| 24506 | Philosophers can employ different abstraction to those used in science [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy need not commit itself to the same abstractions as science. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: Correct, and important. Chirimuuta argues that science inescapably uses simplifying abstractions which avoid the actual complexity of nature. Hence any discipline can use its own abstractions, without deferring to science as a senior partner. |
| 24478 | Methodology can't skew results if multiple evidence converges [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Where one has five to ten sources of converging evidence, the probability of any particular methodological assumption skewing the results falls considerably. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 06) | |
| A reaction: There is multiple evidence from one individual, and then groups of individuals sharing evidence. It is absurd to deny considerable objectivity when lots of evidence converges. |
| 24470 | Abstract reasoning is rooted in the sensorimotor inferences of the body [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual metaphors permit the use of sensorimotor inference for abstract conceptualisation and reason. This is the method by which abstract reason is embodied. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Conception') | |
| A reaction: They argue that metaphors form the crucial bridges between instinctive bodily reasoning ('behaving sensibly' in my terminology) and abstract thought. I think they are right, despite an overemphasis on metaphor. |
| 24501 | Dupré sees all organisms as processes, not entities [Dupré, by Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: John Dupré has argued that all living organisms should be characterised as processes rather than as entities. | |
| From: report of John Dupré (The Disorder of Things [1993]) by Mazviita Chirimuuta - The Brain Abstracted 7.1 | |
| A reaction: Not unreasonable, if that is how we understand a river. But then where is the boundary between processes and entities (given, for example, quantum fluctuations)? I think it is mad, or at least inconvenient, to give up on entities. I am not an entity? |
| 24477 | We mostly categorise by engagement with the world [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Most of our categories …are formed automatically and unconsciously as a result of functioning in the world. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 03) | |
| A reaction: I think this was Aristotle's view, since he just identifies the categories which our minds utilise, with no thought for their logic or their malleability. I take it for granted that all animals categorise their environment into types of entity. |
| 24466 | The traditional view is that nature has a unique category structure [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: The traditional western view is that the world has a unique category structure, independent of human beings. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Traditional') | |
| A reaction: This must have an underpinning of divine Creation. It is still, I think, possible to hold a non-religious view of this sort, if it is seen as more relaxed and flexible. It seems to hold quite well for sub-atomic particles, but less strongly for animals. |
| 24484 | Theories seem intuitive because they are based on metaphors embedded in a culture [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Whenever a philosophical theory seems intuitive to us, it is primarily because it is based on metaphors that are deeply embedded in our cognitive unconscious and are widely shared within a culture. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 24) | |
| A reaction: I think they overemphasise the role of metaphor (rather than mere connections), but there is obviously some truth here. But when I assess my intuitions about a theory I assess the world, as well as my internal inclinations. |
| 24492 | Science consists entirely of conceptually moulding nature to suit human purposes [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Science is to be conceived as a project of domestication in which wild things and processes are altered, reconstructed, so that they are knowable and usable for some people's purposes. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: She seems to think that purely disintested truth-seeking is either non-existent or totally hopeless, which I take to be false. Nevertheless there is obviously a great deal of truth in her claim. I am surprised that she never once mentions Peirce. |
| 24505 | For empiricists, machines with huge data could become better scientists than humans [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: If one adheres to an empiricist epistemology of science, one has no grounds to hold that data-hungry machines will not eventually be better scientists than human beings. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 8.3.3) | |
| A reaction: This is if you think that the aims of science are entirely technological, and aim mainly at classification and prediction. But an empiricist can equally see the aim of science as full understanding, achieved via explanation. |
| 24493 | Idealised modelling is better seen as mathematised simplification [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Simplification through mathematisation is the process that normally goes under the heading of modelling and idealisation in philosophy of science. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Her main thesis is that science can't avoid simplifying nature in its attempts to explain it. I would have thought that some idealised modelling involves mechanisms rather than mathematics. |
| 24491 | Perspectival pluralism says varied simplifications produce diverse descriptions of things [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Perspectival pluralism in science sees many approaches to the same systems, but resting on incompatibile simplifying assumptions, reesulting in unrecognisably different descriptions. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 2.1.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Her great emphasis is on the inescapability of simplifying assumptions, which tend to be subjective and pragmatic, as well as diverse. She makes a particularly good case for this fact in neuroscience. |
