experts fix content, not ordinary users [Segal] |
3121 | If content is narrow, my perfect twin shares my concepts [Segal] |
3118 | If thoughts ARE causal, we can't explain how they cause things [Segal] |
3119 | Even 'mass' cannot be defined in causal terms [Segal] |
7505 | Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker] |
7516 | In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker] |
7515 | All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker] |
7514 | Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker] |