84 ideas
| 19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
| A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
| 4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
| 2392 | Properties supervene if you can't have one without the other [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties supervene on A-properties if no two possible situations are identical with respect to their A-properties while differing in their B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would have thought that if this condition is achieved, then we could go on to say B-properties supervene on A because A is causing them. We shouldn't be shy about this. Personally I think the Bs are necessary. |
| 2393 | Logical supervenience is when one set of properties must be accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties logically supervene on A-properties if no two logically possible situations are identical with respect to their A-properties but distinct with respect to their B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the gap into which Chalmers wants to slip zombies. He's wrong. He thinks that because he can imagine Bs without As, that this makes their separation logically possible. No doubt he can imagine a bonfire on the moon. |
| 2394 | Natural supervenience is when one set of properties is always accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: B-properties supervene naturally on A-properties if any two naturally possible situations with the same A-properties have the same B-properties. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Since it is hard to imagine a healthy working brain failing to produce consciousness, given the current laws of nature, almost everyone (except extreme dualists) must concede that they are naturally supervenient. I wonder why they are. |
| 2398 | Reduction requires logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Reductive explanation requires a logical supervenience relation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.3) | |
| A reaction: Why can't you say that in another world there are zombies, but in this world the mind is explained by its natural supervenience on the brain (given the current natural laws)? Driving on the left in Britain is explained by current laws. |
| 16048 | Physicalism says in any two physically indiscernible worlds the positive facts are the same [Chalmers, by Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Chalmers says that physicalism is true in a world w just in case every positive fact that obtains in w also obtains in any world physically indiscernible from w. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.1) by Karen Bennett - Supervenience | |
| A reaction: [Bennett summarises Chalmers' argument on pp.39-40] Chalmers says negative facts depend on the world's limits, which aren't part of the physical facts of the world. |
| 2401 | All facts are either physical, experiential, laws of nature, second-order final facts, or indexical facts about me [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Facts about the world are exhausted by physical facts, conscious experiences, laws of nature, a second-order that's-all fact, and perhaps an indexical fact about my location. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) |
| 7720 | Two things can only resemble one another in some respect, and that may reintroduce a universal [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A problem for resemblance nominalism is that in saying that two particulars 'resemble' one another, it is necessary to specify in what respect they do so (e.g. colour, shape, size), and this threatens to reintroduce what appears to be talk of universals. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: We see resemblance between faces instantly, long before we can specify the 'respects' of the resemblance. This supports the Humean hard-wired view of resemblance, rather than some appeal to Platonic universals. |
| 7712 | On substances, Leibniz emphasises unity, Spinoza independence, Locke relations to qualities [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Later philosophers emphasised different strands of Aristotle's concept of substances: Leibniz (in his theory of monads) emphasised their unity; Spinoza emphasised their ontological independence; Locke emphasised their role in relation to qualities. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Note that this Aristotelian idea had not been jettisoned in the late seventeenth century, unlike other Aristotelianisms. I think it is only with the success of atomism in chemistry that the idea of substance is forced to recede. |
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 16424 | Strong metaphysical necessity allows fewer possible worlds than logical necessity [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The hypothesized modality of 'strong' metaphysical necessity says there are fewer metaphysically possible worlds than there are logically possible worlds, and the a posteriori necessities can stem from factors independent of the semantics of terms. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers sets this up in order to reject it. He notes that it involves a big gap between conceivability and possibility. If a world is logically possible but metaphysically impossible, then it is impossible, surely? |
| 16425 | Metaphysical necessity is a bizarre, brute and inexplicable constraint on possibilities [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Strong metaphysical necessities will put constraints on the space of possible worlds that are brute and inexplicable. That's fine for our world, but bizarre for possible worlds. The realm of the possible has no room for such arbitrary constraint. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: He would say this, given that he wants zombies to be possible, just because he thinks he can conceive of them. Presumably he thinks a raging bonfire with no flames is also possible. His objection here is weak. |
| 16426 | How can we know the metaphysical impossibilities; the a posteriori only concerns this world [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If some worlds are metaphysically impossible, it seems that we could never know it. By assumption the information is not available a priori, and a posteriori information only tells us about our world. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: You need essentialism to reply to this. If you discover the essence of something, you can predict its possibilities. You discover the natures of the powers and dispositions of actuality. |
| 13956 | Kripke is often taken to be challenging a priori insights into necessity [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: At various points in this book, I use a priori methods to gain insight into necessity; this is the sort of thing that Kripke's account is often taken to challenge. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers uses his 2-D approach to split off an a priori part from Kripke's a posterior part of our insight into necessity. |
| 13963 | Maybe logical possibility does imply conceivability - by an ideal mind [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If we understand conceivability as conceivability-in-principle (by a superbeing?) then it is plausible that logical possibility of a world implies conceivability of the world, so logical possibility of a statement implies its conceivability. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: I see nothing incoherent in the possibility that there might be aspects of existence which are utterly inconceivable to any conscious mind. Infinity might be a start, if an 'infinite' mind were impossible. |
| 2407 | One can wrongly imagine two things being non-identical even though they are the same (morning/evening star) [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Just because one can imagine that A and B are not identical, it does not follow that A and B are not identical (think of the morning star and the evening star). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) |
| 5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
| 2390 | We attribute beliefs to people in order to explain their behaviour [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Belief is something of an explanatory construct: we attribute beliefs to others largely in order to explain their behaviour. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.3) |
| 11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
| 2397 | 'Perception' means either an action or a mental state [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: 'Perception' can be used to refer either to the act of perceiving, or the internal state that arises as a result. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.2) |
| 2422 | The structure of the retina has already simplified the colour information which hits it [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: In vision three varieties of cones abstract out information according to the amount of light present in various overlapping wavelength ranges. Immediately, many distinctions present in the original light wave are lost. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.3) |
| 7710 | Perception is a mode of belief-acquisition, and does not involve sensation [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: According to one school of thought, perception is simply a mode of belief-acquisition,and there is no reason to suppose that any element of sensation is literally involved in perception. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Blindsight would be an obvious supporting case for this view. I think this point is crucial in understanding what is wrong with Jackson's 'knowledge argument' (involving Mary, see Idea 7377). Sensation gives knowledge, so it can't be knowledge. |
| 7711 | Science requires a causal theory - perception of an object must be an experience caused by the object [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Only a causal theory of perception will respect the facts of physiology and physics ...meaning a theory which maintains that for a subject to perceive a physical object the subject should enjoy some appropriate perceptual experience caused by the object. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: If I hallucinate an object, then presumably I am not allowed to say that I 'perceive' it, but that seems to make the causal theory an idle tautology. If we are in virtual reality then there aren't any objects. |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
| 3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
| 2396 | Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.2) |
| 12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
| 2426 | Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'grain problem' for materialism was raised by Sellars: how could an experience be identical with a vast collection of physiological events, given the homogeneity of the former, and the fine-grainedness of the latter? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.5) | |
| A reaction: An interesting question, but it doesn't sound like a huge problem, given the number of connections in the brain. If the brain were expanded (as Leibniz suggested), the 'grains' might start to appear. We can't propose a 'deceived homunculus' to solve it. |
| 2391 | Can we be aware but not conscious? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is always accompanied by awareness, but awareness as I have described it need not be accompanied by consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.5) | |
| A reaction: One should consult Chalmers, but he is stretching the English word 'awareness' rather far. This road leads to saying that thermostats are 'aware', and information is aware of its content, which is probably very wrong indeed. Compare Idea 2415. |
| 2412 | Can we explain behaviour without consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: However the metaphysics of causation turns out, it seems relatively straightforward that a physical explanation of behaviour can be given that neither appeals to nor implies the existence of consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers needs this to support his idea that zombies are possible, but it strikes me as implausible. I find it inconceivable that our behaviour would be unchanged if we retained 'awareness' but lost consciousness. Try visiting an art gallery. |
| 2386 | Hard Problem: why brains experience things [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The Hard Problem is: why is all this brain processing accompanied by an experienced inner life? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The word 'accompanied' is interesting. A very epiphenomenal word! The answer to this neo-dualist question may be: if you do enough complex representational brain processing at high speed, it adds up to some which we call 'experience'. |
| 2416 | What turns awareness into consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Given the necessity of awareness, any candidate for an underlying law will have the form "Awareness plus something gives rise to consciousness" (…but simplicity suggests leaving out the 'something'). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.6.5) | |
| A reaction: You can't leave out the 'something' if you think awareness without consciousness is possible. The phenomenon of blindsight suggests that a whole extra brain area must come into play to produce the consciousness. It may not have a distinct ontology. |