| 24504 | With big data, models no longer extrapolate from a sample, but mould onto the given data [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: In the era of big data, the idea of devising simple models that extrapolate beyond a sample is no more. Instead machine learning generates direct fit models that mould themselves to the contours of any large data set. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 8.3.1) | |
| A reaction: Illuminating. It implies that the earlier models had an explanatory motivation which is now disappearing. She says the new models no longer offer any understanding. The whole of our reality is becoming statistical? Share-dealing pioneered this. |
| 24487 | To build theories and models, individuality must be blurred out in categorisation [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: For the purposes of building theories and models that predict and explain (brain) responses, individuality must be blurred out and a uniformity of categorisations must be imposed. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: She asserts this about brain science, but also about all of science. No two electrons are identical, because they all in different states of energy and relations. I agree. The question then is 'to what extent' are categorised individuals the same? |
| 24490 | In science we cannoy distinguish the contribution of the knower from what is known [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: The guiding idea of 'haptic realism' is scenarions of cyclical interaction, where it is impossible to extract the contribution of the knower, on the one hand, and the target of knowledge on the other. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 2.1.1) | |
| A reaction: 'Haptic' realism is understood as more tactile than visual, with a bigger gap between experience and reality. She explicitly invokes Kant as the main source of her view. I am more robustly realist that this, but she makes a good case. |
| 24497 | The more detailed a causal explanation is, the less it can be generalised [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Increases in the detail given in a causal explanation come with losses in its ability to generalise. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 6.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Her thesis is that the necessary simplifications of nature make science incapable of ever given the full truth about it. Consider how we discuss car accidents, for example. Seems right. |
| 24488 | Reduction gets stuck when the isolated individuals can't explain the collective [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Reduction runs aground when the accumulation of knowledge concerning the parts in isolation is not helping to explain the behaviour of the collective. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Good. She has in mind the brain, but global weather and ecology are similar. I hold a reductive physicalist view of the brain, while seeing no prospect at all of giving a full reductive explanation of it. |
| 24485 | The brain has 170 billion cells, with more in spine and intestines [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Around 85 billion neurons and the same number of gila cells are housed in the human skull, with undreds of millions more neurons in the spinal cord and intestines. …Their dendrites themselves are minature neural networks. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The beginning of her nice concise summary of the mind-boggling complexity of the human brain. |
| 24486 | Each brain synapse contains around 2,500 types of protein [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: It is estimated that there are 2,000-3,000 different types of protein in each synapse of the brain. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Just when her account of the brain's complexity boggles you, she adds another stupendous layer of complexity. Her case that the brain to too complex to ever understand is overwhelming. |
| 24489 | Seeing brains as infinitely complex makes more sense than seeing them as simple [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: With its billions of non-identical neuroons and trillions of ever-changing synapses, to concede that the brain is infinitely complex must be more realistic than to hope that is is approximately simple | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 1.5.3) | |
| A reaction: Splendid advice! They are obviously both wrong, but as a heuristic we will make much more progress in philosophy if we just say the brain's complexity is eternally beyond our grasp. I think 21st century intellectual life begins when this thought meets AI. |
| 24495 | Brain research should reject sharp boundaries, excessive simplification, and neglect of animals [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: The rejection of the classical approach to brain research rejects the idea that brain areas are strictly specialised (e.g. sensory or motor), worries about laboratory simplifications, and asserts the importance of animal behaviour. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: As an outsider, I totally approve of all three of these developments. If we neglect animals, we overemphasise language (as happened in 20th century philosophy). |
| 24500 | Brains largely retain the same set of neurons throughout life [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Unlike the liver, for example, our brains do rely on the same set of neurons throughout life. (n4. though we now know that some neurons do die, and adult neurogenesis does occur in certain brain areas). | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: Despite this, she strongly emphasises that every brain is in a continual state of change. It might help, though, to explain why a person can vividly remember an event for more than ninety years. But axons and dendrites continually change. |
