Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Concept of a Person' and 'Intending'

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13 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / b. Scepticism of other minds
Maybe induction could never prove the existence of something unobservable [Ayer]
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 1. Self and Consciousness
Consciousness must involve a subject, and only bodies identify subjects [Ayer]
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body
People own conscious states because they are causally related to the identifying body [Ayer]
16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
We identify experiences by their owners, so we can't define owners by their experiences [Ayer]
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / a. Memory is Self
Memory is the best proposal as what unites bundles of experiences [Ayer]
Not all exerience can be remembered, as this would produce an infinite regress [Ayer]
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 6. Body sustains Self
Personal identity can't just be relations of experiences, because the body is needed to identify them [Ayer]
19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
Contradiction is impossible, since only one side of the argument refers to the true facts [Prodicus, by Didymus the Blind]
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 1. Intention to Act / a. Nature of intentions
An intending is a judgement that the action is desirable [Davidson]
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 1. Intention to Act / c. Reducing intentions
Davidson gave up reductive accounts of intention, and said it was a primitive [Davidson, by Wilson/Schpall]
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / c. Teleological Proof critique
People used to think anything helpful to life was a god, as the Egyptians think the Nile a god [Prodicus]
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
The gods are just personified human benefits [Prodicus]
He denied the existence of the gods, saying they are just exaltations of things useful for life [Prodicus]