“A century ago mainstream science was still quite happy to countenance vital and mental powers which had a 'downwards' causal influence on the physical realm in a straightforwardly interactionist way. It was only in the middle of the last century that science finally concluded that there are no such non-physical forces. At which point a whole pile of smart philosophers (Feigl, Smart, Putnam, Davidson, Lewis) quickly pointed out that mental, biological and social phenomena must themselves be physical, in order to produce the physical effects that they do.” WayStillsWholeLastsOrderForceSocialInfluenceMiddleEffectsCenturyProduceSmartPhilosopherRealmsMainstreamCountenanceMental PowerPhysical Force Author:David Papineau
“Kripke says that physicalists like me can't explain the 'apparent contingency' of mind-brain identities. He maintains that, if I really believed that pains are C-fibres, then I ought no longer to have any room for the thought that 'they' might come apart. His argument is that, since pains aren't identified via some contingent description, but in terms of how they feel, I have no good way of constructing a possible world, so to speak, where C-fibres are present yet pains absent.” IfsWorldWayFeelsMindMightPainSpeakTermRoomsBrainIdentityOughtArgumentLike MeDescriptionAbsentGood WayContingency Author:David Papineau
“The 'phenomenal concept' issue is rather different, I think. Here the question is whether there are concepts of experiences that are made available to subjects solely in virtue of their having had those experiences themselves. Is there a way of thinking about seeing something red, say, that you get from having had those experiences, and so isn't available to a blind person?” ThinkingWayPersonsMadeDifferentVirtueIssuesSeeingSubjectsConceptsRedBlindAvailableWay Of ThinkingPhenomenalBlind Person Author:David Papineau
“If neuroscientific research shows that those mechanisms only contain comparative information about colour differences, and have 'thrown away' more fine-grained information about the absolute colours of single surfaces, then that would support my position, in a way that just introspecting our colour experiences can't.” IfsWayShowsDifferencesSupportInformationPositionFineResearchAbsolutesSurfaceColourThrownMechanismScientific Research Author:David Papineau
“I don't have much use for the concept of innateness. The everyday concept incorporates a number of different notions that can come apart in in many ways, and as a result encourages a range of dangerously fallacious inferences.” WayDifferentUseResultsNumbersConceptsNotionEverydayRangeInference Author:David Papineau
“I do have quite a lot of sympathy for Fodor's picture of concepts as information-free atomic entities which get locked onto their referents causally, and to that extent they needn't involve anything much in the way of learning. But even so it seems perverse to call them 'innate'. Here we see again the oddity of treating 'not learned' as sufficient for innate.” WaySeemsInformationConceptsSufficientLockedEntityInnateOddities Author:David Papineau