| 24502 | The brain is endlessly complex, and hence is not knowable by us [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: The brain-in-itself is not knowable in its endless, Heraclitean complexity because no finite knowers would be able to theorise it completely and accurately. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: This is her basic thesis, which I take to be correct. Our lives would go better if the entire human race accepted this fact. One of the attractions of dualism is that the disembodied mind can be seen as simpler, and more understandable. |
| 24471 | Conceptual metaphors project our basic experience, and thus create abstract reasoning [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: By allowing us to project beyond our basic-level experience, conceptual metaphor makes possible science, philosophy, and all other forms of abstract reasoning. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Conception') | |
| A reaction: The authors share my view that we, in some way, 'project' our bodily relationship to nature, thus engendering a world of abstraction. They rely wholly on metaphorical thinking, where I emphasise a wider range of mental 'faculties' to do the job. |
| 24476 | We can't know our own minds, because most thought is unconscious [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Because most of our thought is unconscious, a priori philosophising provides no privileged direct access to knowledge of our own mind. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 01) | |
| A reaction: The authors cite modern neuroscience for this view, but I agree with it simply from attempts at introspection. My consciousness finds my other mental activities quite bewildering. |
| 24482 | The Subject is the focus of living, and the Selves are related images [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between the Subject, and one or more Selves. The Subject is the locus of consciousness, experience, reason, will, and our 'essence' (or true Self). The Selves consist of our bodies, social roles, histories and so on. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 13) | |
| A reaction: [Based on Lakoff/Becker 1992 research] The distinction is never made clear, but seems plausible. It would make the Subject a real entity (as the brain's central control) and the Selves a set of fictions. |
| 24467 | Traditionally, free will is implied by dualism, and needs reason to be fully conscious [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Traditionally, will is the application of reason to action, and because our reason is disembodied - free of bodily constraints - will is radically free. Reason is seen as conscious, because unconscious reason for actions wouldn't be free. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Radical') | |
| A reaction: A nice concise summary of traditional thinking on free will. It arises entirely from the assumption of dualism. It hadn't struck me that all of the will's reasoning must also be fully conscious. The authors attack all of these ideas. |
| 24494 | Computationalism separates function from background, neglecting the latter's complexity [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Computationalism permits a distinction between the functional ('information processing') aspects of neural anatomy and its mere background support, and thus neglects countless layers of biological complexity. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: She makes a very persuasive case for this being a major error, especially when it leads to the claim of multiple realisability - that the functions could be supported by some entirely different background. |
| 24496 | If mental life is seen as 'emergent' from the brain, why not emergent from the whole organism? [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: It is hard for a consistent emergentism to stop at the brain and avoid the conclusion that the whole organism, and its behaviour in context, is the level at which mental life must be studied (reasserting the role of psychology). | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 5.2.1) | |
| A reaction: I take soft emergentism to be self-evident, and strong emergentism to be nonsense, because it totally contradicts the rest of our ontology. It is philosophically crazy to have an ontology which rests entirely on homo sapiens. |
| 24472 | Most human thought is non-conscious [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Most of our thought is below the level of consciousness. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Limited') | |
| A reaction: It has taken me many years to gradually realise that this is very obviously true. People deny this because they overemphasise precise rationality and language. |
| 24475 | We are largely unaware of how we reason [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Real human beings are not, for the most part, in conscious control of - or even consciously aware of - their reasoning. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 01) | |
| A reaction: The accceptance of this idea sweeps away huge chunks of the philosophical tradition, but it strikes me as correct. Most people hold lots of strong views, but struggle to articulate why they hold them. |
| 24468 | If the mind is radically free it is beyond both causal laws and scientific study [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: If the mind is seen as radically free and not subject to the laws of physical causation, it is not seen as amenable to scientific study. A different 'interpretive' method is supposedly required for the human sciences. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Traditonal') | |
| A reaction: I think this division started with Dilthey. Modern psychology has encountered a crisis, of inability to replicate earlier experiments. So while neuroscience can be scientific, psychology seems less promising. Personally I value introspection. |
| 24473 | Our conceptual systems are mostly unconscious, and thus hard to change [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Because our conceptual systems are mostly unconscious and neurally fixed, conceptual change is at best slow and difficult; we cannot freely change our conceptual systems by fiat. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Limited') | |
| A reaction: I agree. I see this as based on the fact that nearly all of our important concepts are unthinking responses to lived experience, rather than being deliberate constructions. The deliberate concepts often produce trouble in philosophy. |