| 2423 | Going down the scale, where would consciousness vanish? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Moving down the scale from lizards to slugs, there doesn't seem much reason to suppose that phenomenology should wink out while a reasonably complex perceptual psychology persists….and if you move on down to thermostats, where would it wink out? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.4) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem much of an argument, particularly if its conclusion is that there is phenomenology in thermostats. When day changes into night, where does it 'wink out'? Are we to conclude that night doesn't exist, or that day doesn't exist? |
| 2403 | Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Even if we knew every last detail about the physics of the universe, that information would not lead us to postulate the existence of conscious experience. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.3) | |
| A reaction: I find this a very strange claim. Given that the biggest gap in our physical knowledge is that concerning the brain and consciousness, Chalmer is no position to say this. Why shouldn't a physical revelation suddenly make consciousness inevitable? |
| 2400 | Is intentionality just causal connections? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Intentional properties should be analyzable in terms of causal connections to behaviour and the environment….so there is no separate ontological problem of intentionality. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) | |
| A reaction: There could only be no ontological problem if intentional states were purely physical. Everything is made of something (I presume). |
| 2389 | Sometimes we don't notice our pains [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: What of the fact that we speak of pains that last for a day, even though there are times that they are not conscious? | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This is hardly proof that there are non-conscious pains. Otherwise we might say we have a pain even after it has left us for good (because it might return), which seems daft. Not a crucial issue. The word 'pain' has two uses… |
| 2419 | Why should qualia fade during silicon replacement? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If parts of the brain are gradually replaced, perhaps by silicon chips, ...the most reasonable hypothesis is that qualia do not fade at all. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.3) | |
| A reaction: As it stands this could either assert dualism or functionalism. Personally I think the most reasonable hypothesis is that qualia would fade. Chalmers needs more imagination (or less?). What is it like to experience Alzheimer's Disease? |
| 2402 | It seems possible to invert qualia [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It seems entirely coherent that experiences could be inverted while physical structure is duplicated exactly. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: Strange how what seems 'entirely coherent' to a leading philosopher strikes me as totally incoherent. I would have thought it was only coherent to a dualist. I don't believe God makes the physics on Thursday, and adds experiences on Friday. |
| 2415 | In blindsight both qualia and intentionality are missing [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: In blindsight, the information does not qualify as directly available for global control, and subjects are not truly aware of the information. The lack of experience corresponds directly to a lack of awareness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.6.3) | |
| A reaction: Blindsight patients give correct answers about objects in their visual field, and you need 'global control' to speak the truth, even if you lack confidence in what you are saying. Philosophers should not be frightened of blindsight. Cf Idea 2391. |
| 2414 | When distracted we can totally misjudge our own experiences [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If one is distracted one may make judgements about one's experiences that are quite false. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.5) | |
| A reaction: Of course, when one is distracted one can make mistakes about anything. This does imply that if there is indeed infallible knowledge to be had from introspection, it will at least require full concentration to achieve it. Cf Idea 8883. |
| 7714 | Personal identity is a problem across time (diachronic) and at an instant (synchronic) [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: There is the question of the identity of a person over or across time ('diachronic' personal identity), and there is also the question of what makes for personal identity at a time ('synchronic' personal identity). | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be the first and most important distinction in the philosophy of personal identity, and they regularly get run together. Locke, for example, has an account of synchronic identity, which is often ignored. It applies to objects too. |
| 2409 | Maybe dualist interaction is possible at the quantum level? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The only form of interactionist dualism that has seemed even remotely tenable in the contemporary picture is one that exploits certain properties of quantum mechanics. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.4) | |
| A reaction: I think he is bluffing. No doubt quantum mechanics offers many intriguing possibilities, such as the interaction of many worlds within the mind, but I am not aware that anything non-physical is ever postulated. Physicists don't deal in the non-physical. |
| 2411 | Supervenience makes interaction laws possible [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: There is an objection to dualism that it cannot explain how the physical and the nonphysical interact, but the answer is simple on a natural supervenience framework - they interact by virtue of psychophysical laws (…which are as eternal as physics). | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.6) | |
| A reaction: There are different sorts of laws. What Chalmers is hoping for would be a mere regularity, like the connection of cancer to smoking, but the objection is that the discovery of causal mechanisms, to give truly explanatory laws, is simply impossible. |
| 2424 | It is odd if experience is a very recent development [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It would be odd for a fundamental property like experience to be instantiated for the first time only relatively late in the history of the universe, and even then only in occasional complex systems. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.8.4) | |
