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Ideas of David Papineau, by Text

[British, b.1947, British, born 1947, based at Cambridge University, and then King's College, London]

1987 Reality and Representation
p.67 p.130 12583 Belief truth-conditions are normal circumstances where the belief is supposed to occur
1993 Philosophical Naturalism
Intro p.1 3509 Externalism may be the key idea in philosophical naturalism
1.2 p.11 3510 Epiphenomenalism is supervenience without physicalism
1.8 p.28 3511 Supervenience requires all mental events to have physical effects
2.2 p.35 3512 If a mental state is multiply realisable, why does it lead to similar behaviour?
3.1 n1 p.55 3513 How does a dualist mind represent, exist outside space, and be transparent to itself?
3.2 p.57 3514 Functionalism needs causation and intentionality to explain actions
4.2 p.106 3515 Knowing what it is like to be something only involves being (physically) that thing
4.4 n10 p.112 3516 The Private Language argument only means people may misjudge their experiences
2002 Thinking about Consciousness
p.193 7884 Most reductive accounts of representation imply broad content
p.221 7890 Maybe a creature is conscious if its mental states represent things in a distinct way
Intro §5 p.7 7850 Thinking about a thing doesn't require activating it
Intro §6 p.8 7853 Causation is based on either events, or facts, or states of affairs
Intro §6 p.8 7851 Consciousness affects bodily movement, so thoughts must be material states
Intro §6 p.8 7852 The only serious mind-brain theories now are identity, token identity, realization and supervenience
Intro §7 p.11 7854 Whether octopuses feel pain is unclear, because our phenomenal concepts are too vague
1.2 p.17 7856 It is absurd to think that physical effects are caused twice, so conscious causes must be physical
1.3 p.19 7858 If causes are basic particulars, this doesn't make conscious and physical properties identical
1.3 p.19 7857 Causes are instantiations of properties by particulars, or they are themselves basic particulars
1.4 p.23 7860 The epiphenomenal relation of mind and brain is a 'causal dangler', unlike anything else
1.4 p.25 7862 Maybe minds do not cause actions, but do cause us to report our decisions
1.4 p.25 7863 If content hinges on matters outside of you, how can it causally influence your actions?
1.5 p.27 7864 Maybe mind and body do overdetermine acts, but are linked (for some reason)
1.8 p.36 7865 Supervenience can be replaced by identifying mind with higher-order or disjunctional properties
2.2 p.51 7866 Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts
3.7 p.88 7869 Truth conditions in possible worlds can't handle statements about impossibilities
3.7 p.88 7868 Thought content is possible worlds that make the thought true; if that includes the actual world, it's true
4.2 n1 p.98 7870 Role concepts either name the realising property, or the higher property constituting the role
4.6 p.113 7871 Perceptual concepts can't just refer to what causes classification
4.6 p.113 7872 Teleosemantics equates meaning with the item the concept is intended to track
4.7 p.115 7873 Young children can see that other individuals sometimes have false beliefs
4.7 p.115 7874 Do we understand other minds by simulation-theory, or by theory-theory?
5.3 p.147 7879 Mind-brain reduction is less explanatory, because phenomenal concepts lack causal roles
7.01 p.175 7881 Accept ontological monism, but conceptual dualism; we think in a different way about phenomenal thought
7.01 p.176 7882 Researching phenomenal consciousness is peculiar, because the concepts involved are peculiar
7.02 p.178 7883 Verificationists tend to infer indefinite answers from undecidable questions
7.11 p.205 7885 The 'actualist' HOT theory says consciousness comes from actual higher judgements of mental states
7.11 p.206 7886 Actualist HOT theories imply that a non-conscious mental event could become conscious when remembered
7.13 p.210 7887 States are conscious if they could be the subject of higher-order mental judgements
7.13 p.212 7888 Higher-order judgements may be possible where the subject denies having been conscious
7.13 p.215 7889 Our concept of consciousness is crude, and lacks theoretical articulation
7.16 p.227 7891 We can’t decide what 'conscious' means, so it is undecidable whether cats are conscious
A 6 p.253 20974 Modern biological research, especially into the cell, has revealed no special new natural forces
A 7 n15 p.255 20975 Quantum 'wave collapses' seem to violate conservation of energy
App 3 p.240 20970 Determinism is possible without a complete physics, if mental forces play a role
App 3 n8 p.243 20971 Weak reduction of mind is to physical causes; strong reduction is also to physical laws
App 7 p.255 7892 The completeness of physics is needed for mind-brain identity
App 7 p.256 20976 The completeness of physics cannot be proved
2006 Phenomenal and Perceptual Concepts
p.80 16369 There is a single file per object, memorised, reactivated, consolidated and expanded [Recanati]
2010 Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge
§1 p.1 13407 All worthwhile philosophy is synthetic theorizing, evaluated by experience
§1 p.1 13406 A priori knowledge is analytic - the structure of our concepts - and hence unimportant
§3 p.3 13408 Intuition and thought-experiments embody substantial information about the world
§4 p.4 13409 Our best theories may commit us to mathematical abstracta, but that doesn't justify the commitment
§6 p.6 13410 Verificationism about concepts means you can't deny a theory, because you can't have the concept