| 24469 | All of our concepts arise from our bodily perceptual and motor systems [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Our conceptual system is grounded in, neurally makes use of, and is crucially shaped by our perceptual and motor . systems. We can only form concepts through the body. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Conception') | |
| A reaction: I basically agree with this, but I think they exaggerate their own position, which relies on the idea of metaphors, which are connections between experiences. Our higher level concepts break free of their bodily foundations. |
| 24479 | Conceptual metaphors connect the inferential structures of two domains [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual metaphor allows us to conceptualise one domain of experience in terms of another, preserving in the target domain the inferential structure of the source domain. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 06) | |
| A reaction: They say metaphors just establish connections, rather than picking our similarities. If so, then retaining the same inferential structure may be bad. Why should that be shared between entities, just because our minds connect them? |
| 24465 | Sentence meaning determines its truth-value in various situations [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A meaning for a sentence is something that determines the conditions under which the sentence is true or false. It determines the truth-value of the sentence in various possible states of affairs. | |
| From: David Lewis (General Semantics [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: A somewhat clearer assertion of the view originating with Frege, and championed by Davidson. Meaning is a 'something', and so opposed to the nihilistic Kripkenstein view. I agree with Lewis on that. Meanings are mental states. |
| 24480 | Metaphors project inference patterns, so much reasoning is metaphorical [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental role of metaphor is to project inference patterns from the source domain to the target domain. Much of our reasoning is therefore metaphorical. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 08) | |
| A reaction: 'Project' presumably means an inference in one domain is thereby legitimate in the other, which seems dubious. In 'Juliet is the sun' how could that be true? It is better to talk of 'understandings' than of 'inferences'. We understand Romeo better. |
| 24474 | Moral systems are based on various models of family life [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Moral systems are defined relative to idealised family models (e.g. the Strict Father, and the Nurturant Parent models. What counts as 'altruistic' is very different in different family-based models. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 25 'Evolution') | |
| A reaction: [See Ch 14 of this book] This doesn't offer an account of fundamental metaethics, but it is a good proposal for the sources of the various normative systems. How should strict fathers or nurturers acctually treat children. There are strict nurturers! |
| 24483 | Virtue is the moral strength to fulfil duty, and arises from reason [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Virtue is the moral strength of a man's will in fulfilling his duty, a moral constraint through his own lawgiving reason. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], 405 Intro XIII) | |
| A reaction: Since reason is the source of this determination, it seems that virtue is just a strong power of reason. Does that make clever people morally superior? What if he shows great strength is pursuing a warped sense of duty? |
| 24498 | 'Process theory' says a causal event must trnsmit some kind of 'mark' [Salmon, by Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Wesley Salmon's account of causation in science is 'process theory', which holds that the contiguous transmission of a 'mark' is a condition on causal relationships - which captures the intuition behind the proximality principle | |
| From: report of Wesley Salmon (Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World [1984]) by Mazviita Chirimuuta - The Brain Abstracted 6.2.4 | |
| A reaction: It seems fine to say that any causal event must produce some sort of change, but a bit too specific to say that must be an individuated mark. |
| 24499 | X is causally linked to Y if interventions on X, even if remote, affect Y [Woodward,J, by Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: Woodward's Interventionism says assertion of a causal relation between X and Y requires only that interventions on X, meeting certain conditions, are accompanied by changes in Y, so a remote X can serve, as well as a proximal X. | |
| From: report of James Woodward (Making Things Happen [2003]) by Mazviita Chirimuuta - The Brain Abstracted 6.2.4 | |
| A reaction: Woodward's book was too dense for me, so thanks to Mazviita Chirimuuta for identifying the key point. A distal X will still need a connection to some proximal X'. That connection could be quite circuitous, making X a minor contributor. |
| 24503 | The general theory of energy started with steam engines, followed by Carnot's theory of them [Chirimuuta] |
| Full Idea: The invention of steam engines occurred without a scientific theory; thermodynamics (of Carnot 1824) grew out of a desire to improve them. It eventually became a theory of energetic relations in all things. | |
| From: Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: I think Faradays generators and motors grew out of prior theory. She offers it as evidence that theoretical science is driven by technology, and not vice versa. She even rejects the whole idea of 'pure' science. I disagree. Cosmology? |
| 24481 | Our sense of time may arise from regular brain pulses [Lakoff/Johnson] |
| Full Idea: Forty times a second an electrical pulse is sent across the brain. …The internal sense of time in us is created by such internal regular, iterative events as neural firings. | |
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh [1999], 10) | |
| A reaction: Hard to prove, but they describe it as just a hypothesis. I've always had a better than average knack of estimating the time of day, which must have some basis. |