Depei Bao's Public Library

28 Oct 09

multiple perceptual stimuli
multiple trains of thought.
14 more annotations...
- competition between mutually inhibitory
  streams of processing
- a single coherent
  course of action
- several dimensions of
  variation
- closely related
  to consciousness.
- attention has an important epistemic role to play
- attention and abstraction are linked
- ‘Volition is nothing but attention’
- how volition could be
  given a deflationary treatment, not as a way of inflating
  attention's explanatory role
- two fairly simple processes
- the kind of
  attention that is paid when listening for an overtone is constituted
  by the imagining of what that overtone would sound like
- preparatory imaginative engagement
- identifying particular processes as the
  attention-constituting ones was wrongheaded
- much in common with Locke's claim
  that attention is a mode
- the
  motor-control processes

23 Oct 09

Attention (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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no
substantive theory of attention is needed once our theory of thinking
is in place
attention cannot figure in the explanation of how thinking itself is
possible
4 more annotations...
- attention's role as a regulator
  of cognitive input
- including a role for attention in the production
  of behaviour.
- attention has an
  essential role to play in determining which things get stored in
  memory
- attention has a role in
  determining which particular memories get recalled

17 Oct 09

William James (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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people philosopher

05 Oct 09

Intention (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy intention Practical reasoning

appearance
in three guises
uncover and
describe the unity of the three forms
63 more annotations...
- classify theories of intention roughly but usefully on two
  axes
- Donald Davidson gave a
  reductive theory of ‘intention with which’
- Davidson thereby
  unified, or took himself to have unified, intentional action and
  intention-with-which
- cannot easily
  incorporate prospective intention or intention for the future
- emphasize the
  ‘openness’ of the progressive
- S
  intends to do A with the fact that S is
  doing A intentionally, though perhaps he has barely
  begun
- solve the problem of unity without acknowledging intention as a mental
  state
- two main arguments for the
  theory of intending as being embarked on intentional action
- the theory of intending as being embarked on intentional
  action explains the unity of what Thompson calls
  ‘naïve’ and ‘sophisticated’
  rationalization
- ‘naïve’ explanations in terms
  of what someone is doing entail ‘sophisticated’
  explanations that appeal to intention
- it captures the element of
  commitment in intention
- it is in
  fact controversial that intending to do A is necessary for
  doing A intentionally
- doubt whether intending
  to do A is sufficient for me to count as doing it
  intentionally
- the possibility of making a mistake
- An intention with which one is
  doing A is an intentional-action-in-progress that explains one's
  doing it
- how can we preserve the
  unity of our three divisions?
- associated with resistance to causal accounts of acting for a
  reason
- identify doing A
  intentionally with doing A in order to do something else
- those who think of intention as a mental state
  could explain why its objects are restricted to actions by saying more
  about the kind of state it is
- merely having
  that intention is not enough
- doing A with the intention of
  doing B is intending, of one's doing A, that it
  promote or constitute one's doing B
- an intentional action of
  doing A is the execution of a prior intention to
  do A,
- although we sometimes
  form an intention prior to acting, this is not essential
- tacitly circular
- two problems of principle can be
  raised against the present approach
- whether ‘the relation
  of being done in execution of a certain intention, or
  being done intentionally, is a causal relation between act
  and intention.
- intention need not
  precede intentional action, while causes must precede their
  effects
- ‘causal deviance’
- the condition of doing A because one so
  intends looks insufficient
- ambiguities in ‘desire.’
- thus a ‘pro-attitude’ of some
  kind
- ‘an all-out, unconditional judgement that the action is
  desirable’
- we can fail to act, or intend, in
  accordance with our evaluations
- distinguishing ‘all
  things considered’ from ‘unconditional’ evaluative
  judgement
- non-comparative
  account
- intention is a distinctive practical attitude
  marked by its pivotal role in planning for the future
- a ‘pragmatic
  rationale’ for such requirements
- Responses to Bratman's theory
- intentions do not provide inputs to practical
  reasoning by providing additional reasons
- ‘rational
  irrationality’
- it is sometimes rational to attempt both A
  and B, hoping to achieve one or the other
- Bratman concludes that the Simple View is false
- The main objection to this view
- A final objection to Bratman's theory
- when S is doing A intentionally, S knows
  that she is doing A
- in acting
  for a reason, I know an explanation of what I am doing that cites that
  reason, and therefore know that I am doing it
- acting for a reason is acting with self-knowledge
- Intention as involving
  belief
- an adequate account of what intention is
- those accounts that give a motivational
  role to belief
- ‘the problem of
  promiscuity’
- ‘conclusion[s] of practical reasoning’
- the contrast
  between intention and belief is normative
- Intention sets the
  standard of success for what does
- Velleman holds that ‘practical reasoning is a kind of theoretical
  reasoning’
- ‘cognitivism’
- cognitivism
- two main arguments against this conception
- apparent cases of intention without belief
- intention involves belief
- practical knowledge ‘knowledge without
  observation,’
- reject the
  demand for prior evidence outright
- the scope of
  groundless (non-perceptual, non-inferential) self-knowledge

