Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

by Simon Blackburn

The harmony between our minds and the world is due to the fact that the world is responsible for our minds.

Through evolutionary proecesses as above

doubtful.

Till now the bok assumes that its possible to gain knowledge which is final, perfectly descriptive of reality. To this doubt is raised througharguments of experiences in which such perceptions were chllenged and foumd imperfect. i suppise the solution lies in the integration of the problem into the premise: knowledge can be had but is subject to clrification and improvement. This fact doesnt abrogate thhe process of garnering knlowledge nor the garnered knowledge; it merely allows for subsequent clrificatkion. E.g. Noticing that an object appears to b a circle gains knowledge. But when rotated 90 degrees the object reveals a triangle shape, we neednt dismiss our senses as useless, only the jump to a conclusion of the shpe of tge object. Using humes hybrid of sense nd reson we improve our perception and realize the object is more accurately a cone! thus knkowledge is a process not necessarily a conclusion.

A structure of this kind can have each bit supported by other bits without there being any bit that supports all the others without support itself.

We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Any part can be replaced, provided there is enough of the rest on which to stand. But the whole structure cannot be challenged en bloc, and if we try to do so, we find ourselves on Descartes’s lonely rock.

scepticism, or the view that there is no knowledge.

More accurately tgan this hopelessness: theres no knowledge whjich cant be confused witg other ideas as descartes showed

So, one might argue, it is ‘easier’ for a moderately disordered world, such as the world is now, to come into existence, than it is for any lower-entropy, more orderly ancestor.

it is as if God or Nature had less to do,

ponder.

But it seems entropy must progress in stages. For example a man must squeeze out the tootgpaste over several weeks rather than it suddenly appear outside of tge tube. Likewise the world doesnt immediately dissolve into uniform diffuse stuff as in the so called heat death, it follows stges according to physical laws. And physical law doesnt allkow for a totally disordered state can progress into our current ordered state. So the present suggestion of tgis book seems unlikely

chances.

This raises a good point. The scary scenarious are simply less likely than our sensory based perceptions of the world. As such its left to choose which is more likely; and we should choose the more likely one. As for our difficulty in articulating how this perception squares with descargtes objectiins, a lack of understanding doesnt cancel an objecft; even though i dont understand how my e-reader works, it still works. Descartes's understanding isnt necessary for something to exist or for reality to be.

So how then do I know anything about your mental life?

For Descartes it is not only that mental events are distinct from physical events. They also belong to a distinct kind of substance—immaterial substance—a kind of ghost-stuff or ectoplasm.

‘substance dualist’.

People who hold that there are two kinds of property (mental and physical) but that they can belong to the one kind of stuff (whatever large animals are made of) are called property dualists.

But in the normal human being there is a close correlation between events of the one kind and those of the other: sticking a pin in someone makes physical changes, but it also causes a mental event of feeling pain. And vice versa: the mental event of remembering a blunder may cause physical events such as groaning and blushing. So events in the one realm may affect those in the other. But in principle the two realms are entirely distinct.

Perhaps

Not compelling

Perhaps when she does instead hear middle C on a clarinet, she feels awful pain, but it only makes her smile beatifically.

Perhaps the rest of you are all Mutants, compared with me.

Can’t I reasonably use myself as a model for all the rest? It would be not so much a case of knowledge as of a hypothesis or conjecture, but it perhaps it is a reasonable conjecture to make. This is called the argument from analogy to the existence of other minds.

Its reasonable that since i cme from my parents, i am like them. Thus they must too have minds like mine. Likewise all people are related having arose from apes and subsequent presursor species some few hundres years ago. We all ought to have similar minds.

well.

As In my above note all people come from a common source. Likewise if all boxes came out of a beetling packaging factory then we could be confident that noy only the open one has a beetle inside.

example.

Bjut a rock never expressed consciousness, save the on moses dealt with in the bible perhaps. A rock never fought for civil rights on the grounds that it had a soul like people do.

faith.