| A reaction: The assumption of this remark is that experience is 'fundamental', which seems to claim that it is a separate ontological category. Maybe, but experience doesn't seem to be a thing. 'Process' seems a better term, and that is not a novelty in the universe. |
| 2413 | If I can have a zombie twin, my own behaviour doesn't need consciousness [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of my zombie twin's claims does not depend on consciousness, as there is none in his world. It follows that the explanation of my claims is also independent of the existence of consciousness. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Epiphenomenalism says my accounts of my consciousness are NOT because of my consciousness (which seems daft). Chalmers here gives a very good reason why we should not be a friend of philosophical zombies. |
| 2417 | Does consciousness arise from fine-grained non-reductive functional organisation? [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: I claim that conscious experience arises from fine-grained functional organisation….. we might call it 'non-reductive functionalism'. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Chalmers' final position. If consciousness is 'emergent' and cannot be reduced, what has fine-grained got to do with it? I take 'fine-grained' to be a hint at why the brain becomes conscious. Fine-grained functions cause something. |
| 2428 | Maybe the whole Chinese Room understands Chinese, though the person doesn't [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Opponents typically reply to Searle's argument by conceding that the person in the room does not understand Chinese, and arguing that the understanding should instead be attributed to the system consisting of the person and the pieces of paper. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 4.9.4) | |
| A reaction: Searle himself spotted this reply. It seems plausible to say that a book contains 'understanding', so the translation dictionary may have it. A good Room would cope with surprise questions. |
| 2418 | The Chinese Mind doesn't seem conscious, but then nor do brains from outside [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: While it may be intuitively implausible that Block's 'mind' made of the population of China would give rise to conscious experience, it is equally intuitively implausible that a brain should give rise to experience. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 3.7.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like good support for functionalism, but I am more inclined to see it as a critique of 'intuition' as a route to truth where minds are concerned. Intuition isn't designed for that sort of work. |
| 2406 | H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about that [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Searle argues that H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about liquidity. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Good! |
| 2405 | Perhaps consciousness is physically based, but not logically required by that base [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It remains plausible that consciousness arises from a physical basis, even though it is not entailed by that basis. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find this totally implausible. Since every other property or process in the known universe seems to be entailed by its physical basis, I don't expect the mind to be an exception. |
| 2395 | Zombies imply natural but not logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It seems logically possible that a creature physically identical to a conscious creature might have no conscious experiences (a zombie)…so conscious experience supervenes naturally but not logically on the physical. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: "It seems possible" isn't much of an argument. This claim by Chalmers has been a great incentive to reassess what is or isn't possible. Can a brain lack consciousness? Can a tree fall over silently? Can cyanide stop poisoning us? |
| 9318 | Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Chalmers, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| Full Idea: In Chalmers's non-reductive theory, phenomenal consciousness is treated as a fundamental feature of the world, that cannot be explained in nonphenomenal terms. Theory is still possible, in the regularities of interaction. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996]) by U Kriegel / K Williford - Intro to 'Self-Representational Consciousness' n2 | |
| A reaction: I can't make much sense of this view without a backing of panpsychism. How could a 'fundamental' feature of reality only begin to appear when life evolves on one particular planet? But 'panpsychism' is a warning of big misunderstandings. See Idea 2424. |
| 2404 | Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: It is consistent with the physical facts about a mouse that it has conscious experiences, and it is consistent with the physical facts that it does not. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.4) | |
| A reaction: No. It is consistent with our KNOWLEDGE of a mouse that it may or may not be conscious. I take this to be the key error of Chalmers, which led him to the mistaken idea that zombies are possible. The usual confusion of ontology and epistemology…. |
| 2429 | Temperature (etc.) is agreed to be reducible, but it is multiply realisable [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Many physical phenomena that are often taken to be paradigms of reducibility (e.g. temperature) are in fact multiply realizable. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], n 2.20) | |
| A reaction: So multiple realisability isn't such a big problem for physicalism. I take it, though, that all hot things have some physical type of event in common (a level of molecular energy). Finding the level of commonality is the challenge. |
| 23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
| 18403 | Indexicals may not be objective, but they are a fact about the world as I see it [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Even if the indexical is not an objective fact about the world, it is a fact about the world as I find it, and it is the world as I find it that needs explanation. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.5) | |
| A reaction: Chalmers treats them as important, whereas the way he expresses it could make them eliminable, if the world seen by him is eliminable. |