29 Aug 09

Properties (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy properties

the selfsame property can be instantiated by
numerically distinct things
distinction between singular terms and
predicates
9 more annotations...
- a property is its foundation or ground
  for it
- wholly-present
- some properties seem to exemplify themselves
- properties generate vicious
  regresses
- between explanatory power and epistemic risk
- objective similarities or groupings
- the
  old and new cases share a common property — and that the creature
  is somehow attuned to recognize it.
- what properties are
  like and how they do what they are invoked to do
- necessary and sufficient conditions for the properties x
  and y to be one and the same property

28 Aug 09

Teleological Theories of Mental Content (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy mind teleology

Content is said to be
normative because it legitimates certain evaluations
representing is often a
three-place relation
13 more annotations...
- content
- referential content, not theories of cognitive
  role or mode of presentation
- representation of and representation as
- teleological theories of content are theories of
  representation as
- Three remaining points about broad aims might be useful
- narrow content
- teleological
  theories of mental content are not generally intended as theories about
  how we grasp meanings or are conscious of them
- teleological theories of mental content are usually (although
  not always) intended as real nature theories
- a crucial feature of content is
  that it legitimates semantic evaluations
- the relevant concept of function is not
  purposive
- normative
- an
  etiological theory of functions
- etiological (teleological) functions are
  distinct from the causal-role functions involved in what is called
  "functionalism" in philosophy of mind

22 Aug 09

Compatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy free will determinism

the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their
conduct in the fullest manner necessary for moral
responsibility
a person as an agent, action, could have done
otherwise, event, cause, and causal
determination
25 more annotations...
- her ability to select among, or choose
  between, alternative courses of
  action
- requires alternative possibilities
- at any time, given the facts of the past and the laws of
  nature, only one future is possible
- Classical Incompatibilist
  Argument
- Source model of control
- not the
  ultimate source of her actions
- Source Incompatibilist
  Argument
- determinism is not a threat to it
- the two-way compatibilists were prepared to defend a Garden of Forking
  Paths model of control
- all compatibilists must respond to the argument by
  arguing against the truth of the first premise
- an agent's ability to do otherwise
  in conditional terms
- a conditional assertion reporting what an agent would have
  done under certain counterfactual conditions.
- their analysis of
  could have done otherwise failed decisively
- an agent's
  ability to do what she wishes in the absence of impediments that would
  otherwise stand in her way
- freedom of action
- Even if an unencumbered agent does what she wants, if
  she is determined, at least as the incompatibilist maintains, she could
  not have done otherwise
- A person acts of her own free will only if
  she is its ultimate source
- what is power necessary for a person
- concerns what is
  not within a person's power
- she cannot act in such a
  way that the fact would not obtain
- so long as one's action arises from one's
  unencumbered desires, she is a genuine source of her action
- Powerlessness, it seems, transfers from one fact to consequences of it
- general
  pattern of inference
- a type of example in which
  an agent is morally responsible, but could not, at the time of the
  pertinent action, do otherwise.
- psychologically impossible to stop having certain kinds of emotional
  responses to others

20 Aug 09

David Lewis (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy philosopher

his
contributions to philosophy of mind into two broad categories
term-introducing theory
9 more annotations...
- Ramsification
- argue
  for the mind-brain identity theory
- physical is causally closed
- if we change the second premise a
  little, drawing on neurology rather than physics
- the content of someone's mental states is the
  interpretation of those states that a good interpreter would make
- Some of our beliefs and desires are self-directed
- our dispositions
  massively underdetermine contents
- Some properties, he
  says, are more natural than others
- what it is for two worlds to have an ‘exact match’ of
  spatiotemporal regions

