94 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
2352 | The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam] |
3426 | If one theory is reduced to another, we make fewer independent assumptions about the world [Kim] |
2345 | Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam] |
2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
3431 | Supervenience suggest dependence without reduction (e.g. beauty) [Kim] |
2349 | Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam] |
3437 | 'Physical facts determine all the facts' is the physicalists' slogan [Kim] |
3430 | Resemblance or similarity is the core of our concept of a property [Kim] |
3432 | Is weight a 'resultant' property of water, but transparency an 'emergent' property? [Kim] |
3434 | Emergent properties are 'brute facts' (inexplicable), but still cause things [Kim] |
3436 | Should properties be individuated by their causal powers? [Kim] |
2351 | Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam] |
3406 | Counterfactuals are either based on laws, or on nearby possible worlds [Kim, by PG] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
3368 | Mind is basically qualities and intentionality, but how do they connect? [Kim] |
3392 | Mind is only interesting if it has causal powers [Kim] |
3396 | Experiment requires mental causation [Kim] |
3397 | Beliefs cause other beliefs [Kim] |
3367 | Both thought and language have intentionality [Kim] |
3365 | Intentionality involves both reference and content [Kim] |
3360 | Are pains pure qualia, or do they motivate? [Kim] |
3366 | Pain has no reference or content [Kim] |
3389 | Inverted qualia and zombies suggest experience isn't just functional [Kim] |
3391 | Crosswiring would show that pain and its function are separate [Kim, by PG] |
3422 | Externalism about content makes introspection depend on external evidence [Kim] |
3363 | We often can't decide what emotion, or even sensation, we are experiencing [Kim] |
3412 | How do we distinguish our anger from embarrassment? [Kim] |
3409 | Mental substance causation makes physics incomplete [Kim] |
3399 | If epiphenomenalism were true, we couldn't report consciousness [Kim] |
3390 | Are inverted or absent qualia coherent ideas? [Kim] |
3414 | What could demonstrate that zombies and inversion are impossible? [Kim] |
3359 | Cartesian dualism fails because it can't explain mental causation [Kim] |
3369 | Logical behaviourism translates mental language to behavioural [Kim] |
3428 | Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles [Kim] |
3380 | Are dispositions real, or just a type of explanation? [Kim] |
3370 | What behaviour goes with mathematical beliefs? [Kim] |
3371 | Behaviour depends on lots of mental states together [Kim] |
3372 | Behaviour is determined by society as well as mental states [Kim] |
3373 | Snakes have different pain behaviour from us [Kim] |
3379 | Neurons seem to be very similar and interchangeable [Kim] |
3388 | Machine functionalism requires a Turing machine, causal-theoretical version doesn't [Kim] |
2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
3384 | The person couldn't run Searle's Chinese Room without understanding Chinese [Kim] |
2348 | Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam] |
2332 | Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam] |
2071 | If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam] |
3393 | How do functional states give rise to mental causation? [Kim] |
3439 | Reductionism gets stuck with qualia [Kim] |
3427 | Reductionism is impossible if there aren't any 'bridge laws' between mental and physical [Kim] |
3376 | We can't assess evidence about mind without acknowledging phenomenal properties [Kim] |
3424 | Most modern physicalists are non-reductive property dualists [Kim] |
3362 | Supervenience says all souls are identical, being physically indiscernible [Kim] |
3413 | Zombies and inversion suggest non-reducible supervenience [Kim] |
3374 | Token physicalism isn't reductive; it just says all mental events have some physical properties [Kim] |
3433 | The core of the puzzle is the bridge laws between mind and brain [Kim] |
2344 | If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam] |
3377 | Elimination can either be by translation or by causal explanation [Kim] |
3438 | Reductionists deny new causal powers at the higher level [Kim] |
3440 | Without reductionism, mental causation is baffling [Kim] |
3375 | If an orange image is a brain state, are some parts of the brain orange? [Kim] |
3411 | How do we distinguish our attitudes from one another? [Kim] |
3387 | A culture without our folk psychology would be quite baffling [Kim] |
2074 | Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam] |
3386 | Folk psychology has been remarkably durable [Kim] |
3410 | Folk psychology has adapted to Freudianism [Kim] |
3394 | Maybe folk psychology is a simulation, not a theory [Kim] |
3382 | A machine with a mind might still fail the Turing Test [Kim] |
3383 | The Turing Test is too specifically human in its requirements [Kim] |
3408 | Two identical brain states could have different contents in different worlds [Kim] |
3420 | Two types of water are irrelevant to accounts of behaviour [Kim] |
2343 | Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam] |
3418 | 'Arthritis in my thigh' requires a social context for its content to be meaningful [Kim] |
3416 | Content may match several things in the environment [Kim] |
3421 | Content is best thought of as truth conditions [Kim] |
3417 | Content depends on other content as well as the facts [Kim] |
3419 | Pain, our own existence, and negative existentials, are not external [Kim] |
2346 | Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam] |
2354 | "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam] |
2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
2340 | We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam] |
2341 | Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam] |
2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
3403 | We assume people believe the obvious logical consequences of their known beliefs [Kim] |
3402 | If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction [Kim] |
1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
2342 | "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam] |
3401 | A common view is that causal connections must be instances of a law [Kim] |
3407 | Laws are either 'strict', or they involve a 'ceteris paribus' clause [Kim] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |