Quotes by David Papineau

David Papineau

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.

Order

Smart

Way

A certain kind of methodologically-minded philosopher of science is quick to read off metaphysical conclusions from features of scientific practice. Chemists don’t derive their laws from fundamental physics, so reductive physicalism must be false. Biologists refer to natural numbers in some of their explanations, so numbers must exist. I think that this kind of thing makes for bad philosophy.

Law

Philosophy

Thinking

After all, in supporting phenomenal concepts I am in a sense siding with introspection against the more behaviourist Wittgensteinians. But even so I don’t think that introspection is powerful enough to resolve the specific issue about how many colours you can see.

Issues

Powerful

Thinking

Again, when we view a scene fleetingly, do we consciously see all the details even though we don’t retain them, or do we not see them in the first place? Neurological information is crucial to deciding these questions. After all, they are so interesting precisely because unaided introspection cannot resolve them. Rather we need to know what is going on in the brain activities that constitute visual awareness.

Brain

Interesting

Views

Even if no learning to speak of was involved in locking my mental term onto doorknobs, it is odd to say that therefore my possession of a doorknob concept is innate, just as it is odd to say that my head-injury-caused singing is innate.

Odd

Singing

Speak

Everybody agrees that a future in which you are dead is a very bad thing, and that it isn’t made any better by your not being around to notice how bad it is.

Agree

Bad Things

Made

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.

Information

Oddities

Way

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.

Different

Everyday

Numbers

I don’t think that we are capable of anything like this many possible colour responses. Instead I argue that the perception of colour differences between two surfaces viewed side-by-side is a gestalt phenomenon.

Differences

Thinking

Two

I don’t think that we can figure out what is going on in conscious colour perception just by phenomenological introspection. We need to know about brain mechanisms as well. We need to figure out what information is present in the mechanisms that constitute conscious colour perception.

Brain

Perception

Thinking

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Agree

Alive

Answers

Bad Things

Block

Brain

Calling

Care

Cat

Data

Degrees

Differences

Different

Done

Enough

Enough Time

Events

Everyday

Feelings

Genes

Good Questions

Identity

Information

Interesting

Issues

Law

Made

Mean

Mind

Motivation

Moving

Numbers

Odd

Oddities

Order

Pain

Perception

Philosophical

Philosophy

Powerful

Real

Reality

Realizing

Red

Research

Simple

Singing

Smart

Speak

Squares

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Quotes by David Papineau

David Papineau

After all, in supporting phenomenal concepts I am in a sense siding with introspection against the more behaviourist Wittgensteinians. But even so I don’t think that introspection is powerful enough to resolve the specific issue about how many colours you can see.

Even if no learning to speak of was involved in locking my mental term onto doorknobs, it is odd to say that therefore my possession of a doorknob concept is innate, just as it is odd to say that my head-injury-caused singing is innate.

Everybody agrees that a future in which you are dead is a very bad thing, and that it isn’t made any better by your not being around to notice how bad it is.

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.

I don’t think that we are capable of anything like this many possible colour responses. Instead I argue that the perception of colour differences between two surfaces viewed side-by-side is a gestalt phenomenon.

I don’t think that we can figure out what is going on in conscious colour perception just by phenomenological introspection. We need to know about brain mechanisms as well. We need to figure out what information is present in the mechanisms that constitute conscious colour perception.

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