‘Looks Red’ and Dangerous Talk

Philosophy ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 70 (274) ◽  
pp. 545-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. C. Smart
Keyword(s):  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Armstrong ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Do So

This paper is partly to get rid of some irritation which I have felt at the quite common tendency of philosophers to elucidate (for example) ‘is red’ in terms of ‘looks red’. For a relatively recent example see, for example, Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter, ‘An Objectivist′s Guide to Subjectivism about Colour’. However rather than try to make a long list of references, I would rather say ‘No names, no pack drill’. I have even been disturbed to find the use of the words ‘looks red’ that I am opposing ascribed to me by Keith Campbell in his useful article ‘David Armstrong and Realism about Colour’. I am not saying that such talk is necessarily wrong. Talk of ‘looks red’ may be a way of harmlessly referring to the behavioural discriminations with respect to colour of a human percipient. Where it is dangerous, at least to those of us who wish to argue for a broadly physicalist account of the mind, is that it may have concealed overtones of reference to epiphenomenal and irreducibly psychic properties of experiences. Moreover even if it does not do so it may be fence sitting on this issue and liable to misinterpretation.

scholarly journals A discipline for the avoidance of unnecessary assumptions

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Scalar Case ◽  
Mean Square ◽  
William Of Ockham ◽  
Know How ◽  
Mathematical Formulas ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Available Information ◽  
Do So

Although unnecessary assumptions are something we all try to avoid, advice on how to do so is much harder to come by than admonition. The most widely quoted dictum on the subject, often referred to by writers on philosophy as “Ockham's razor” and attributed generally to William of Ockham, states “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”. (Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.) As pointed out in reference [I], however, the authenticity of this attribution is questionable.The same reference mentions Newton's essentially similar statement in his Principia Mathematica of 1726. Hume [3] is credited by Tribus [2c] with pointing out in 1740 that the problem of statistical inference is to find an assignment of probabilities that “uses the available information and leaves the mind unbiased with respect to what is not known.” The difficulty is that often our data are incomplete and we do not know how to create an intelligible interpretation without filling in some gaps. Assumptions, like sin, are much more easily condemned than avoided.In the author's opinion, important results have been achieved in recent years toward solving the problem of how best to utilize data that might heretofore have been regarded as inadequate. The approach taken and the relevance of this work to certain actuarial problems will now be discussed.Bias and PrejudiceOne type of unnecessary assumption lies in the supposition that a given estimator is unbiased when in fact it has a bias. We need not discuss this aspect of our subject at length here since what we might consider the scalar case of the general problem is well covered in textbooks and papers on sampling theory. Suffice it to say that an estimator is said to be biased if its expected value differs by an incalculable degree from the quantity being estimated. Such differences can arise either through faulty procedures of data collection or through use of biased mathematical formulas. It should be realized that biased formulas and procedures are not necessarily improper when their variance, when added to the bias, is sufficiently small as to yield a mean square error lower than the variance of an alternative, unbiased estimator.

Meaning Redefined

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Sonesson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Present Author ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Fundamental Part ◽  
Essential Contribution ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Scholastic Realism ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Do So

From the point of view of semiotics, the essential contribution of John Deely consists in having made us all aware of the richness of the Scholastic heritage, and to have explained it to us latter-day semioticians. Even for those, who, like the present author, think that semiotics was alive and well between the dawn of the Latin Age, and the rediscovery of Scholastic realism by Peirce, the notions coined by the Scholastic philosophers are intriguing. To make sense of scholastic notions such as ens reale and ens rationis is not a straightforward matter, but it is worthwhile trying to do so, in particular by adapting these notions to ideas more familiar in the present age. Starting out from the notions of Scholastic Realism, we try in the following to make sense of the different meanings of meaning, only one of which is the sign. It will be suggested that there are counterparts to ens rationis, not only in the thinking of some contemporary philosophers, but also, in a more convoluted way, in the discussion within cognitive science about different extensions to the mind. The recurrent theme of the paper will be Deely’s musing, according to which signs, unlike any other kind of being, form relations which may connect things which are mind-dependent (ens rationis) and mind-independent (ens reale). The import of this proposition is quite different if is applied to what we will call the Augustinian notion of the sign, or to the Fonseca notion, which is better termed intentionality. In both cases, however, mind-dependence will be shown to have a fundamental part to play. Following upon the redefinition of Medieval philosophy suggested by Deely, we will broach a redefinition of something even wider: meaning even beyond signs.