Or else tgey amount to the prsesent author and his preddecessors as unable to articulate a successful rationalization for common experience

The reason is that the possibilities are used to test a conception of how things are. Here they are being used to test the conception of mind and matter that gives rise to them. The argument is that if mind and matter are thought of in the Cartesian way, then there would be wide-open possibilities of a bizarre kind, about which we could know nothing. So, since this is intolerable, we should rethink the conception of how things are (this is called the metaphysics).

This is essentially what i noted above, that no one means to acgualy entedrtain such possibilities

toe.

Why now is the author retreating from cartesian rigidity of truth criteria?

(This is the doctrine known as epiphenomenalism.)

I.e. Since its not a separate essence but only an excressence of the body, it doesnt do anything that the body doesnt do. But this is specious by dint of inaccuracy; feet are likewise excressences of the body, yet this doesnt negate their distinct fuction of walking, which the other body parts dont do. Likewise the mind does what the feet dont.

occasionalism, which was embraced by another contemporary, Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715). According to this, physical events do not strictly cause or bring about mental events at all. Rather, they provide the occasions upon which God himself inserts mental events of appropriate kinds into our biographies.

It must not be thought that ideas such as those of colour and pain are arbitrary and that between them and their causes there is no relation or natural connection: it is not God’s way to act in such an unruly and unreasoned fashion. I would say, rather, that there is a resemblance of a kind—

the Cartesians have overlooked;

?

quasi-mathematical

Terminology resembling that of the pythagorian school which refers to the world as comprising units which interact in a way that can be understood

better mathematician than Descartes,

How was nhe better?

It is rather that for Leibniz the whole order of nature must eventually be transparent to reason.

confidence

Bred from experience of other mtters arranged in such intelligible systems

so.

Epkiphenimalksm solves the problem

he is abundantly clear that it takes a mind to make a mind.

As above that anoyher thinker was confident tgat a progenitor infuses his essence into his offspring or consequence

epiphenomenal—

Isnt epiphinominalism contrary to dualism in that the former holds the mind to arise from the body

Philosophers also talk of a reduction of statements of one kind to those of another. Analyses provide the reductions.

the leading American thinker of the mid-twentieth century, W. V. Quine (1908–

Who?

This doctrine is called logical behaviourism.

Which doctrine exactly?

perhaps there is a metaphysical identity between mental and physical facts or events, but that it is not necessarily one that can be known a priori.

problem

Ki.e. That thoughts dont seem go b made of the sme stuff as fingers and eyes. If so whatre tgoughts

This would be what is called a psycho-physical identity theory.

authority.

No. The mechanism is the thing. If its remkoved tgen so is tge pain. Each part of the mechankism is necessary like a car needs wheels and engine and steering wheel so does pain need the sensing structure and the cunducting structure and tge brain to process it

account.

As in my previous note, this is only inasmuch as shrimp may have some other mechanism in the absence of c fibers but which fulfill their function; if we could know theres certainly no such mechanism then we would know theres no pain

consciousness.

Tgis seems to go against the grain and unlikely

so.

Why would this matter? Their green is what we call red; they sill can stop at the correct traffic light color. baby boys will have pink onesies but this we be mutants' familiar convention. So thats tge difference

accurate?

I dont understand. As bove the mmory of the physical world causes a memory within the mental world and can be verified. As in the mental world the car is in the garage. This verifies the mental memory

is.)

Theyr both events caused by something. Pain caisedd by some Bodily harm, a tgiught caused by... The focus of coonsciousnes trained on a sensation or a memory

thought.

Thoughts point to things inasmusch as tgeyre previously associated. Red can mean stop as in a stop sign. It can mean ripe as in an apple. It can mean angry or ddrunk as in a face. Sonthe authirs problem seems solved

us.

Not sure yet whats meant here but i coosider thoughts to be neurologiical analogs of things. So the tgought of red is a neurological structure associated with the memory of a red sensation. It isnt an actual, red thing.

p.

I.e. The thought is manifest in some behavior which is observable. E.g. The tgought of red exists if i choose a red apple over one which is sill green or i nkotice a red traffic light and react with stopping my car. In these csses its clear im thinking red. But idk why a tgought should only be considered if its manufest to others. I can have a private thought which never realizes in behavior.

without relying in other ways on other mental states of the subject,

?