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Quote by Ned Block

“You ask: What is it that philosophers have called qualitative states? I answer, only half in jest: As Louis Armstrong said when asked what jazz is, 'If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know.'”

Quote by Ned Block

Book:Consciousness, function, and representation

Work

Consciousness, function, and representation

This book delves into the complex subject of consciousness, examining its various functions and the mechanisms by which it represents and interacts with the external environment. more

Author

Ned Block is a renowned American philosopher known for his contributions to the fields of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. His research focuses on the nature of consciousness, philosophical semantics, and the relationship between language and thought. more

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“We do not live in several different, or even two different, worlds, a mental world and a physical world, a scientific world and a world of common sense. Rather, there is just one world; it is the world we all live in, and we need to account for how we exist as part of it.”

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“...monetary exchanges have interesting things in common; Gresham's law, if true, says what one of these interesting things is. But what is interesting about monetary exchanges is surely not their commonalities under physical description. A natural kind like a monetary exchange could turn out to be co-extensive with a physical natural kind; but if it did, that would be an accident on a cosmic scale.”

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Author:Jerry Fodor

“...there are special sciences not because of the nature of our epistemic relation to the world, but because of the way the world is put together: not all natural kinds (not all the classes of things and events about which there are important, counterfactual supporting generalizations to make) are, or correspond to, physical natural kinds.”

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“The primitive sign of wanting is trying to get.”

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Author:G. E. M. Anscombe

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“There are lots of cases where we know more about how the world works than we do about how we know how it works. That's no paradox. Understanding the structure of galaxies is one thing, understanding how we understand the structure of galaxies is quite another. There isn't the slightest reason why the first should wait on the second and, in point of historical fact, it didn't. This bears a lot of emphasis; it turns up in philosophy practically everywhere you look.”

“[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.”

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“I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology.”

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Book:The Possibility of Altruism

Source: The Possibility of Altruism

“equally real at all stages of his life; specifically, the fact that a particular stage is present cannot be regarded as conferring on it any special status.”

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Book:The Possibility of Altruism

Source: The Possibility of Altruism

“To look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe.”

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Book:Mortal Questions : Canto

Source: Mortal Questions : Canto