The Late Great Plot: The Official Delusion Concerning the Xhosa Cattle Killing 1856-1857

1895 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 253-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.B. Peires
Keyword(s):  
Economic Resources ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Belief Structures ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Military ◽  
European Technology ◽  
Significant Question ◽  
Do So

The very idea that the Xhosa chiefs and their allies engineered the great cattle-killing which finally broke their power seems so absurd that most people who hear of it dismiss it instinctively. And indeed, they are perfectly correct to do so. Yet the sheer mass of documentary evidence in support of the proposition is such that all historians who have come into contact with it have been forced to be more circumspect with regard to the “chiefs' plot.” We have to look very carefully at this evidence before we reject its conclusions, and once we have done so, we have to answer a further and even more significant question: If the “chiefs' plot” did not exist, why did the Colonial authorities maintain that it did? Paradoxically, we will discover that an investigation of the “chiefs' plot” can tell us nothing about the Xhosa or the cattle-killing, but it can tell us a great deal about the mind and methods of Sir George Grey, that colossus of early Victorian imperialism.After nearly seventy years of epic struggle, the catastrophic defeats of the Seventh (1846-47) and Eighth (1850-53) Frontier Wars finally broke the military capacity of the Xhosa people to resist the Colonial advance from the Cape of Good Hope. Their political structures fragmented by partial incorporation into the Crown Colony of British Kaffraria; their belief structures fractured by the victories of missionary teaching and European technology; the slender remnants of their economic resources decimated by the onslaught of the lung-sickness epizootic in their cattle from 1855, the Xhosa turned, as other peoples have done in like situations, to millennarian hopes.

The Dialectical Phenomena and Processes of the Mind

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry M. Vyner
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Functional Identity ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Group A ◽  
Considerable Length ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Do So

For the last 14 years, the author has been interviewing Tibetan lamas at considerable length about their experiences of their own mind in meditation for the purposes of: 1) developing a formal descriptive science of the phenomena that appear in the stream of consciousness; and 2) using that descriptive science to describe the defining characteristics of the healthy human mind. This paper will present the central elements of the descriptive science of the stream of consciousness that has been generated by these interviews. It will do so as a means of making the case that the psychological processes that appear in the stream of consciousness have, as a group, a coherent functional identity. This paper will also present representative excerpts from the interviews from which the descriptive science has been derived.

scholarly journals Identity as Epistemology

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-120
Author(s):  
M.A. Muqtedar Khan
Keyword(s):  
Publish Or Perish ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
First Order ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Do So

Purposeful PhilosophyThe first order of things requires an explication of the purpose of thisinquiry into Islamic epistemology. In order to do so, I shall have to distinguishbetween academic philosophy, pure philosophy, and purposeful philosophy.Academic philosophy is a product of the modem academic institutionalstructure of recognition and discipline. This academic structurecompels scholars to produce scholarship for the sake of scholarship. Iheprinciple of “publish or perish” is a guarantor of mediocrity. Such pmfessionalphilosophical projects are often intellectually parasitic and may offerlittle or no new insights. For example, a visit to any library will reveal hundredsof books that deal with academic projects such as The Idea ofJusticein Rawls Theory of Justice or the The Nature of Judgment in Kant‘s Criticof Judgment. Such projects contribute little to advance the understanding ofjustice or judgment and have no bearing on the nonnative nature of thesociety.Pure philosophy is a lifestyle. The pure philosopher is a habitual speculatorwho relishes the sheer indulgence of the mind. It is not the product ofreflection but the pleasures of reflection in themselves which sustain thepure philosopher. As one philosopher commented, “We could go to themosque, pray, and come back to continue with our discussion of the questionwhether there is a God.” The fact that the philosopher has just prayeddoes not settle the issue that as far as that philosopher is concemed there isa God and to question that is meaningless. Either the prayer was speciousor the debate was meaningless. I suggest this because there is a disconnectbetween thought and action. The lifestyle of the pure philosopher, whileimmensely satisfactory to the philosopher concemed, trivializes both action ...

scholarly journals School-aged children's awareness of their own working memory contents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christopher L. Blume
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Visual Array ◽  
Memory Contents ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Subjective Estimates ◽  
Do So

Working memory researchers in psychology have long wondered about how the mind organizes the many different pieces of information that must be maintained at any one time in order that the individual may carry out daily tasks of cognition. This research has often focused on the capacity of information that an individual is capable of holding in mind at any one time. In order to obtain a better understanding of this capacity researchers have developed what are thought to be objective measures of estimating the number of items (k) an individual must have in mind based on their performance on some cognitive task. In the present research one such formula is used to obtain a typical estimate for a visual array task in which multiple colored squares must be held in mind for a short duration before the participant is asked about whether or not a single probe color was one of the colors that had just seen in the array. In addition, participants are asked to provide their own subjective estimates of the number of colors they believe themselves to have memorized. Several age groups were tested starting with children as young as 6. The results show that while all age groups appear to overestimate their own capacity when compared to the objective k estimate, younger children tend to do so to a greater degree. This effect is discussed as the result of the development of quicker processing with age, faster forgetting in young age, or simply a structural increase in the capacity irrespective of the prior two possibilities.

Inventing America

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Lienhard
Keyword(s):  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Do So

America was not discovered, it was invented. Its name was invented; its machines were invented; its way of life was invented. America sprang from the minds of that unlikely breed of people who were able to pack up a few belongings and step into a great unknown. That step into the expanse of a new continent unleashed astonishing creative energy. America was an adventure of the mind. The land seemed to reach into infinity, and minds opened to fill it. The colonists had limited recourse to the European intellectual mainstream. They were poorly equipped, but they were freedom-driven and freedom-shaped. They were free of method and free of tradition. They were free to create a new life. Colonial technology was so molded by the imperative to be free that it is hard to talk about it without being drawn into that infectious drive. You cannot just report it; you have to celebrate it. As I look back at the early episodes of The Engines of Our Ingenuity upon which this chapter is based, it is clear that I too was drawn in. My first impulse in reworking this material for print was to tone it down and mute my enthusiasm. In the end I did not do so. History gives us too few moments with such verve. Why not go back and be the irrepressible child that America itself once was? The need to rediscover the childhood of our nation is great. We are drifting into a new sobriety. It was in my generation that we first lost a war. We no longer take our leadership in productivity for granted. We have found that we have a capacity for failure, and that we do not always emerge as the good guys. We have deconstructed our heroes until they seem to be heroes no more. But they were heroes. Any chapter on colonial technology inevitably yields up the names of Jefferson (no mean inventor himself), Fulton (with his thumb in so many pies), and the towering figure of Benjamin Franklin. These people appear here not because they were the only heroes we had, but because they were true paragons of colonial creativity.

On disappointment: promoting ordinary conversations in extraordinary times

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Scanlon
Keyword(s):  
Public Spheres ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Do So

To be disappointed is to be human, to be disappointing is also to be human. This article will invite reflection upon the under-theorised phenomenon of disappointment and its relationship to ‘failure’, to ‘hope’ and perhaps even ‘forgiveness’ (or the lack if it). The central premise is that to engage with ‘disappointment’ in our internal relatedness, and in our interpersonal and social relationships may enable us to re-connect with our own and others’ humanity – and not to do so is to remain stuck, aggrieved, resentful and locked into cycles of reciprocal self- and other-destructive violence and recrimination. The article will seek to explore disappointment as a ‘disturbance of groupishness’ (Bion, 1961, emphasis added), ‘a location of disturbance’ (Foulkes, 1948/1983 emphasis added) and a way of structuring the traumatised organisation-in-the-mind (Armstrong, 2005; Scanlon, 2012). The article will conclude with an invitation for psycho-social practitioners to leave our psycho-social retreats (consulting rooms, libraries, classrooms and the like) and, once again, to engage more deliberatively with conversations in ‘public spheres’ (Habermas, 1968).

Science, Philosophy, and Diagnosis

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
Joel Paris
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Psychosocial Factors ◽  
Signs And Symptoms ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
External Sources ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Do So

Diagnosis in psychiatry is not well based in science, mainly because we do not know the causes of most mental disorders, and are forced to identify them by their signs and symptoms, Diagnosis could be made more scientific by using external sources of validity, such as biomarkers for endophenoypes, but there is not enough knowledge do so. In general, attempts to apply reductionist models to the mind are limited in principle because neuroscience studies mental phenomena on a different level, and tends to exclude psychosocial factors. In practice, diagnoses tend to be used largely as heuristics leading to treatments believed to be effective. Moreover, there is no well-defined boundary between psychopathology and normality.

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