14 Aug 09

Reasons for Action: Justification vs. Explanation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy action reason

the reasons that
explain what we do and the reasons that justify what
we do
reasons in three main contexts
14 more annotations...
- ask
  not what reasons there were to perform it but what were
  the agent's reasons for performing it
- subjective
  and objective reasons
- obligations or
  reasons can be taken to represent external facts
- facts about reasons I have are not independent of
  facts about what motivates me
- normative
  existence internalism and externalism
- moral existence internalism and externalism
- normative and moral judgement internalism
- Internalists seek to make sense of justifying reasons in terms of their
  connection to what motivates us
- desire-based theories of reason
- any entailment is at most one-way
- what speaks
  to my desires determines what reasons I have and not vice versa
- nonreductive realists
- as
  expressive and not descriptive of such states
- Normative expressivism

07 Aug 09

Proprioception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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wikipedia perception

six exteroceptive senses
interoceptive senses
8 more annotations...
- provides feedback solely on the status of the body internally
- awareness of movement derived from muscular, tendon, and articular sources
- joint position sense
- kinesthesia
- proprioception is, in essence, a feedback mechanism
- Kinesthesia is a key component in muscle memory and hand-eye coordination
- The initiation of proprioception is the activation of a proprioreceptor in the periphery
- proprioreceptors

01 Aug 09

Stop That Crow!: Embodied Realism

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embodiment

L&J argue that since all human reason is shaped by the physical body by way of our neural structure, we simply cannot be radically free in our actions or even in our thoughts
the necessary embodiment of all thinking
22 more annotations...
- They think that any idea of absolute and objective truth of any kind is completely out the window
- the idea of a fully embodied mind interacting with metaphysics
- Consequently, we cannot, as neural beings, have any kind of experience which transcends all conceptualization and categorization.
- secondary qualities
- while Locke distinguished between those (secondary) properties which only existed as perceived properties, and those (primary) properties which exist independently of our perception of them
- Additionally, they also seem to be maintaining that most, indeed perhaps all properties which Locke would have labeled “primary” are actually secondary
- If an emergent property is simply one which cannot be described by an account of the properties of the parts of the system, it would seem absurd that the properties of the parts must also all be emergent, ad infinitum
- Basic-level categorization is the level at which we categorize objects most quickly, accurately and “naturally.”
- the highest (most general) level at which a single mental image can represent the category
- the highest level at which category member share a perceive overall shape
- the highest level at which a person interacts with category members with similar motor actions
- the level at which most of our knowledge is organized
- based on gestalt perception, motor programs, and mental images
- counter-argument
- our abilities and tendencies to categorize the world in certain ways as opposed to others have been structured by the mind-independent reality and the way in which it really is carved up
- The properties that make for basic-level categories are responses to the part-whole structure of physical beings and objects
- the nature of our local environment as well as the nature of very bodies
- evolution has not required us to be as accurate above and below the basic level as the basic level, and so we are not.
- Metaphysical realism seems to work primarily at the basic level
- a being with a different basic-level categorization than ours entering our environment, it is highly dubitable that metaphysical realism would appear at all plausible to such a being
- the scientific description of reality by way of instrumentation as “extending [our] basic-level abilities to perceive, image, and intervene
- while doing their best to avoid the position of radical metaphysical subjectivity

24 Jul 09

Self-Knowledge (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy self knowledge

what precisely
distinguishes self-knowledge from knowledge in other realms
infallibility and omniscience
70 more annotations...
- qualified version of the infallibility claim
- restricting this
  qualified infallibility claim to phenomenal states such as
  sensations
- where one cannot be wrong, one cannot be right either
- we
  are conscious that we do so
- some states
  automatically justify self-attributing beliefs about them
- The infallibility and omniscience theses may be weakened
  further.
- lack the
  modal force of the previous claims
- neutral between
  epistemic internalism and externalism
- the highest degree
  of epistemic security on the internalist model is certainty
- Descartes' cogito argument
- a divide between an ‘inner’ world and an
  ‘outer’ or ‘external’ world
- direct access to its objects
- an epistemically mediating factor
- the only process that yields non-inferential knowledge of
  contingent truths
- no room for error in introspective beliefs about sensations
- ascertain our own thoughts by looking outward
- this procedure creates rather than reveals beliefs
- one's
  ability to regulate one's own states, and thereby
  to constitute oneself
- dynamically related to first-person
  reflection
- self-knowledge
  does not consist in simple observation of one's thoughts
- evaluate its object
- the authority view
- does not require that self-attributions be
  epistemically grounded
- epistemic and non-epistemic
- we observe our own thoughts
- non-inferential and metaphysically direct
- self-presenting properties are
  those with particular psychological and epistemic characteristics
- ‘self-presenting’
- the dual directness
- the
  instance of the phenomenal quality to which one attends, in
  introspection, partially constitutes the phenomenal belief
- some deny that any method will yield
  the strong epistemic results — most notably, infallibility or
  certainty
- high
  price for securing metaphysical directness
- the role of concepts in
  self-attributions
- questions whether this model can capture the
  relational features which, on most views, define propositional
  attitude contents
- introspection as fundamentally similar to
  perception
- vary as to the extent
  of the analogy between introspection and perception
- introspection as the
  brain's “self-scanning process”
- these states must be “distinct existences”.
- unlike
  perception, introspection need not involve any sensory
  quality
- introspection is limited in principle to
  one's own states
- often
  accept the Higher-Order Perception, or HOP, theory of
  consciousness
- fails to accommodate the profound difference between
  self-knowledge and other-knowledge
- the claim that the capacity for self-awareness as a merely
  contingent — albeit evolutionarily important — feature of
  persons
- neglects the transparency of mental content
- an outward rather than an inward
  look
- construes self-knowledge as inferential.
- the large
  inferential gap between non-mental and mental states
- incapacity to cover all of the knowledge of our
  own minds that we seem to have
- need
  not be restricted to the case of belief
- Purely epistemic versions
- partially epistemic.
- a circularity
  worry
- it is
  unclear how to establish that I am rational without using the accuracy
  of my self-attributions
- the chief problem for the Rationality model
- The first non-epistemic account of introspection is
  the Commitment Model
- The
  requirement that one be committed to one's self-attributed attitudes
  ties in with the transparency of mental states
- a noteworthy hybrid account
- not to explain how
  commitment to an attitude can provide warrant or justification for a
  self-attribution of that attitude
- the link
  between reasons and belief is what justifies the self-attributions;
  the thinker needn’t be aware of that link
- The second non-epistemic model construes self-attributions as
  performances that express one's mental states
- The deepest objections to Pure Expressivism target its implication
  that self-attributions are non-propositional
- reflexive self-reference
- immune to
  error through misidentification.
- identify myself directly
- some mental states appear physical
- The argument for materialism from proprioceptive awareness
- “the systematic
  elusiveness of the ‘I’”
- The role of self-understanding in agency
- we strongly desire to understand ourselves
- self-fulfilling expectations

Donald Davidson (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Donald Davidson

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy people

Tarski's theory of truth
Tarski's theory of truth
44 more annotations...
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- Tarski's theory of truth
- the seminal paper ‘Actions, Reasons and
  Causes’
- redeploys a number of Wittgensteinian notions
- a ‘primary
  reason’
- action ‘under a description’
- the connection between reason and action
- the connection between reason and action
  cannot be described in terms of any strict law
- ‘Mental Events’
- The Principle of Causal Interaction
- The Principle of the Nomological
  Character of Causality
- The Anomalism of the Mental
- the truth of anomalous monism
- they
  can relate events only as those events are given under specific
  descriptions
- denial of the existence of any strict
  ‘psycho-physical’ laws
- the mental as ‘supervening’ on the physical
- A belief or desire in the mind of one person can cause a belief or
  desire in the mind of another without this compromising the rationality
  of the mental
- view the mind as weakly
  ‘partitioned’
- events are
  particulars and so constitute a fundamental ontological category
- meaning is best understood via the concept of truth
- a holistic conception of linguistic understanding
- a theorem that specifies what each sentence means
- a compositional approach
- the
  ‘object-language’
- the
  ‘meta-language’
- Truth, he argues, is a less opaque concept
  than that of meaning
- not as a general account of the nature of truth, but rather
  as a way of defining the truth-predicate as it applies within a formal
  language
- first-order quantificational logic as supplemented by set theory
- a
  three-way conceptual interdependence between knowledge of oneself,
  knowledge of others and knowledge of the world
- ‘Swampman’ example

20 Jul 09

Causation and Manipulability (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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causality Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

very roughly, if C is genuinely a
cause of E, then if I can manipulate C in the right
way, this should be a way of manipulating or changing E
turn the
connection between causation and manipulability into a reductive
analysis
1 more annotations...
- an
  intervention

18 Jul 09

Kant's View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy Kant mind consciousness

transcendental idealism
transcendental method
2 more annotations...
- transcendental
  arguments.
- a priori truths

17 Jul 09

Operationalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy concepts

we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of
operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of
operations
an extreme
and outmoded position

The Disjunctive Theory of Perception (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy perception

being
perceptual experiences
its rejection of a ‘common kind claim

05 Jul 09

Alexius Meinong (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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people Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy object theory

the distinction between the psychological (mental)
content [psychologischer Inhalt] and the object
of a representation
(1) the act, (2) the (psychological) content, and (3) the
object of the experience
2 more annotations...
- The difference
  between the objects must somehow come down to an internal difference
  between the representations in question
- self-presentation

27 Jun 09

fragments of consciousness: Nida-Rumelin on grasping phenomenal properties

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fragments of consciousness phenomenal consciousness

against the materialist thesis
that phenomenal properties are physical properties
grasping a property requires having more than having a concept of the property
5 more annotations...
- in two-dimensional terms
- phenomenal concepts are semantically neutral
- rule out hidden-physical-essence view such as Russellian monism
- expresses a relevant epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal properties
- cognitive transparency

24 Jun 09

Karl Popper (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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people Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

falsifiability
distinguishing between
science and what he terms ‘non-science’
40 more annotations...
- the validity of
  the Humean critique of induction
- induction is never actually used by the
  scientist
- there are no pure or theory-free observations
- no unique methodology specific to science
- falsifiability
- a theory is scientific only if it is refutable
  by a conceivable event
- based upon his perception of
  the logical asymmetry
- prohibitive
- it forbids, by implication,
  particular events or occurrences
- superseded by a better
  theory
- a
  scientific law is conclusively falsifiable although it is not
  conclusively verifiable
- a single conflicting or counter-instance is never sufficient
  methodologically to falsify a theory
- There is no logical path
  leading to [the highly universal laws of science]
- only be
  reached by intuition
- Science, in Popper's view, starts with
  problems rather than with observations
- require a leap of the
  imagination
- The centrality and priority of problems
- rather than with observations or ‘bare
  facts’
- the deductive testing
  of theories
- contradictions.
- the
  axiomatising of the theory to distinguish between its empirical and its
  logical elements
- the comparing of the new theory with
  existing ones
- the testing of a theory
  by the empirical application of the conclusions
- all knowledge is provisional, conjectural,
  hypothetical
- the more probable a theory is,
  the better it is
- a high informative content
- all scientific criticism must be piecemeal
- not knowledge in the sense of being conclusively
  established
- background
  knowledge
- not possible to question both the theory and the background
  knowledge at the same time
- The Popperian answer is that we cannot have absolute certainty here,
  but repeated tests usually show where the trouble lies
- the importance of questioning the background knowledge
- observation-statements are theory-laden, and hence fallible
- a theory which replaces a
  falsified theory
- ‘truthlikeness’ or
  ‘verisimilitude’
- A ‘good’ scientific
  theory, Popper thus argued, has a higher level of verisimilitude than
  its rivals
- two methods of comparing theories in terms of
  verisimilitude
- the index of the content of a given
  theory is its logical improbability
- fundamental defects in Popper's formal definitions of verisimilitude
- In the crucially important case of false theories,
  however, Popper's definitions are formally defective

Depei Bao's Public Library

Attention (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Attention (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

William James (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Intention (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Properties (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Teleological Theories of Mental Content (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Compatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

David Lewis (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Reasons for Action: Justification vs. Explanation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Proprioception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stop That Crow!: Embodied Realism

Self-Knowledge (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Donald Davidson (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Causation and Manipulability (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Kant's View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Operationalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The Disjunctive Theory of Perception (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Alexius Meinong (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

fragments of consciousness: Nida-Rumelin on grasping phenomenal properties

Karl Popper (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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