| 7715 | Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: 'Mentalese' would be neither conventional nor a means of public communication so that even to call it a language is seriously misleading. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It is, however, supposed to contain symbolic representations which are then used as tokens for computation, so it seems close to a language, if (for example) symbolic logic or mathematics were accepted as languages. But who understands it? |
| 7722 | If meaning is mental pictures, explain "the cat (or dog!) is NOT on the mat" [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If meaning is a private mental picture, what does 'the cat is NOT on the mat' mean, and how does it differ from 'the dog is not on the mat?'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Not insurmountable. We picture an empty mat, combined with a cat (or whatever) located somewhere else. A mental 'picture' of something shouldn't be contrued as a single image in a neat black frame. |
| 14708 | Rationalist 2D semantics posits necessary relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility [Chalmers, by Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Chalmers seeks a rationalist interpretation of the 2D framework, situated in the tradition which posits a golden triangle of necessary constitutive relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 2.3.1 | |
| A reaction: The first prize of the project is to get some sort of apriori knowledge about these crucial relations. I suppose the superduper prize is to get apriori knowledge of the possibilities of the world, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that. |
| 13958 | The 'primary intension' is non-empirical, and fixes extensions based on the actual-world reference [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'primary intension' of a concept is a function from worlds to extensions reflecting the way the actual-world reference is fixed, ...which is independent of empirical factors. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This bit is a priori because the concept picks out something, no matter what its essence turns out to be. I take it to be a priori because it is stipulative. |
| 2399 | Meaning has split into primary ("watery stuff"), and secondary counterfactual meaning ("H2O") [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The single Fregean intension has fragmented into two: a primary intension ("watery stuff") that fixes reference in the actual world, and a secondary intension ("H2O") that picks out reference in counterfactual possible worlds. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: No one actually performs this schizoid double operation, so this is theory disconnected from life. What is the role of 'H2O' in the actual world, and 'watery stuff' in the others? |
| 13959 | The 'secondary intension' is determined by rigidifying (as H2O) the 'water' picked out in the actual world [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: The 'secondary intension' of 'water' picks out the water (H2O) in all worlds. ..It is determined by first evaluating the primary intension at the actual world, and then rigidifying it so that the same sort of thing is picked out in all possible worlds. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: No wonder Soames calls 2-D semantics 'Byzantine'. If we don't actually do this psychologically, what exactly is Chalmers describing? Is this revisionary semantics - i.e. how we ought to do it if we want to talk about the world properly? |
| 13957 | Primary and secondary intensions are the a priori (actual) and a posteriori (counterfactual) aspects of meaning [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Primary intension picks out a referent in a world considered as actual; secondary considers it as counterfactual. ...(62) We can think of the primary and secondary intensions as the a priori and a posteriori aspects of meaning, respectively. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: Primary intension is a priori because, it seems, it is stipulative ('water' means 'the watery stuff'), whereas the secondary intension (in counterfactual worlds) is empirical ('water' is used to refer to H2O/XYZ). We get internalism and externalism. |
| 13961 | We have 'primary' truth-conditions for the actual world, and derived 'secondary' ones for counterfactual worlds [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: 'Primary' truth-conditions tell us how the actual world has to be for an utterance of the statement to be true in that world; ....'secondary' truth-conditions give the truth-value in counterfactual worlds, given that the actual world turned out some way. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the reinterpretation of the truth-conditions account in terms of two-dimensional semantics. My first reaction is not very positive. Why can't we fix our references in counterfactual worlds, and then apply them to the actual (like inventions)? |
| 13962 | Two-dimensional semantics gives a 'primary' and 'secondary' proposition for each statement [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: If we see a proposition as a function from possible worlds to truth-values, then the two sets of truth-conditions yield two propositions associated with any statement. A 'primary' for those which express a truth, and 'secondary' for counterfactual truth. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is where 2-D semantics becomes increasingly 'Byzantine'. Intuition and introspection don't seem to offer me two different propositions for every sentence I utter. I can't see this theory catching on, even if it is technically beautiful. |
| 11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
| 13960 | In two-dimensional semantics we have two aspects to truth in virtue of meaning [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Both the 'primary' and 'secondary' intension qualify as truths in virtue of meaning; they are simply true in virtue of different aspects of meaning. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 1.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of two-dimensional semantics, which has split Fregean sense into an a priori and an a posterior part. Chalmers is trying to hang onto the idea that we might see necessity as largely analytic. |
| 6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 16427 | Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible [Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Presumably it is in God's powers, when creating the world, to do anything that is logically possible. | |
| From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't really understand why anyone would say that the only constraint on God is logic. Presumably no logic is breached if God places in object simultaneously in two spacetime locations, but it would be an impressive achievement. |
| 22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
| A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |