Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.
The author or concept searched is found in the following 46 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analog/Digital | Dyson | Brockman I 35 Analog/digital/Dyson, George: Electronics underwent two fundamental transitions over the past hundred years: from analog to digital and from vacuum tubes to solid state. That these transitions occurred together does not mean they are inextricably linked. Just as digital computation was implemented using vacuum tube components, analog computation can be implemented in solid state. Analog computation is alive and well, even though vacuum tubes are commercially extinct. There is no precise distinction between analog and digital computing. Many systems operate across both analog and digital regimes. A tree integrates a wide range of inputs as continuous functions, but if you cut down that tree, you find that it has been counting the years digitally all along. In analog computing, complexity resides in network topology, not in code. Information is processed as continuous functions of values such as voltage and relative pulse frequency rather than by logical operations on discrete strings of bits. Brockman I 36 Digital computing, intolerant of error or ambiguity, depends upon error correction at every step along the way. Analog computing tolerates errors, allowing you to live with them. Nature uses digital coding for the storage, replication, and recombination of sequences of nucleotides, but relies on analog computing, running on nervous systems, for intelligence and control. The genetic system in every living cell is a stored-program computer. Brains aren’t. Analog computers also mediate transformations between two forms of information: structure in space and behavior in time. There is no code and no programming. (…) nature evolved analog computers known as nervous systems, which embody information absorbed from the world. They learn. Dyson, G. “The Third Law”. In: Brockman, John (ed.) 2019. Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. New York: Penguin Press. |
Dyson I Esther Dyson Release 2.1: A Design for Living in the Digital Age New York 1998 Brockman I John Brockman Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI New York 2019 |
| Animism | Monod | I 40 Definition Animism/Monod: Animism is the assumption of a universal teleonomic principle according to which evolution should end in mankind. I 41 The human projects the consciousness, which he/she has from the strongly teleonomic mode of action of the central nervous system (CNS), to the inanimate nature. Cf. >Anthropic principle, >Teleonomy. |
Mon I J. Monod Le hasard et la nécessité, Paris 1970 German Edition: Zufall und Notwendigkeit Hamburg 1982 |
| Behavior | Dawkins | I 92 Genes have made animals active risk-taking vehicle. Behavior/genes/Dawkins: (Behavior in this chapter is physical behavior) Genuine protection of the genes is only possible if the time of muscle contraction is somehow coordinated with the outside world. I 95 As an intermediary, the genes first had to invent the brain. I 96 Behavior/intention/machine/Dawkins: It is not difficult to speak of machines that behave as if they had an intention. We can leave the question open. >Intentions, >Robots, >Artificial intelligence, >Artificial consciousness. Basically, the principles of unconscious purposeful behavior are basic skills of engineering. E.g. steam engine. Negative feedback. I 98 It is a fallacy that machines that were originally built by humans would have to be controlled by them. Similar fallacy, for example, that computers do not really play chess, because they "merely do what the operator tells them". But they must be able to play themselves, because there are more chess games than atoms in our galaxy. >Chess. I 111 Behavior/brain/gene/Dawkins: The brain even gives the survival machine the power to rebel against the dictation of the genes and, for example, to refuse to have many children. >Brain, >Brain/brain states. I 116 Behavior/communication/Dawkins: We can say that one survival machine is communicating with another when it affects their behavior or the condition of their nervous system. ((s) MaturanaVs: the central nervous system (CNS) cannot, for example, be influenced by anything from outside). Behavior: e.g. mole crickets sing in a hole in the earth, which amplifies their voice. I 152 Population/behavior/Dawkins: It may appear as if a population acted like a self-regulating unit. But that is a deception: it is aroused by a selection that takes place at the level of the individual gene. >Selection. I 153 Egoistic gene/Dawkins: The gene distributes its loyalty to different bodies. |
Da I R. Dawkins The Selfish Gene, Oxford 1976 German Edition: Das egoistische Gen, Hamburg 1996 Da II M. St. Dawkins Through Our Eyes Only? The Search for Animal Consciousness, Oxford/New York/Heidelberg 1993 German Edition: Die Entdeckung des tierischen Bewusstseins Hamburg 1993 |
| Behavior | Gray | Corr I 349 Behavior/Gray: Gray used the language of cybernetics (cf. Wiener 1948)(1) – the science of communication and control, comprising end-goals and feedback processes containing control of values within the system that guide the organism towards its final goal – in the form of a cns-CNS (conceptual nervous system/Central Nervous System >Terminology/Gray) bridge, to show how the flow of information and control of outputs is achieved (see also, Gray 2004)(2). >Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory/Gray, >Conceptual Nervous System/Gray. Gray faced two major problems: first, how to identify brain systems responsible for behaviour; and, secondly, how to characterize these systems once identified. The individual differences perspective is one major way of identifying major sources of variation in behaviour; by inference, there must be causal systems (i.e., sources) giving rise to observed variations in behaviour. Hans Eysenck’s (1947(3), 1957(4), 1967(5)) approach was to use multivariate statistical analysis to identify these major sources of variation in the form of personality dimensions. GrayVsEysenck: Gray accepted that this ‘top-down’ approach can identify the minimum number of sources of variation (i.e., the ‚extraction ‘extraction problem’ in factor analysis), but he argued that such statistical approaches can never resolve the correct orientation of these observed dimensions (i.e., the ‘rotation problem’ in factor analysis). Solution/Gray: „bottom-up“ approach: rested on other forms of evidence, including the effects of brain lesions, experimental brain research (e.g., intracranial self-stimulation studies), and, of most importance, the effects on behaviour of classes of drugs known to be effective in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Transforming base pharmacological findings into a valuable neuropsychological theory. This was a subtle and clever way to expose the nature of fundamental emotion and motivation systems, especially those implicated in major forms of psychopathology. >Method/Gray, >Fear/Gray. 1. Wiener, N. 1948. Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and machine. Cambridge: MIT Press 2. Gray, J. A. 2004. Consciousness: creeping up on the Hard Problem. Oxford University Press 3. Eysenck, H. J. 1947. Dimensions of personality. London: K. Paul/Trench Trubner 4. Eysenck, H. J. 1957. The dynamics of anxiety and hysteria. New York: Preger 5. Eysenck, H. J. 1967. The biological basis of personality. Springfield, IL: Thomas Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Behavior | Maturana | I 114 Behavior/Maturana: not determined by semantic or functional values, but by the structure of the nervous system. - E.g. flight and landing are irrelevant to the internal dynamics of the aircraft (system). - ((s) structure determines behavior, but not vice versa.) >Nervous System, >Structure/Maturana, >Systems/Maturana. Behavior: changing relations and interactions of an organism with its environment, such as those described by an observer. >Description/Maturana. I 128 Behavior/Organism/Body/Maturana: different organisms can produce the same behavior - therefore from the behavior can not be inferred the physiology. - Regularity is always part of the description. >Regularities. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Brain | Deacon | I 45 Brain/Deacon: in the co-evolution of language and brain, the relationship between cause and effect was reversed in that the new ability of the symbolic reference (which is reserved exclusively for the human species) was decoupled from genetic transmission. >Symbolic Reference, >Symbols/Deacon. If it is true that there has been a pressure in selection on symbolic organisms, our unique mental ability must also be understood in these terms. Then the architecture of our brains should also show systematic deviations from the architecture of monkey brains. >Animals, >Animal language. Size: is only an insignificant feature. What is more important is the transformation, the re-engineering of the architecture. I 146 - 164 Brain/Learning/Deacon: Brain size has probably something to do with intelligence, but there are many other factors to consider, such as the proportion of brain capacity required to control the musculoskeletal system. Learning. I 164 Second level learning, i.e. the development of new reactions to new situations only occurs in organisms that live longer. In more short-lived species, such an ability would not pay off. >Behavior. I 166 Small dogs with correspondingly small brains are very similar to big dogs in their brain performances. Their cerebralization (i.e. their brain performance relative to their weight) is even slightly greater than that of their larger conspecifics. I 170 Cerebralisation/encephalisation: the origin of their increase in primates is not in the head! It is in the relatively slower growth of their bodies. I 183 To compare the brains of animals with those of humans, we do not need to compare sizes in general, but we need to compare the sizes of the individual parts of the brain. The structure of the brain or the control of the relative growth of individual body parts at all. Is controlled by homeotic genes. I 194 The brain adapts to the rest of the body during evolution. This explains the otherwise extremely improbable result that adding further components of this extremely networked structure leads to an increase in functions and does not restrict them. Solution: the brain itself plays a systemic role in the design of its parts. Neurons - unlike other cell types - are designed for communication and thus for tuning the function with remote cells. Cf. Learning, >Learning/Hebb. I 195 In this way, the nervous system itself can participate in the process of its construction. Cf. >Neural Networks. I 199 Xenotransplantation of brain parts between different animal species showed that growth and interconnection with foreign tissue is possible. The molecular processes are identical in the different animal species. I 202 In foreign tissue, neurons begin to produce an increased number of axons, some of which turn out to be less suitable and are then used less frequently. This is a Darwin-like process of selective elimination. I 474 Deacon thesis: the initial unspecific connectivity and subsequent competition of the connections influences cognitive processes through tendencies in neural computation resulting from superior patterns due to regional distribution. This is how differences between the species develop. Cf. >Computation, >Information Processing/Psychology. I 205 Cells in different brain regions have not previously gotten their compounds dictated and can specialize in different directions. Literally every developing brain region adapts to the body in which it is located. I 207 Displacement/Deacon: if a genetic variation strengthens the relative size of a population of nerve cells, the axons will shift from smaller to larger regions. I 212 We do not have to speculate about special brain functions, which are reserved solely for humans when we understand the shift that does not depend on the sheer size of the brain. The course for the division of regions for individual brain functions is set shortly after birth. I 213 The formation and differentiation of the brain regions of the human being takes place along the formation of the functions of its body parts and other bodily functions such as eyes, ears, musculoskeletal system. This formation is very different to the formation of small and large dogs. I 214ff Thought experiment: Assuming that a human embryonic brain is transplanted into a gigantic monkey body. It is possible to predict quite accurately which brain regions develop and how, adapted to the body functions and their relative expression. Factors such as the deviating size of the retina or the competition of the brain cells for the control of muscle cells are decisive. These changes are not isolated adaptations. I 220 Langauge/Brain/Deacon: Thesis: Increasing vocalization can be traced back to motor projections of the midbrain and brain stem, while symbolic learning can be traced back to the extension of the prefrontal cortex and competition for synapses throughout the brain. DeaconVsTradition: early on it was assumed that musicians, for example, have a particularly large brain region for processing auditory signals. That turned out to be wrong. I 221 There is competition between central and peripheral regions of the brain as well as between neighbouring regions. A selection is made not only with regard to regions, but also in terms of functions. >Selection. I 253 Language/mammals/Deacon: most mammals are unable to speak because the connection between motor cortex and vocal control instances in the brain stem has been cut during early development. I 267 In the brain, the operations for organizing the combinatorial relations, which regulate the use of symbols and associations, are located in the prefrontal cortex. I 277 The cerebellum is very fast in the formation of predictions. Linking to the cerebellum is, for example, beneficial for fast conjugations that are used in the formation of sentences. The prefrontal cortex is then responsible for filtering out the right associations. I 343 Brain/Human/Evolution: What is decisive is not an absolute growth in the size of the brain, but a growth in size relative to an increase in body height within species. And we can see that, in addition to this relative growth in size in the case of the human being, it has led to an increase in the size of the prefrontal cortex. This corresponds to a shift in learning disposition. I 345 This development can only be understood in terms of Baldwin's evolution (Baldwin effect). Cf. >Evolution/Deacon. I 346 Tool use/Deacon: passed on from individual to individual, i.e. learned and is not a characteristic that is reflected in the brain structure. >Culture, >Nature, >Evolution. I 347 The first tools were used by living beings whose brains were not well adapted for the use of symbols. However, experiments with monkeys such as Kanzi show that even such brains with considerable social training are able to learn to use symbols. >Symbols/Deacon. |
Dea I T. W. Deacon The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of language and the Brain New York 1998 Dea II Terrence W. Deacon Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter New York 2013 |
| Brain Development | Developmental Psychology | Upton I 70 Brain development(Developmental psychology/Upton: between the ages of two and five years the changes that occur in the brain enable children to plan their actions, pay greater attention to tasks and increase their language skills. The brain does not grow as rapidly during this time period as it did in infancy, but there are still some dramatic anatomical changes that take place (Thompson et al., 2000)(1). During early childhood, children’s brains show rapid growth in the prefrontal cortex in particular. The prefrontal cortex is an area of the frontal lobes that is known to be involved in two very important activities: planning and organising new actions, and maintaining attention to tasks (Blumenthal et al., 1999)(2). Other important changes include an increase in myelination of the cells in the brain. This myelination speeds up the rate at which information travels through the nervous system (Meier et al., 2004)(3). E.g.myelination of the area of the brain that controls hand–eye coordination is not completed until around four years of age. Brain-imaging studies have shown that children with lower rates of myelination in this area of the brain at four years of age show poorer hand–eye coordination than their peers (Pujol et al., 2004)(4). Upton I 71 Language/right hemisphere: Handedness has traditionally been thought to have a strong link to brain organisation. Paul Pierre Broca first described language regions in the left hemisphere of right-handers in the nineteenth century and, from then on, it was accepted that the reverse, that is, right-hemisphere language dominance, should be true of left-handers (Knecht et al., 2000)(5). However, in reality the left-hand side of the brain dominates in language processing for most people: around 95 per cent of right-handers process speech predominantly in the left hemisphere (Springer and Deutsch, 1985)(6), as do more than 50 per cent of left-handers (Knecht et al., 2000)(5). According to Knecht et al., left-handedness is neither a precondition nor a necessary consequence of right-hemisphere language dominance (Knecht et al., 2000(5), p. 2517). >Learning, >Learning theory, >Language acquisition, >Brain, >Lateralization of the brain, >Language. 1. Thompson, P.M., Giedd, J. N., Woods, R. P., MacDonald D. Evans, A. C. & Toga, A. W. 2000. Growth patterns in the developing brain detected by using continuum mechanical tensor maps. Nature, 404, 190-3. 2. Blumenthal, J. A., Babyak M. A., Moore, K.A., Craighead, W.E:, Herman, S. Khatri, P., Waugh, R, Napolitano, M.A., Forman, L.M., Appelbaum, M., Doraiswamy, P.M. & Krishnan, K.R. 1999. Effects of exercise training on older patients with major depression, Archives of internal Medicine, 159: 2349-56. 3. Meier, B.P. and Hinsz, V.B. (2004) A comparison of human aggression committed by groups and individuals: an interindividual-intergroup discontinuity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40: 551–59. 4. Pujol,J, López-Sala, A., Sebastiá-Gallés, N, Deus, J, Cardoner, N., Soriano-Mas, C, Moreno, A. and Sans, A. (2004) Delayed myelination in children with developmental delay detected by volumetric MRI. NeuroImage, 22 (2): 897–903. 5. Knecht, S., Dräger, B., Deppe, M., Bobe, L. and Lohmann, H. (2000) Handedness and hemispheric language dominance in healthy humans. Brain, 123(12): 2512–18. 6. Springer, S.P. and Deutsch, G. (1985) Left Brain, Right Brain. New York: W.H. Freeman. |
Upton I Penney Upton Developmental Psychology 2011 |
| Brain/Brain State | Fodor | Rorty I 269 Fodor: (according to Rorty): the distinction between states of the organism and states of its nervous system are irrelevant to the cognitive psychology. >Cognitive Psychology. |
F/L Jerry Fodor Ernest Lepore Holism. A Shoppers Guide Cambridge USA Oxford UK 1992 Fodor I Jerry Fodor "Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis", Synthese 28 (1974), 97-115 In Kognitionswissenschaft, Dieter Münch Frankfurt/M. 1992 Fodor II Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Fodor III Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Rorty I Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton/NJ 1979 German Edition: Der Spiegel der Natur Frankfurt 1997 Rorty II Richard Rorty Philosophie & die Zukunft Frankfurt 2000 Rorty II (b) Richard Rorty "Habermas, Derrida and the Functions of Philosophy", in: R. Rorty, Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers III, Cambridge/MA 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (c) Richard Rorty Analytic and Conversational Philosophy Conference fee "Philosophy and the other hgumanities", Stanford Humanities Center 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (d) Richard Rorty Justice as a Larger Loyalty, in: Ronald Bontekoe/Marietta Stepanians (eds.) Justice and Democracy. Cross-cultural Perspectives, University of Hawaii 1997 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (e) Richard Rorty Spinoza, Pragmatismus und die Liebe zur Weisheit, Revised Spinoza Lecture April 1997, University of Amsterdam In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (f) Richard Rorty "Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache", keynote lecture for Gadamer’ s 100th birthday, University of Heidelberg In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (g) Richard Rorty "Wild Orchids and Trotzky", in: Wild Orchids and Trotzky: Messages form American Universities ed. Mark Edmundson, New York 1993 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty III Richard Rorty Contingency, Irony, and solidarity, Chambridge/MA 1989 German Edition: Kontingenz, Ironie und Solidarität Frankfurt 1992 Rorty IV (a) Richard Rorty "is Philosophy a Natural Kind?", in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 46-62 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (b) Richard Rorty "Non-Reductive Physicalism" in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 113-125 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (c) Richard Rorty "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 66-82 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (d) Richard Rorty "Deconstruction and Circumvention" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 85-106 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty V (a) R. Rorty "Solidarity of Objectivity", Howison Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, January 1983 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1998 Rorty V (b) Richard Rorty "Freud and Moral Reflection", Edith Weigert Lecture, Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities, Washington School of Psychiatry, Oct. 19th 1984 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty V (c) Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy, in: John P. Reeder & Gene Outka (eds.), Prospects for a Common Morality. Princeton University Press. pp. 254-278 (1992) In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Colour | Deacon | I 116 Colour Words/Language Origin/Deacon: The development of color words in different languages and societies converges. >Color words. In principle, the combination of colour tones and sounds can be arbitrary. In fact, however, the mapping relations are in some respects universal. >Image, >Picture theory, >Word meaning, >Signs. I 117 But that does not mean they are somehow built into the brain. Colour word/colours/Berlin/Kay/Deacon: In different societies, black (dark) and white (light) are the first distinctions, later on the distinction red/green is added. If there are three or four colour terms in a language, yellow or blue will be added next. If there are more terms, the pattern is not so clear to predict(1). >Distinctions. Surprisingly, the colours that are considered to be typically red or green (best red/best green) are similar all over the world(2). I 118 Explanation: this is where the brain's ability to differentiate or highlight differences comes into play, which goes beyond the specifics of the use of language in individuals or societies. I 119 Language evolution/colour words: the patterns of typical errors contribute to the fact that the language use adapts itself to the neurophysiological conditions of perception. This is a case of neurological tendency as selection pressure in social evolution. >Language emergence, >Selection, >Perception. Suppose we wanted to introduce a new word for a very special hue of colour between known colours. In the long run, this new name will disappear again in favour of old colour words. Certain prominent colours will dominate. The tendency of our brains to remember certain colours better corresponds to the natural selection of certain variants instead of other variants. Thus, the reference of colour words will develop in adaptation to the human nervous system. >Reference, >Nervous system. I 120 However, this development is due to non-genetic forces. Without these social universals, the use of colour words would be idiosyncratic, i.e. limited to single individuals. Nevertheless, it is clear that colour terms are not firmly anchored in the brain. What is universally anchored is rather certain tendencies of the group, which are not linguistic. The division of colour terms as they are is not a necessary feature of language and is not an innate linguistic category. >Classification, >Order, >Categorization. 1. Berlin, B., und Kay, P. (1969). Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. (2) Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In: E. Rosch, & B. B. Lloyd (Hrsg.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 28-49). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. |
Dea I T. W. Deacon The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of language and the Brain New York 1998 Dea II Terrence W. Deacon Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter New York 2013 |
| Conceptual Nervous System | Gray | Corr I 349 Conceptual Nervous System/Gray: An (…) important aspect of RST (>Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory) is the distinction between those parts that belong to the conceptual nervous system (cns) and those parts that belong to the central nervous system (CNS) (a distinction advanced by Hebb 1955)(1). Def cns/Hebb: The cns component of RST provides the behavioural scaffolding, formalized within some theoretical framework (e.g., learning theory; see Gray 1975(2); or, ethoexperimental analysis; see Gray and McNaughton 2000)(3); Def CNS/Hebb: the CNS component specifies the brain systems involved, couched in terms of the latest knowledge of the neuroendocrine system (see McNaughton and Corr 2008)(4). As noted by Gray (1972a)(5), these two levels of explanation must be compatible 1. Hebb, D. O. 1955. Drives and the C. N. S. (Conceptual Nervous System), Psychological Review 62: 243–54 2. Gray, J. A. 1975. Elements of a two-process theory of learning. London: Academic Press 3. Gray, J. A. and McNaughton, N. 2000. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Oxford University Press 4. Corr, P. J. and McNaughton, N. 2008. Reinforcement sensitivity theory and personality, in P. J. Corr (ed). The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality, pp. 155–87. Cambridge University Press 5. Gray, J. A., 1972a. Learning theory, the conceptual nervous system and personality, in V. D. Nebylitsyn and J. A. Gray (eds.), The biological bases of individual behaviour, pp. 372–99. New York: Academic Press Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press Corr II 115 Conceptual Nervous System/Central Nervous System/Brain/Drugs/Gray/McNaughton/Corr: One can, and Gray in particular did, map in [two] directions: between a ‘conceptual nervous system’ (cns) of the type inferred by Hebb (1955)(1) from the careful observation of experimentally constrained behaviour and the real ‘central nervous system’ (CNS) studied by neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Gray’s unique step was to use drugs as a conceptual dissection tool – assuming that a drug changes synaptic activity (CNS) and so behaviour (cns) in parallel. Suppose a drug affects behaviour A but not behaviour B. We can be sure that A depends on a process not shared by B. Critically, this means we exclude from consideration all cognitive and neural processes that are not drug-sensitive. Drugs, thus, dissect both the cns and CNS in a highly replicable, theory-independent, way. Gray used drug dissection in a particularly powerful way: (…) to tie together specific behaviours, neural systems, personality systems and clinical disorders. II 125 Introversion/Gray: (…) Gray concludes ‘that it is activity in this frontal cortex-medial septal area-hippocampal system which determines the degree of introversion: the more sensitive or the more active this system is, the more introverted will the individual be’ (1970a, p. 260)(2). 1. Hebb, D. O. (1955). Drives and the C.N.S. (conceptual nervous system). Psychological Review, 62, 243–254. 2. Gray, J. A. (1970a). The psychophysiological basis of introversion–extraversion. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 8, 249–266. McNaughton, Neil and Corr, John Philip: “Sensitivity to Punishment and Reward Revisiting Gray (1970)”, In: Philip J. Corr (Ed.) 2018. Personality and Individual Differences. Revisiting the classical studies. Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage, pp. 115-136. |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Conceptual Nervous System | Hebb | Corr I 349 Conceptual Nervous System/Hebb: An (…) important aspect of RST (>Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory) is the distinction between those parts that belong to the conceptual nervous system (cns) and those parts that belong to the central nervous system (CNS) (a distinction advanced by Hebb 1955)(1). Def cns/Hebb: The cns component of RST provides the behavioural scaffolding, formalized within some theoretical framework (e.g., learning theory; see Gray 1975(2); or, ethoexperimental analysis; see Gray and McNaughton 2000)(3); Def CNS/Hebb: the CNS component specifies the brain systems involved, couched in terms of the latest knowledge of the neuroendocrine system (see McNaughton and Corr 2008)(4). As noted by Gray (1972a)(5), these two levels of explanation must be compatible 1. Hebb, D. O. 1955. Drives and the C. N. S. (Conceptual Nervous System), Psychological Review 62: 243–54 2. Gray, J. A. 1975. Elements of a two-process theory of learning. London: Academic Press 3. Gray, J. A. and McNaughton, N. 2000. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Oxford University Press 4. Corr, P. J. and McNaughton, N. 2008. Reinforcement sensitivity theory and personality, in P. J. Corr (ed). The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality, pp. 155–87. Cambridge University Press 5. Gray, J. A., 1972a. Learning theory, the conceptual nervous system and personality, in V. D. Nebylitsyn and J. A. Gray (eds.), The biological bases of individual behaviour, pp. 372–99. New York: Academic Press Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Hebb I Donald O. Hebb The Organization of Behavior Hoboken, NJ 1949 Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Conceptual Nervous System | Kelsen | ||
| Conditioning | Eysenck | Corr I 353 Conditioning/Eysenck: Eysenck (1957)(1) stated that introverted individuals (i.e., high arousal, or excitable process, type) are relatively easy to condition; whereas, extraverts (i.e., low arousal, or inhibitory process, type) are relatively less easy to condition. The observation that clinical neurotics are indeed introverts (they are also high on neurosis, which adds negative emotional fuel to the high-arousal fire) fitted the theory well, as did the clinical observation that behaviour therapy, which was based upon conditioning principles, was effective in the treatment of a number of neurotic conditions. >Extraversion/Eysenck, >Introversion/Eysenck. Corr I 354 VsEysenck: (a) at high levels of stimulation, introverts were actually worse than extraverts at conditioning (Eysenck and Levey 1972)(2). Although this supported the Pavlovian notion of transmarginal inhibition (TMI) of response (i.e., a breakdown of the orderly stimuli-response relationship at too-high levels of stimulation), it simultaneously corroded the very foundations of the theory, for it led to the conclusion that extraverts should condition best to high arousing stimuli (including the panoply of aversive stimuli found in neurosis) and, therefore, should be overrepresented in the psychiatric clinic, which they are not for typical neurotic conditions. (b) Compounded with this first problem was the finding, again from Eysenck’s own work (Eysenck and Levey 1972)(2) but also from other researchers (Revelle 1997)(3), that it is impulsivity, not sociability, that carried the causal burden of the arousal-conditioning link. As impulsivity is orthogonal, and thus independent of sociability (the main trait of Eysenck’s Extraversion scale), this destroyed not only the arousal-conditioning-Extraversion link, but also the relevance of Extraversion at all in conditioning effects, including those supposedly so crucial in the development of neurotic conditions. (c) The relations observed between arousal and conditioning were observed to vary as a function of time of day: Eysenck-like sociability/impulsivity x arousal effects that are found with morning testing (e.g., introverts showing superior performance under placebo and TMI-related performance deficits under arousal, relative to extraverts) are reversed with evening testing. As ruefully noted by Gray (1981), one is not a neurotic in the morning and a psychopath in the evening! (d) See >Conditioning/Psychological Theories, >Conditioning/Gray (>GrayVsEysenck). 1. Eysenck, H. J. 1967. The biological basis of personality. Springfield, IL: Thomas 2. Eysenck, H. J. and Levey, A. 1972. Conditioning, Introversion–Extraversion and the strength of the nervous system, in V. D. Nebylitsyn and J. A. Gray (eds), The biological bases of individual behaviour, pp. 206–20. London: Academic Press 3. Revelle, W. 1997. Extraversion and impulsivity: the lost dimension, in H. Nyborg (ed.), The scientific study of human nature: tribute to Hans J. Eysenck at eighty, pp. 189–212. Oxford: Elsevier Science Press Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Constructivism | Black | III 75 Constructivism/Hudson Hoagland: Thesis: we do not perceive the properties of objects t but the properties of our own nervous system. BlackVsHoagland: how can he know then that the physico-chemical events are complex? >Description levels, >Levels (Order), >Theories, >Methods, >Knowledge, >Perception. |
Black I Max Black "Meaning and Intention: An Examination of Grice’s Views", New Literary History 4, (1972-1973), pp. 257-279 In Handlung, Kommunikation, Bedeutung, G. Meggle (Hg) Frankfurt/M 1979 Black II M. Black The Labyrinth of Language, New York/London 1978 German Edition: Sprache. Eine Einführung in die Linguistik München 1973 Black III M. Black The Prevalence of Humbug Ithaca/London 1983 Black IV Max Black "The Semantic Definition of Truth", Analysis 8 (1948) pp. 49-63 In Truth and Meaning, Paul Horwich Aldershot 1994 |
| Constructivism | Searle | III 168 Constructivism/Maturana: the nervous systems (autopoietic) creates reality. >Autopoiesis. SearleVsMaturana: genetic fallacy: from the fact that our image of reality is constructed, it does not follow that reality is constructed. >Constructivism/Maturana. Maturana: rejects the idea of an "objective reality" in favour of the idea that nervous systems like autopoietic systems create their own reality. Since we have no idea and no access to reality except through social construction, there is no independent reality. >Objectivity/Maturana, >Reality/Maturana. SearleVsMaturana: from the fact that our knowledge/imagination/image of reality is constructed by human brains in social interactions, it does not follow that reality has been created by human brains. III 169 Genetic misconception: a problem beyond that: would the interactions themselves also be constructed by interaction? >Regress. Winograd: example: "there is water in the fridge". Relative to different backgrounds you can make statements that are true or false. From this he concludes that reality does not exist independently of our representations. SearleVsWinograd: the genetic fallacy as in Maturana confuses our image (background) with reality. Cf. >Background/Searle, >Terminology/Searle. --- Derrida: "Il n'y a pas de "hors texte"". SearleVsDerrida: this is simply claimed without argument. In a later polemical answer he seems to take everything back anyway. He claims that the whole thing only means banality, that everything exists in one context or another. >Derrida. |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Exterior/interior | Maturana | I 98 Recursion/within/without/Maturana: through recursive distinctions the observer can operate as if he moves outside his circumstances. (Self-reference, application of operations an operations). >Recursion, >Self-reference. I 113f Unity/closed system/Maturana: within/without is only for the observer not by Input/Output describable, otherwise open system. >Systems, >Input/Output. I 121 Distinction from hallucination for nervous system not possible, part of the cognitive domain of the observer. >Observation/Maturana, >Nervous system. I 183 Definition Life/Maturana: in ontogenetic drift push through a range of interference, while a constantly changing niche is realized. >Life, >Niche. Living System/: operates only in the present. - It is open for the passage of molecules (parts of autopoietic systems). Purpose: is part of the observer. >Purposes. Living systems have no within/without - they are in the process of autopoiesis or disintegrated. >Autopoiesis. Environment: is not "used" by the system. - Instead living systems they bring their own niche out. I 194 Life is knowledge - living systems are cognitive systems. >Knowledge, >Cognition. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Genes | Dawkins | Gould I 88ff Richard Dawkins Thesis: Genes are the relevant units of selection. >Selection. Gould II 171 Dawkins Thesis: Dawkins argues that the bodies are only temporary abodes of the genes, the real bearers of evolution. Dawkins writes as a strict Darwinist. >Darwinism. Gould II 172 Dawkins: Question: If the DNA is self-referring, why does it not create millions of copies of itself? That finally displace everything else? What is hindering it? Dawkins I 50 Gene/Dawkins: Genes live much longer than their bearers. A gene can be understood as a unity that survives a multitude of successive individual bodies. I 62 Def Gene/Dawkins: in the sense of the title this book it is more complicated than Cistron. There is no generally accepted definition for gene. I would like to use the definition of G.C. Williams: Def Gene/Williams: any piece of chromosome material that potentially survives so many generations that it can serve as a unit for selection. I 63 Inheritance/copying accuracy/Dawkins: "Longevity in the form of copies". I 64 The shorter a genetic unit, the longer it will probably live. I 71 Dawkins Thesis: Small genetic units can survive in identical form, individuals, groups and species cannot. >Species. Gene/Dawkins: Does not age! For it, the probability of dying at the age of one million years is not greater than at a hundred years. I 73 Order/Dawkins: The cards themselves survive the shuffling. Selection/Dawkins: If genes always mixed, the selection would be impossible in general. I 74 Gene/Container/DawkinsVsGould: Successful genes are good designers of survival machines. For example, creatures with long legs can flee better from predators. What are the characteristics that immediately characterize a gene as good or bad? I 75 Gene/Dawkins: Independent and free as they may be on their journey through the generations, they are very inhibited in the control of embryonic development. There is no one gene that is responsible for developing a single body part. I 86 Gene/Dawkins: There is a "gene for copying errors, (mutators)." It follows the selfish purpose of causing errors in other genes. Similarly, a "gene for propagation" manipulates all others for its selfish purposes. I 91 Body/cell/human/Dawkins: I prefer to imagine the body as a colony of genes, and the cell as a convenient work unit for the chemical industry of the genes. I 112 Altruism/gene/Dawkins: A "gene for altruism" controls the development of the nervous system in such a way that it is very likely to behave selflessly. >Altruism. For example, some bees pull their own larvae from the hive if they are infected. I 115 The survival of the genes can also be promoted by seemingly altruistic behavior! I 154 Gene/Dawkins: Thesis: The gene may be able to help the copies of its own in other bodies. I 155 E.g.: Albino gene in humans: We must, however, revoke our language somewhat: they do not actually "want" to survive or help other Albino genes. But if it were to move its bodies purely by chance to behave towards other albinos in a more selfless way, the consequence would be that it would be more numerous in the gene pool. For this, the gene must have two functions: 1) To produce light skin color ((s) Recognizability) 2) The tendency to altruism against other fair-skinned bodies. Such a gene with two effects could be very successful. |
Da I R. Dawkins The Selfish Gene, Oxford 1976 German Edition: Das egoistische Gen, Hamburg 1996 Da II M. St. Dawkins Through Our Eyes Only? The Search for Animal Consciousness, Oxford/New York/Heidelberg 1993 German Edition: Die Entdeckung des tierischen Bewusstseins Hamburg 1993 Gould I Stephen Jay Gould The Panda’s Thumb. More Reflections in Natural History, New York 1980 German Edition: Der Daumen des Panda Frankfurt 2009 Gould II Stephen Jay Gould Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. Further Reflections in Natural History, New York 1983 German Edition: Wie das Zebra zu seinen Streifen kommt Frankfurt 1991 Gould III Stephen Jay Gould Full House. The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, New York 1996 German Edition: Illusion Fortschritt Frankfurt 2004 Gould IV Stephen Jay Gould The Flamingo’s Smile. Reflections in Natural History, New York 1985 German Edition: Das Lächeln des Flamingos Basel 1989 |
| Grice | Millikan | I 52 Language/Millikan: in this chapter: what are the relations between 1. the stabilizing function of a speech pattern 2. their literal use 3. the speaker's intentions. Stabilization function/Millikan: next chapter thesis: one aspect of the word meaning, the syntactic form is the focused stabilization function. >Terminology/Millikan. Literary use/Millikan: the literary use does not correspond to any stabilizing function (see below). Gricean Intention/MillikanVsGrice/Millikan: Thesis: the Gricean intentions are not at all what drives language usage and understanding. >Grice. Stabilization function/language/Millikan: if speech patterns such as words or syntactic forms have a stabilizing function, then these direct eigenfunctions of reproductively determined families (rfF) are 1st level, of which these patterns are also elements. Functions: of words etc. are historically acquired by expressing both utterances and reactions of the listener. Intention/Speaker's intention/N.B.: these functions do not depend on the speaker's intentions! Direct eigenfunction: has a word token even when it is produced by a parrot. The token is an element of a reproductively determined family in that it has a direct eigenfunction. >Speaker intention. Intention/purpose: the intention or purpose provides a derived eigenfunction. Derived eigenfunction: however, lies above and beyond the direct or stabilizing function. It can be the same as the direct function, but it does not have to be. In any case, it is not its own function of the speech pattern, it is not its eigenfunction. Stabilization Function/Language/Millikan: although the stabilization function is independent of purpose and speaker's intention, it is not independent of purposes that speakers can have in general. I 53 Here again there will be a "critical mass" of cases of use. I 63 Imperative/Millikan: now it is certainly the case that a listener, if asked if the speaker intended to obey the command, will surely immediately answer "yes". I 64 But that does not mean that he used this belief in obedience. Gricean intentions/MillikanVsGrice/Millikan: Gricean intentions are thus superfluous. And they also do not help to distinguish unnatural meaning from less interesting things. In any case, we need not pay attention to Gricean intentions, which are subject only to potential and not actual modifications of the nervous system. >Intention/Grice, >Intentionality/Grice. I 65 VsMillikan: one could object that you could have reasons for an action without these reasons being activated in the anatomy. Millikan: if I stop believing something, I will refrain from certain actions. Gricean Intentions/Millikan: the only interesting question is whether they are realised actually inside while one is speaking. E.g. Millikan: the Sergeant says: "When I say 'stop' the next time, do not stop!" A similar example is given by Bennett. Problem: the training was so effective that the soldier did not manage to stop. |
Millikan I R. G. Millikan Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism Cambridge 1987 Millikan II Ruth Millikan "Varieties of Purposive Behavior", in: Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, R. W. Mitchell, N. S. Thomspon and H. L. Miles (Eds.) Albany 1997, pp. 189-1967 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Hardware | Bostrom | I 71 Hardware/superintelligence/Bostrom: advantages for digital intelligences: - Speed of computational elements. Biological neurons operate at a peak speed of about 200 Hz, a full seven orders of magnitude slower than a modern I 72 microprocessor (~ 2 GHz).)(*) As a consequence, the human brain is forced to rely on massive parallelization and is incapable of rapidly performing any computation that requires a large number of sequential operations. - Internal communication speed. Axons carry action potentials at speeds of 120 m/s or less, whereas electronic processing cores can communicate optically at the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s).(3) - Number of computational elements. The human brain has somewhat fewer than 100 billion neurons. I 339 The number of neurons in an adult human male brain has been estimated at 86.1 ± 8.1 billion, a number arrived at by dissolving brains and fractionating out the cell nuclei, counting the ones stained with a neuron-specific marker. In the past, estimates in the neighborhood of 75–125 billion neurons were common. These were typically based on manual counting of cell densities in representative small regions (Azevedo et al. 2009(4)). I 72 By contrast, computer hardware is indefinitely scalable up to very high physical limits. I 339 The ultimate physical limits to computation set by quantum mechanics, general relativity, and thermodynamics are, however, far beyond this “Jupiter brain” level (Sandberg 1999(5); Lloyd 2000(6)). - Storage capacity. Human working memory is able to hold no more than some four or five chunks of information at any given time. I 340 The number of chunks working memory can maintain is both information- and task-dependent; however, it is clearly limited to a small number of chunks. See Miller (1956)(7) and Cowan (2001)(8). I 73 - Reliability, lifespan, sensors, etc. Machine intelligences might have various other hardware advantages. I 340 For example, biological neurons are less reliable than transistors. Channel noise can trigger action potentials, and synaptic noise produces significant variability in the strength of transmitted signals. Nervous systems appear to have evolved to make numerous trade-offs between noise tolerance and costs (mass, size, time delays); see Faisal et al. (2008)(9). For example, axons cannot be thinner than 0.1 µm lest random opening of ion channels create spontaneous action potentials (Faisal et al. 2005)(10). >Software/Bostrom, >Superintelligence, >Artificial intelligence, >Artificial neural networks, >Machine learning. * This mainly occurs in short bursts in a subset of neurons—most have more sedate firing rates (Gray and McCormick 1996)(1); Steriade et al. 1998(2)). 1. Gray, C. M., and McCormick, D. A. 1996. “Chattering Cells: Superficial Pyramidal Neurons Contributing to the Generation of Synchronous Oscillations in the Visual Cortex.” Science 274 (5284): 109–13. 2. Steriade, M., Timofeev, I., Durmuller, N., and Grenier, F. 1998. “Dynamic Properties of Corticothalamic Neurons and Local Cortical Interneurons Generating Fast Rhythmic (30–40 Hz) Spike Bursts.” Journal of Neurophysiology 79 (1): 483–90. 3. Kandel, Eric R., Schwartz, James H., and Jessell, Thomas M., eds. 2000. Principles of Neural Science. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. 4. Azevedo, F. A. C., Carvalho, L. R. B., Grinberg, L. T., Farfel, J. M., Ferretti, R. E. L., Leite, R. E. P., Jacob, W., Lent, R., and Herculano-Houzel, S. 2009. “Equal Numbers of Neuronal and Nonneuronal Cells Make the Human Brain an Isometrically Scaled-up Primate Brain.” Journal of Comparative Neurology 513 (5): 532–41. 5. Sandberg, Anders. 1999. “The Physics of Information Processing Superobjects: Daily Life Among the Jupiter Brains.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 5. 6. Lloyd, Seth. 2000. “Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation.” Nature 406 (6799): 1047–54. 7. Miller, George A. 1956. “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.” Psychological Review 63 (2): 81–97. 8. Cowan, Nelson. 2001. “The Magical Number 4 in Short-Term Memory: A Reconsideration of Mental Storage Capacity.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (1): 87–114. 9. Faisal, A. A., Selen, L. P., and Wolpert, D. M. 2008. “Noise in the Nervous System.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9 (4): 292–303. 10. Faisal, A. A., White, J. A., and Laughlin, S. B. 2005. “Ion-Channel Noise Places Limits on the Miniaturization of the Brain’s Wiring.” Current Biology 15 (12): 1143–9. |
Bostrom I Nick Bostrom Superintelligence. Paths, Dangers, Strategies Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017 |
| Imagination | Quine | V 57f Imagination/Tradition/Quine: problem: imagine the same odd and even numbers. Solution: imagination as a hypothetical nervous state. Then you do not have to fix the number of spots on a chicken you are seeing. V 178 Imagination/liveliness/Hume: liveliness: is the differentiator for imagination: memory: is attenuated sensation. Fantasy: is attenuated recollection. QuineVsHume: imagination: is an event in the nervous system that leads to dispositions. V 57/58 Imagination/Tradition/Quine: Problem: For example, if one could imagine a number that would be both even and odd. Imagination/Quine: Solution: if you take imaginary images as hypothetical nerve states, there are no such problems. Concerning a nervous state one does not have to commit oneself to e.g. the number of spots of a chicken. Idea/Concept/Berkeley/Hume/Quine: the two were not innocent and even drew the line before the abstract idea of the triangle and only allowed ideas of certain triangles. QuineVsTradition: these are vain questions about the causal connection of ideas. Psychology/Peirce: the only way to examine a psychological question is to rely on external facts. V 59 Quine: Problem: how can you do that if you only talk about outer things and not about inner things like ideas? >Ideas/Quine. Solution/Quine: by talking about language. ((s) >Semantic Ascent). V 177 Past/Observation/Quine: but there are also reports of previous observations where the term was learned by definition rather than by conditioning. Since a defined term can be replaced by its definiendum, this results in a composite observation term. Example: "I have seen a black rabbit": Learning situation: once for black, once for rabbit, as well as for attributive composition. Imagination/Memory/Quine: in the language of imaginary images we can say that they are evoked even if the corresponding object is not present. Now, however, we must go further and require even more skills: the child must distinguish between two types of imaginary images: a) Imagination. b) Memories. V 178 QuineVsHume: has made little convincing reference to liveliness as a distinguishing feature. Def Memory/Hume: is attenuated sensation. Def Imagination/Hume: is weakened memory. >Memory/Quine. Def Imagination/QuineVsHume: is an event in the nervous system that leads to a state of readiness for corresponding stimulation. This indicative nerve process is perceived by the subject, i.e. it must be able to react specifically to it in two different ways: a) Summary of previously learned elements such as "black" and "rabbit". b) Strengthened by acquaintance: i.e. through a real previous encounter with a black rabbit. Is the basis for affirmation. V 179 Observation Sentence/Complete Thought/Reference/Quine: refers to the object and to the calendar clock and, if applicable, to a location. Is a complex observation term. Protocol Sentence: is a timeless sentence (of eternal duration) if place and time data are complete. |
Quine I W.V.O. Quine Word and Object, Cambridge/MA 1960 German Edition: Wort und Gegenstand Stuttgart 1980 Quine II W.V.O. Quine Theories and Things, Cambridge/MA 1986 German Edition: Theorien und Dinge Frankfurt 1985 Quine III W.V.O. Quine Methods of Logic, 4th edition Cambridge/MA 1982 German Edition: Grundzüge der Logik Frankfurt 1978 Quine V W.V.O. Quine The Roots of Reference, La Salle/Illinois 1974 German Edition: Die Wurzeln der Referenz Frankfurt 1989 Quine VI W.V.O. Quine Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge/MA 1992 German Edition: Unterwegs zur Wahrheit Paderborn 1995 Quine VII W.V.O. Quine From a logical point of view Cambridge, Mass. 1953 Quine VII (a) W. V. A. Quine On what there is In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (b) W. V. A. Quine Two dogmas of empiricism In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (c) W. V. A. Quine The problem of meaning in linguistics In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (d) W. V. A. Quine Identity, ostension and hypostasis In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (e) W. V. A. Quine New foundations for mathematical logic In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (f) W. V. A. Quine Logic and the reification of universals In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (g) W. V. A. Quine Notes on the theory of reference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (h) W. V. A. Quine Reference and modality In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (i) W. V. A. Quine Meaning and existential inference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VIII W.V.O. Quine Designation and Existence, in: The Journal of Philosophy 36 (1939) German Edition: Bezeichnung und Referenz In Zur Philosophie der idealen Sprache, J. Sinnreich (Hg) München 1982 Quine IX W.V.O. Quine Set Theory and its Logic, Cambridge/MA 1963 German Edition: Mengenlehre und ihre Logik Wiesbaden 1967 Quine X W.V.O. Quine The Philosophy of Logic, Cambridge/MA 1970, 1986 German Edition: Philosophie der Logik Bamberg 2005 Quine XII W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York 1969 German Edition: Ontologische Relativität Frankfurt 2003 Quine XIII Willard Van Orman Quine Quiddities Cambridge/London 1987 |
| Information | Dennett | I 268 Information/code/Dennett: the fact that a one-dimensional code can represent a three-dimensional structure is a gain of information. Actually, "value" is added! (Contribution to the functioning). >Functions, >Functional explanation, >Code. II 35 Information/action/virus/Dennett: The virus must "make sure" of the proliferation of its information. in order to achieve its objectives, it produces an enzyme which is shown a "password", and then it leaves the other molecules "untouched". II 94f Information/Life/Dennett: long before there were nervous systems in organisms, they used a primitive. postal service: the circulation and metabolism for transmitting information. Information processing/DennettVsFunctionalism: one thing was always clear: as soon as there are transducers and effectors in an information system, its "media neutrality" or multiple realization disappears. (VsPutnam, VsTuring). Embodied Information/Dennett: evolution causes information to become physical in every part of every living creature. E.g. the baleen of the whale embodies information about the food. E.g. The bird's wings contain information about the medium air. E.g. The skin of the chameleon carries information about the environment. This information need not go to the brain as copies. |
Dennett I D. Dennett Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York 1995 German Edition: Darwins gefährliches Erbe Hamburg 1997 Dennett II D. Dennett Kinds of Minds, New York 1996 German Edition: Spielarten des Geistes Gütersloh 1999 Dennett III Daniel Dennett "COG: Steps towards consciousness in robots" In Bewusstein, Thomas Metzinger Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 1996 Dennett IV Daniel Dennett "Animal Consciousness. What Matters and Why?", in: D. C. Dennett, Brainchildren. Essays on Designing Minds, Cambridge/MA 1998, pp. 337-350 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Information | Maturana | I 86f Information/Maturana: it is false to say that the nervous system encoded information on the environment and represents it in the functional organization. Correct: there are processes (not descriptions) that are encoded. - They can be decoded only by the actual realization. - The code is not isomorphic with a description. >Code, >Description/Maturana, >Processes, >Representation, >Nervous System. Information applies only to the cognitive domain: it refers to the degree of uncertainty in the behavior of the observer within defined alternatives. >Behavior, >Observation, >Operation/Maturana. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Learning | Maturana | I 63 Learning/Maturana: historical transformation of an organism through experience. - It serves the basal circularity >Recursion. New behavior evolves. - For an observer, behavior by incorporating a representation seems justified that modifies behavior by memory. >Memory, >Behavior, >Observation. But the system operates in the present - advantageousness can only be determined a posteriori. >Systems. I 70 Allowes purely consensual (cultural) evolution without evolution of the nervous system. >Nervous system. I 73 Learning/Maturana: behavioral change must be accompanied by other changes. >Change. I 74 Not accumulation of representations but continuous transformation of behavior. >Representation. I 119 Learning/instinctive behavior/Maturana. initially indistinguishable, because they are determined in the concrete realization by the structures of the nervous system - Learning: acquired ontogenetically - instinct: acquired evolutionary. I 119 Learning/Maturana: does not change the structure. - Acquisition of representations: only metaphorically (it would presuppose an instructive system). - A learning system has no trivial experiences (interactions), because all interactions lead to structural changes. I 280 Learning/Maturana: described in brackets: pure epigenetic process (development of the individual) - no directed process of adaptation to a reality. >Adaption, >Reality, >Objectivity/Maturana. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Learning Theory | Gray | Corr I 358 Learning Theory/Gray: Gray’s (1975)(1) Elements of a two-process theory of learning fully embodied [the tradition of Hull] (see Learning Theory/Hull, Hull 1952(2)) in personality psychology. Hull: reduced all forms of motivationally-salient reinforcement to a single process of ‘drive-reduction’; as noted by Gray (1975(1), p. 25), the ‘Hullian concept of general drive, to the extent that it is viable, does not differ in any important respects from that of arousal’. On the real nervous system side of the coin, the conceptual nervous system work was strengthened by neurophysiological findings pointing to specific emotion centres in the brain (e.g., the ‘pleasure centres’; Olds and Milner 1954(3); see Corr 2006(4)). >Emotions/Gray. 1. Gray, J. A. 1975. Elements of a two-process theory of learning. London: Academic Press 2. Hull, C. L. 1952. A behaviour system. New Haven: Yale University Press 3. Olds, J. and Milner, P. 1954. Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain, Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47: 419–27 4. Corr, P. J. 2006. Understanding biological psychology. Oxford: Blackwell Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Mathematics | Neumann | Weizenbaum I 203 Mathematics/Neumann, J. von: (J. von Neumann 1958)(1): when we talk about mathematics, then perhaps we are discussing a secondary language based on the primary language that is actually used by the central nervous system. Thus, the external forms of our mathematics are not absolutely relevant when it comes to judging which mathematical or logical language is actually used by the central nervous system. >Theory language, >Language of theought, >Mathematical entities, >Theoretical terms, >Theoretical entities, >World/thinking, >Thinking without language, >Central nervous system. 1. J. von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain, New Haven, 1958, S. 82. |
NeumJ I J. v. Neumann The Computer and the Brain New Haven 2012 Weizenbaum I Joseph Weizenbaum Computer Power and Human Reason. From Judgment to Calculation, W. H. Freeman & Comp. 1976 German Edition: Die Macht der Computer und die Ohnmacht der Vernunft Frankfurt/M. 1978 |
| Memory | Quine | I 20 Memory: has no traces of earlier sensations, but is conceptually. V 176 Memory/Quine: is a disposition, to pronounce a name in the presence of the relevant - the observation sentence has nothing to do with the past - to forget a name is to forget a piece of language. V 177 Past/Observation/Quine: there are also reports of previous observations where the term was learned by definition rather than by conditioning. Since you can replace a defined term with its definiendum, this amounts to a composite observation term. Example "I have seen a black rabbit": >Observation/Quine. Learning situation: one for black, one for rabbits, as well as for attributive composition. Imagination/Memory/Quine: in the language of imaginary images, we can say that they are created even if the corresponding object is not present. But now we have to go further and assume even more abilities: the child has to distinguish between two types of images: a) Fantasies and b) Memories. V 178 QuineVsHume: has made little convincing reference to liveliness as a distinguishing feature. Def Memory/Hume: is a weakened sensation Def Fantasy/Hume: is a weakened memory. Def Imagination/QuineVsHume: is an event in the nervous system that leads to a state of readiness for a corresponding irritation. This indicative nerve process is perceived by the subject, i.e. it must be able to react specifically to it, in two different ways: a) Summary of elements that have been learned so far e.g. "black" and "rabbit". b) Reinforced by acquaintance: i.e. real earlier encounter with a black rabbit. Basis for the affirmative. V 179 Observation sentence/complete thought/reference/Quine: refers to the object and the calendar clock and, if applicable, to a location. Complex observation term. >Observation Sentence/Quine. Protocol sentence: timeless record (of eternal duration) if location and times are complete. |
Quine I W.V.O. Quine Word and Object, Cambridge/MA 1960 German Edition: Wort und Gegenstand Stuttgart 1980 Quine II W.V.O. Quine Theories and Things, Cambridge/MA 1986 German Edition: Theorien und Dinge Frankfurt 1985 Quine III W.V.O. Quine Methods of Logic, 4th edition Cambridge/MA 1982 German Edition: Grundzüge der Logik Frankfurt 1978 Quine V W.V.O. Quine The Roots of Reference, La Salle/Illinois 1974 German Edition: Die Wurzeln der Referenz Frankfurt 1989 Quine VI W.V.O. Quine Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge/MA 1992 German Edition: Unterwegs zur Wahrheit Paderborn 1995 Quine VII W.V.O. Quine From a logical point of view Cambridge, Mass. 1953 Quine VII (a) W. V. A. Quine On what there is In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (b) W. V. A. Quine Two dogmas of empiricism In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (c) W. V. A. Quine The problem of meaning in linguistics In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (d) W. V. A. Quine Identity, ostension and hypostasis In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (e) W. V. A. Quine New foundations for mathematical logic In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (f) W. V. A. Quine Logic and the reification of universals In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (g) W. V. A. Quine Notes on the theory of reference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (h) W. V. A. Quine Reference and modality In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (i) W. V. A. Quine Meaning and existential inference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VIII W.V.O. Quine Designation and Existence, in: The Journal of Philosophy 36 (1939) German Edition: Bezeichnung und Referenz In Zur Philosophie der idealen Sprache, J. Sinnreich (Hg) München 1982 Quine IX W.V.O. Quine Set Theory and its Logic, Cambridge/MA 1963 German Edition: Mengenlehre und ihre Logik Wiesbaden 1967 Quine X W.V.O. Quine The Philosophy of Logic, Cambridge/MA 1970, 1986 German Edition: Philosophie der Logik Bamberg 2005 Quine XII W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York 1969 German Edition: Ontologische Relativität Frankfurt 2003 Quine XIII Willard Van Orman Quine Quiddities Cambridge/London 1987 |
| Mental States | Davidson | I (b) 30 Twin Earth/Davidson: Subjective states do not arise as a consequence of the state of the brain or the nervous system. I (b) 35 False theory: the objects would be the meanings of sentences (Vs), that is, the >propositions. DavidsonVs: with this, it would be so arranged that, e.g. if a Frenchman attributed the same state of consciousness to Paul as I do, the same subject would be named by us both, whereas this would not be the case in the theory under consideration, for the sentence in question of the Frenchman would not be the same as mine (falsely). It should not concern us that the Frenchman and I use different words, it is similar to ounces and carats. (> Measuring). My monism is ontological: it asserts that mental events and objects can also be described as physical. >">Anomalous Monism. I (e) 99 Mind/Davidson: if we consider the subjective or mental exclusively as a consequence of the physical characteristics of a person, meanings cannot be something purely subjective or mental. (Putnam: Meanings are not in the head). Frank I 626 Mind/Davidson: does not work without language, both equal. Donald Davidson (1984a): First Person Authority, in: Dialectica 38 (1984), 101-111 - - - Frank I 657ff Mental states/external attribution/Davidson: "narrow" state/twin earth: "inner", is solipsistic, as in Descartes. The narrow states are the same for the twin earth. BurgeVsPutnam: they do not exist. SearleVsPutnam: narrow states are unnecessary, ordinary propositional attitudes suffice. DavidsonVsSearle/VsBurge: ordinary mental states are narrow (internal) and at the same time "non-individualistic", i.e. externally identifiable. Donald Davidson (1987): Knowing One's Own Mind, in: Proceedings and Adresses of the American Philosophical Association LX (1987),441-4 58 |
Davidson I D. Davidson Der Mythos des Subjektiven Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (a) Donald Davidson "Tho Conditions of Thoughts", in: Le Cahier du Collège de Philosophie, Paris 1989, pp. 163-171 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (b) Donald Davidson "What is Present to the Mind?" in: J. Brandl/W. Gombocz (eds) The MInd of Donald Davidson, Amsterdam 1989, pp. 3-18 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (c) Donald Davidson "Meaning, Truth and Evidence", in: R. Barrett/R. Gibson (eds.) Perspectives on Quine, Cambridge/MA 1990, pp. 68-79 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (d) Donald Davidson "Epistemology Externalized", Ms 1989 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (e) Donald Davidson "The Myth of the Subjective", in: M. Benedikt/R. Burger (eds.) Bewußtsein, Sprache und die Kunst, Wien 1988, pp. 45-54 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson II Donald Davidson "Reply to Foster" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 Davidson III D. Davidson Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1980 German Edition: Handlung und Ereignis Frankfurt 1990 Davidson IV D. Davidson Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford 1984 German Edition: Wahrheit und Interpretation Frankfurt 1990 Davidson V Donald Davidson "Rational Animals", in: D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford 2001, pp. 95-105 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 Fra I M. Frank (Hrsg.) Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewusstseins Frankfurt 1994 |
| Neural Networks | Deacon | I 130 Neural networks/learning/Deacon: the basic structure consists of three layers: input units, output units and hidden units (hidden units, middle layer) as well as their connections. The states of the nodes of the middle layer (0 or 1) are initially influenced by the input nodes. It is crucial that the strength of the compounds only emerges as a result of more frequent use. The connections are trained by comparing the success of the output signal (correct or wrong association) with the input. Cf. >Learning, >Learning/Hebb, >Input/Output. I 131 This training corresponds to adapting to a stock of external forms of behaviour and is an analogy to learning. Such systems are much more capable of recognizing patterns than conventional programmed computers. When neural networks are trained to categorize stimuli, they can easily continue this when new stimuli occur. When it comes to incidental interference, they are superior to conventional computers... I 132 ... in reacting and not to reinforce problematic connections. I.e. they do not react in an all-or-nothing way. This is similar to the reaction of the nervous systems to damage. >Machine learning. Information processing within neural networks has been compared with holograms that have information available from several perspectives at the same time. Short-term memory: can be simulated with recurrent networks (see J. Elman)(1). Incremental learning, or the importance of starting small. In 13th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, NJ, L. Erlbaum, 443-448). Former states of the hidden layer are entered and processed as new input. Language acquisition/Elman: with this, language learning could be simulated: the problem of syntax learning was translated into the problem of mapping previous sequences to future input sequences. Incomplete sequences were completed by the system with the most likely additions. Initially, this involved the occurrence of 0 and 1, i.e. meanings were neglected. Problem: Neural networks sometimes converge into suboptimal solutions because they only take local patterns into account. Solution: in order to prevent the nets from being trapped in such "learning potholes", it is possible to install "noises" (random disturbances) that force the system to search for possible solutions in another area. I 133 Language acquisition/Elman/Deacon: Elman kept different stages of learning more complex structures apart, so they could not interfere with each other. >Language Acquisition. I 134 Deacon: the production of grammatically correct forms was learned inductively without any grammar, let alone to presuppose a universal grammar. >Universal grammar, >Grammar, >N. Chomsky. I 135 N.B.: it was shown that the structure of the learning process has to do with what can and cannot be learned. More importantly, it suggests that the structure of the language and the way in which it has to be learned are related. >Language/Deacon, >Brain/Deacon. 1. Elman, J. (1991): Incremental learning, or the importance of starting small. In: 13th Annual Conference oft he Cognitive Science Society, NJ, L. Erlbaum, 443-448. |
Dea I T. W. Deacon The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of language and the Brain New York 1998 Dea II Terrence W. Deacon Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter New York 2013 |
| Pain | Singer | I 51 Pain/Human/Animal/P. Singer: some will say that the pain inflicted on a pig or mouse is not as severe as the pain inflicted on a human being, because the human being is more conscious and suffers more consciously. P. Singer: I would also say that a human cancer patient usually suffers more than an animal with the same disease. But that does not undermine the principle of equal consideration of interests. >Interest, >Animals, >Suffering. I 52 If you wanted to make the aspect that people are more concerned about themselves and others a standard, you could justify experiments with mentally disadvantaged or with children, which we do not want. Suffering: less consciousness does not have to mean less suffering: it may not be understandable for captive wild animals that they are not threatened with death. For this reason, a more precise definition of suffering cannot be essential here. >Consciousness. I 59 Pain/Human/Animal/P. Singer: How do we know that animals feel pain like us? Their behaviour is similar to ours and the nervous system of all vertebrates is very similar. >Behavior. I 60 It does not apply to plants that they feel pain. Famous experiments with lie detectors, which were applied to plants, could not be repeated. Plants do not have a centrally organized nervous system like us. |
SingerP I Peter Singer Practical Ethics (Third Edition) Cambridge 2011 SingerP II P. Singer The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically. New Haven 2015 |
| Perception | Luhmann | Reese-Schäfer II 39 Perception/Maturana/Reese-Schäfer: the environment is not mapped in the nervous system. Instead: caused by any interaction, states of neuronal activity embody the given in the interaction relations. >Cf. >Cognition/Maturana, >Experience/Maturana, Inside/outside/Maturana, >Objectivity/Maturana, >Perception/Maturana, >Reality/Maturana. Cf. >Central nervous system, >Conceptual nervous system. |
AU I N. Luhmann Introduction to Systems Theory, Lectures Universität Bielefeld 1991/1992 German Edition: Einführung in die Systemtheorie Heidelberg 1992 Lu I N. Luhmann Die Kunst der Gesellschaft Frankfurt 1997 Reese-Schäfer II Walter Reese-Schäfer Luhmann zur Einführung Hamburg 2001 |
| Perception | Quine | Münch III 296 Definition Perception/Quine/Schnelle: getting aware of an irritation. Münch III 298 Quine, "the animal responds to the semi-circle on the screen" - SchnelleVsQuine: how does he know that? - Maybe it just avoids pain. Helmut Schnelle, Introspection and the Description of Language Use“, in: Florian Coulmas (Ed) Festschrift for native speaker, Den Haag 1981, 105-126. Quine VI 2 Perception/Quine: Input: is not objects, but activation of our sensory receptors. - We must justify ourselves with stimulus influences. Stimulus influences instead of observation and instead of documents. >Stimulus/Quine. VI 100 Perception/Quine: is neurophysiologically recordable in principle - beliefs cannot be recorded. V 15 Perception/Quine: this is about form, not about stimuli (these fall under reception). V 18 Perception/Quine: has more to do with consciousness than with the reception of stimuli. But it is also accessible to behavioral criteria. It shows itself in the conditioning of reactions. V 33 Similarity/perception/ontology/Quine: the transition from perception to perceptual similarity brings ontological clarity: perception (the result of the act of perception) is omitted. V 36 Perception Similarity/Quine: one is inclined to speak here of similarity in certain respects. V 37 Quine: this is convenient in practice, but dispensable in theory, if you extend similarity as above by many digits. Learning/Perception/Similarity/Perception Similarity/Quine: in learning, different degrees of similarity must play a role. N.B.: otherwise any enhanced reaction would be conditioned equally to any future episode, since they would all be equally similar! N.B.: it follows from this that the standards of perceptual similarity must be innate. VI 1 Perception/Language/World: our systematic theory about the outside world has evolved over generations. It allows us to predict future sensory stimuli. Thus, amidst the maze of stimuli, we have a theory that helps us to verify predictions. >Predictions/Quine. VI 2 Perception/Observation/Quine: what is observation is not easy to analyze. Our input does not consist in objects, but in the activation of our sensory receptors. We must justify ourselves with stimulus influences, and renounce the objects! (Also on corresponding singular terms). Def Stimulus Influence/Quine: the temporally ordered set of all perceptual receptors of the subject that are activated at an event. VI 3 Observation/Quine: this is how we manage to renounce the term "observation" as an independent technical term! (In favour of stimulus influence). VI 26 Perception/Quine: I have always spoken of neuronal receptors and their stimulation and never of sense data. (>Naturalized Epistemology). Sense Data/Quine: are cartesian! >Cartesianism. VI 86 Perception/Learning/Language/Quine: two of Otto's perception situations that it is raining will differ not only in time, but also in neuronal terms. They are probably too complicated to be described neuronally at all, since there are many different signs of rain. But there must still be some common neuronal characteristic for the class of these processes, because after all it was stimulus generalizations that were responsible for Otto learning it. Then we can transfer this class to a whole population. However, it is even more inaccessible because the nervous systems of different individuals are networked differently. VI 89 Perception/Criteria/Quine: of things: Example "x perceives that p". Problem: the light in which we see an object always comes from the sun or another source. VI 90 Can we resort to criteria? No: because we also want to allow a bowl to be perceived by the fact that it is reflected in something. Solution: focal point: we want to distinguish between seeing a glass and seeing through this glass. But causal relationships and the focal point are not yet sufficient. Some part of the surface of our bowl would satisfy this condition no less than the whole bowl itself. VI 91 So we need whole sentences to get through them to the terms. VI 92 Perception/Quine: For example "x perceives that p" drives the speech of perceptions to undreamt-of heights. So we should even notice that Newton's laws imply Kepler's! But condition: only on the occasion of the situation in which we take note for the first time that p, they say of us, we noticed that p. VI 93 Perception/Quine: is only one event in a subject at a time. We register foreign perceptions through the behavior of a subject and our empathy. VI 94 It is more difficult to empathize with the belief of others: although we understand the belief of the dog that he will get his food, how do we understand that someone believes in transubstantiation during the Eucharist? >Behaviorism. VI 100 Perception/Quine: we have already seen that a neurological generalization of our perceptions is not possible because of the different situations, viewpoints and different neural networks. Nevertheless, every perception is in principle completely describable using strictly neurological terms! However, this does not apply to belief. |
Quine I W.V.O. Quine Word and Object, Cambridge/MA 1960 German Edition: Wort und Gegenstand Stuttgart 1980 Quine II W.V.O. Quine Theories and Things, Cambridge/MA 1986 German Edition: Theorien und Dinge Frankfurt 1985 Quine III W.V.O. Quine Methods of Logic, 4th edition Cambridge/MA 1982 German Edition: Grundzüge der Logik Frankfurt 1978 Quine V W.V.O. Quine The Roots of Reference, La Salle/Illinois 1974 German Edition: Die Wurzeln der Referenz Frankfurt 1989 Quine VI W.V.O. Quine Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge/MA 1992 German Edition: Unterwegs zur Wahrheit Paderborn 1995 Quine VII W.V.O. Quine From a logical point of view Cambridge, Mass. 1953 Quine VII (a) W. V. A. Quine On what there is In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (b) W. V. A. Quine Two dogmas of empiricism In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (c) W. V. A. Quine The problem of meaning in linguistics In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (d) W. V. A. Quine Identity, ostension and hypostasis In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (e) W. V. A. Quine New foundations for mathematical logic In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (f) W. V. A. Quine Logic and the reification of universals In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (g) W. V. A. Quine Notes on the theory of reference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (h) W. V. A. Quine Reference and modality In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (i) W. V. A. Quine Meaning and existential inference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VIII W.V.O. Quine Designation and Existence, in: The Journal of Philosophy 36 (1939) German Edition: Bezeichnung und Referenz In Zur Philosophie der idealen Sprache, J. Sinnreich (Hg) München 1982 Quine IX W.V.O. Quine Set Theory and its Logic, Cambridge/MA 1963 German Edition: Mengenlehre und ihre Logik Wiesbaden 1967 Quine X W.V.O. Quine The Philosophy of Logic, Cambridge/MA 1970, 1986 German Edition: Philosophie der Logik Bamberg 2005 Quine XII W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York 1969 German Edition: Ontologische Relativität Frankfurt 2003 Quine XIII Willard Van Orman Quine Quiddities Cambridge/London 1987 Mü III D. Münch (Hrsg.) Kognitionswissenschaft Frankfurt 1992 |
| Person | Gould | IV 64 Person/individual/organism/nature/Gould: coral reefs, for example, are accumulations of millions of tiny organisms. Every polyp is a complete living being. Some jellyfish (e. g. the Portuguese galley) are colonies of several people (tentacles). Each tentacle is initially created as a separate person. These have different functions. IV 71 Paradox: the differentiation into individual persons (swimming, catching, protection, eating etc. functions) is correct in terms of evolution. They developed from simpler aggregations of independent organisms, each of which is relatively complete and can assume almost all functions. (As with today's corals.) But the colony is so integrated that the whole thing can only be considered as a single person! Although each individual person has his or her own nervous system, all of them are connected by a common nerve strand. >Evolution, >Explanation, Paradox: in terms of evolution it is a colony, but in terms of its current function it is more of an organism. IV 72 Th. H. Huxley: Huxley triggered the debate and argued for a single organism.(1) IV 73 Haeckel: for artistic reasons, Haeckel often overemphasized symmetry.(2) Syphonophores (jellyfish) develop from a single egg! IV 75 E. g. bamboo wood: bamboo may be traceable to a single seed, but each budded stem is considered an individual. They are genetically identical copies. Are they connected underground? And are they above ground now individual or part? There is no clear answer here. Continuum/Gould: nature has created a continuum from the individual to the colony. Ants/Gould: in ants, we still choose the single organism, although some natural scientist consider it to be a super organism. IV 77 E. g. aphids: all members of a clone are female. The entire offspring is absolutely identical. Is this clone an aggregation of independent individuals, or an evolutionary body? IV 78 Criteria of spatial separation and function do not apply here. The question is asked wrongly. 1. Th. H. Huxley (1849). The oceanic Hydrozog observed during the voyage of HMS "Rattlesnake" in the years 1846-1850. London: The Ray society. 2. Ernst Haeckel (1888). Report on the Siphonophorae collected by HMS Challenger during the years 1873-1876. Voyage of HMS Challenge, Zoology, Vol. 28. |
Gould I Stephen Jay Gould The Panda’s Thumb. More Reflections in Natural History, New York 1980 German Edition: Der Daumen des Panda Frankfurt 2009 Gould II Stephen Jay Gould Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. Further Reflections in Natural History, New York 1983 German Edition: Wie das Zebra zu seinen Streifen kommt Frankfurt 1991 Gould III Stephen Jay Gould Full House. The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, New York 1996 German Edition: Illusion Fortschritt Frankfurt 2004 Gould IV Stephen Jay Gould The Flamingo’s Smile. Reflections in Natural History, New York 1985 German Edition: Das Lächeln des Flamingos Basel 1989 |
| Psychological Stress | Lazarus | Corr I 207 Psychological Stress/Lazarus/Elovainio/Kivimäki: the transactional stress theory by Lazarus (1984)(1) defines stress as a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as relevant to his or her own wellbeing and in which the person’s resources are taxed. This approach creates also a basis for understanding individual differences in emotions as emergence of emotions is viewed as depending upon an individual’s appraised meaning of the event. Lazarus: that there is no objective way to predict psychological stress level without taking into account individual capacity (Lazarus 1993)(2). Stress/Lazarus: an imbalance between external forces or loads and individual possibilities to cope with or resist those external forces by many modern theories (Lazarus 1991(3)). Stress is assumed to involve more or less simultaneous activation of psychological and biological systems. Recognition of a threat or challenge is accompanied by immediate systemic arousal produced by the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenocortical axis. At the same time, stress is associated with changes in mood, alertness, attention, memory, problem-solving, task performance and wellbeing. >Stress/psychological theories. 1. Lazarus, R. S. 1984. On the primacy of cognition, American Psychologist 36: 124–9 2. Lazarus, R. S. 1993. From psychological stress to the emotions: a history of changing outlooks, Annual Review of Psychology 44: 1–21 3. Lazarus, R. S. 1991. Cognition and motivation in emotion, American Psychologist 46: 352–67 Marko Elovainio and Mika Kivimäki, “Models of personality and health”, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Reality | Searle | III 168 Reality/Maturana: the nervous system (autopoietic) creates reality. SearleVsMaturana: there is a genetic fallacy: from the fact that our image is constructed, it does not follow that reality is constructed. III 179 E.g. someone says: "In reality everything is different"/Berkeley: (Berkeley claims anyway, that matter does not exist) if the matter does not exist, everything stays the same. III 185 Truth/reality/Searle: truth cannot coincide because each (true or false) representation is bound to certain aspects, but not to others. -> Aspects/Searle; >Conceptual scheme. Ontology/Searle: an ontologically objective reality seems to have no point of view. PutnamVsSearle: there is no "ready made world". >"...if everything was different." >Berkeley. III 194 Background/Searle: Moore's hands belong to the background. They are not in a safe deposit box. The background helps us to determine the truth conditions of our utterances. >Background/Searle, >Moore's hands. |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Recursion | Maturana | I 275 Recursion/recursive/Maturana: recursion presupposes independence of the systems. >Systems, >Independence. E.g. A circular operation of the nervous system is only recursive in terms of the historical flow of events - not in itself. >Nervous system, >Events. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Reinforcement Sensitivity | Corr | Corr I 348 Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory/Corr: The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) of personality represents a bold attempt to account for the neuropsychological regulation of behaviour, and how individual differences in neuropsychological systems give rise to what we commonly label ‘personality’. RST is based upon notions of central states of emotion and motivation that mediate the relations between stimulus input and behavioural response: here ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’ can be internal processes, processes, and only inferred from ingenious behavioural experiments (e.g., sensory preconditioning; see McNaughton and Corr 2008)(1). Corr I 349 RST encompasses a number of approaches that move at different paces. This point is well made by Smillie, Pickering and Jackson (2006, p. 320)(2), who note that, although RST is often seen as a theory of personality, it is ‘more accurately identified as a neuropsychology of emotion, motivation and learning. In fact, RST was born of basic animal learning research, initially not at all concerned with personality’. An (…) important aspect of RST is the distinction between those parts that belong to the conceptual nervous system (cns) and those parts that belong to the central nervous system (CNS) (a distinction advanced by Hebb 1955)(3). Def cns/conceptual nervous system/Hebb: The cns component of RST provides the behavioural scaffolding, formalized within some theoretical framework (e.g., learning theory; see Gray 1975(4); or, ethoexperimental analysis; see Gray and McNaughton 2000)(5); Def CNS/Central Nervous System/Hebb: the CNS component specifies the brain systems involved, couched in terms of the latest knowledge of the neuroendocrine system (see McNaughton and Corr 2008)(1). As noted by Gray (1972a)(6), these two levels of explanation must be compatible. Corr I 360 Post-2000 RST: see >Terminology/Corr, Anxiety/Corr. Corr I 371 RST/Corr:Of importance is the translational nature of this research: we can now go from basic non-human animal studies to human ones, armed with a rigorous theory to guide the difficult process of understanding the neuropsychology of human personality. As an example of such translational research, Perkins and Corr (2006)(7) confirmed that the basic defensive reactions of rodents to cats in ethologically-valid situations are found in human defensive reactions to a range of threatening situations. Remaining problems: a) how best to characterize BAS processes and how to measure them by questionnaire (Corr 2008a(8); Pickering and Smillie 2008)(9); b) what is the relationship between conscious awareness, its functions and emotion/motivation (Gray 2004(10); Corr 2006(11), 2008a)(12); c) how best to operationalize reward and punishment variables in the laboratory and what predictions we should make about their possible interaction (Corr 2002a(13), 2008a(12)); d) what is the most appropriate way to measure FFFS (Fight–Flight–Freeze System;>Terminology/Gray) , BIS (Behavioral Inhibition System, >Terminology/Corr) and BAS (Behavioral Approach system, >Terminology/Corr) in human beings, and how such measures can be validated; and e) are the principles of frustrative non-reward and relief of non-punishment useful in explaining counter-productive and paradoxical behaviour (McNaughton and Corr in press). On top of these problems are wider ones, ranging from the role of ‘free will’ in behaviour, and how individual behaviour is regulated by society (e.g., effective penal systems). 1. Corr, P. J. and McNaughton, N. 2008. Reinforcement sensitivity theory and personality, in P. J. Corr (ed). The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality, pp. 155–87. Cambridge University Press 2. Smillie, L. D., Pickering, A. D. and Jackson, C. J. 2006. The new reinforcement sensitivity theory: implications for personality measurement, Personality and Social Psychology Review 10: 320–35 3. Hebb, D. O. 1955. Drives and the C. N. S. (Conceptual Nervous System), Psychological Review 62: 243–54 4. Gray, J. A. 1975. Elements of a two-process theory of learning. London: Academic Press 5. Gray, J. A. and McNaughton, N. 2000. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Oxford University Press 6. Gray, J. A., 1972a. Learning theory, the conceptual nervous system and personality, in V. D. Nebylitsyn and J. A. Gray (eds.), The biological bases of individual behaviour, pp. 372–99. New York: Academic Press 7. Perkins, A. M. and Corr, P. J. 2006. Reactions to threat and personality: psychometric differentiation of intensity and direction dimensions of human defensive behaviour, Behavioural Brain Research 169: 21–8 8. Corr, P. J. 2008a. Reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST): Introduction, in P. J. Corr (ed). The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality, pp. 1–43. Cambridge University Press 9. Pickering, A. D. and Smillie, L. D. 2008. The behavioural activation system: challenges and opportunities, in P. J. Corr (ed). The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality, pp. 120–54. Cambridge University Press 10. Gray, J. A. 2004. Consciousness: creeping up on the Hard Problem. Oxford University Press 11. Corr, P. J. 2006. Understanding biological psychology. Oxford: Blackwell 12. Corr, P. J. 2008a. Reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST): Introduction, in P. J. Corr (ed). The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality, pp. 1–43. Cambridge University Press 13. Corr, P. J. 2002a. J. A. Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory: tests of the joint subsystem hypothesis of anxiety and impulsivity, Personality and Individual Differences 33: 511–32 Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Reinforcement Sensitivity | Gray | Corr I 348 Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory/Gray: Jeffrey Gray’s (1970(1), 1975(2), 1976(3), 1982(4)) neuropsychological theory of emotion, motivation, learning and personality is now widely known as RST. Thesis: Stimuli per se do not affect behaviour (at least, in any simple sense); they merely have the potential to activate neuropsychological systems (i.e., internal processes) that control behavioural reactions: the mind is not a series of black boxes. For a fully-satisfying scientific explanation of behaviour control and regulation, it is to these neuropsychological systems that we must turn our attention. Corr I 349 An (…) important aspect of RST is the distinction between those parts that belong to the conceptual nervous system (cns) and those parts that belong to the central nervous system (CNS) (a distinction advanced by Hebb 1955)(5) >Conceptual nervous System/Gray, >Terminology/Hebb, >Behavior/Gray. Corr I 351 RST is built upon a description of the immediate/short-term state of neural systems: how animals, including the human form, respond to motivationally significant (i.e., ‘reinforcing’) stimuli, and which neuropsychological systems mediate these responses. Built upon this state infrastructure are longer-term trait dispositions of emotion, motivation and behaviour. RST assumes that personality factors revealed by multivariate statistical analysis (e.g., factor analysis) reflect sources of variation in neuropsychological systems that are stable over time – that is, they are properties of the individual. Corr I 359 RST/Gray: (summarized in the words of Fowles (2006)(6) p. 8.): „In this view, organisms are seen as maximizing exposure to rewarding (‘appetitive’) events and minimizing exposure to punishing (‘aversive’) events. Rewarding or appetitive events consist of the presentation of a reward (Rew), termination of a punishment (Pun!), or omission of an expected punishment (nonPun), while punishing or aversive events consist of the punishment (Pun), termination of reward (Rew!), and omission of an expected reward (nonRew). Through a process of classical conditioning, conditioned stimuli (CSs) paired with events come to acquire some of their emotional and motivational properties.“ 1, Gray, J. A. 1970. The psychophysiological basis of Introversion–Extraversion, Behaviour Research and Therapy 8: 249–66 2. Gray, J. A. 1975. Elements of a two-process theory of learning. London: Academic Press 3. Gray, J. A. 1976. The behavioural inhibition system: a possible substrate for anxiety, in M. P. Feldman and A. M. Broadhurst (eds.), Theoretical and experimental bases of behaviour modification, pp. 3–41. London: Wiley 4. Gray, J. A. 1982. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Oxford University Press 5. Hebb, D. O. 1955. Drives and the C. N. S. (Conceptual Nervous System), Psychological Review 62: 243–54 6. Fowles, D. C. 2006. Jeffrey Gray’s contributions to theories of anxiety, personality, and psychopathology, in T. Canli (ed.), Biology of personality and individual differences, pp. 7–34. New York: Guilford Press Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Relations | Maturana | I 45 Relations / Maturana: observed relations depend on the structural organization of the observer. >Observation, >Operation/Maturana. Two interactions, that are the same state of relative activity are identical for the nervous system, no matter how different they are in the cognitive domain. >Nervous system. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Representation | Maturana | I 48 Representation/Maturana: the nervous system can interact recursively in infinite ways with the representations of its interactions. Representations express agreement that observes the observer between relations and different activity states of the nervous system. - They are situated themselves in the cognitive domain. >Nervous system, >Domains/Maturana. I125 Representation/meaning/description/semantics/Maturana: these are terms that are unique to operating in a consensual area - they have no explanation value in regard to the actual operating. >Operation/Maturana. I 209/10 Representation/Maturana: an observer can always understand a state of activity as a result of interaction of the nervous system as a representation of the interaction. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Similarity | Churchland | Fodor IV 188 Condition/Equality/Similarity/Quality/Paul Churchland: basic cncepts: State space, similarity space, similarity metric. E.g. "Anglophone hyperspace with logical relations on hypersurfaces." Should replace Chomsky's image. ((s) Hypersurface/Churchland/(s): something on that you can go up/down, right/left, and front/back, and that within a language. Is needed to describe objects and their relationships.) --- IV 189 Fodor/Lepore: that assumes that state spaces also reflect grammar. Churchland: It also has in mind that a kind of representations reflect "contents" of neurological states. Fodor: Thereby he's up to his neck in his intentionality. --- Fodor IV 193 Similarity/Equality/Semantics/Paul Churchland/Fodor/Lepore: surprisingly begins with sensations, not with intentionality (such as with propositional attitudes or concepts). Thesis: if we had an adequate access to sensations, this could be generalized to a general mental representation. Churchland: the qualitative character of our sensations is generally considered to be inaccessible as neurobiological reduction. But even so, we find that a determined attempt to find an order here, reveals a considerable amount of explicit information. E.g. color dice with frequencies. --- IV 194 Fodor/Lepore: Churchland actually assumes here that this is an access to the sensations (via frequencies!), not only to the discriminatory ability of the nervous system. Churchland: so the inexpressible can be expressed. The "unspeakable pink" can be grasped by frequency. So maybe the everyday language can also be replaced. --- IV 195 Fodor/LeporeVsChurchland: how plausible is this story in terms of sensations? Does it provide a robust concept of equality in general? |
Churla I Paul M. Churchland Matter and Consciousness Cambridge 2013 Churli I Patricia S. Churchland Touching a Nerve: Our Brains, Our Brains New York 2014 Churli II Patricia S. Churchland "Can Neurobiology Teach Us Anything about Consciousness?" in: The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates ed. Block, Flanagan, Güzeldere pp. 127-140 In Bewusstein, Thomas Metzinger Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 1996 F/L Jerry Fodor Ernest Lepore Holism. A Shoppers Guide Cambridge USA Oxford UK 1992 Fodor I Jerry Fodor "Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis", Synthese 28 (1974), 97-115 In Kognitionswissenschaft, Dieter Münch Frankfurt/M. 1992 Fodor II Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Fodor III Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Temperament | Psychological Theories | Corr I 177 Temperament/psychological theories/Rothbart: The Eastern European temperament tradition has its roots in Pavlov’s (1951–52)(1) observations of individual differences in his dogs’ behaviour in the laboratory. Pavlov linked temperamental differences among the animals (which he argued would generalize to humans) to qualities of the central nervous system, including strength of neural activation. Subsequent work by Nebylitsyn (1972)(2) and others adapted these ideas to the study of individual differences in human adults and, although Eastern European methods changed considerably, contemporary research remains heavily influenced by Pavlov’s work (for a discussion see Strelau and Kaczmarek 2004)(3). In contrast to Eastern European research, early studies of temperament in the West were more focused on identifying regularities in the structure of individual differences through the use of psychometric techniques. For example, in 1908 Heymans and Wiersma asked 3,000 physicians to observe a family (parents and children) and to fill out a temperament/personality questionnaire on each family member. >Personality, >Personality traits, >Extraversion, >Introversion. Corr I 178 More recently, (…) a resurgence of interest in temperament has stemmed at least in part from the realization that the parent-child influence is bidirectional, not only from parent to child but also from child to parent. Children bring much to interactions with their families (Bell 1968)(4), and a large part of what they bring is related to temperament. Temperament research has also been linked to recent advances in neuroscience, with individual differences in temperament providing links to genes and neural networks, as well as to social interaction. >Interaction, >Behavior, >Social behavior. Corr I 179 Temperament/Thomas and Chess: (Thomas and Chess 1977)(5): A content analysis of interview information on the first twenty-two infants yielded nine dimensions of temperamental variability: Activity Level, Rhythmicity, Approach-Withdrawal, Adaptability, Threshold, Intensity, Mood, Distractibility and Attention Span-Persistence. The goals of the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) were chiefly clinical, and no attempt was made to conceptually distinguish these dimensions from one another. As a result of more recent research, however, major revisions to the NYLS list have been proposed (Rothbart and Bates 2006)(6). See >Temperament/Rothbart, >M.K. Rothbart. 1. Pavlov, I. P. 1951–52. Complete works, 2nd edn. Moscow: SSSR Academy of Sciences 2. Nebylitsyn, V. D. 1972. Fundamental properties of the human nervous system. New York: Plenum 3. Strelau, J. and Kaczmarek, M. 2004. Warsaw studies on sensation seeking, in R. M. Stelmack (ed.), On the psychobiology of personality: essays in honor of Marvin Zuckerman, pp. 29–45. New York: Elsevier 4. Bell, R. Q. 1968. A reinterpretation of the direction of effects in studies of socialization, Psychological Review 75: 81–95 5. Thomas, A. and Chess, S. 1977. Temperament and development. New York: Brunner/Mazel 6. Rothbart, M. K., and Bates, J. E. 2006. Temperament in children’s development, in W. Damon and R. Lerner (Series eds.) and N. Eisenberg (Vol. ed.), Handbook of child psychology, vol. III, Social, emotional, and personality development, 6th edn, pp. 99–166. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Mary K. Rothbart, Brad E. Sheese and Elisabeth D. Conradt, “Childhood temperament” in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Terminology | Gray | Corr I 326 Terminology/Gray: Jeffrey Gray focused more heavily on neurobiology than on personality, with an emphasis on the development of a Def ‘conceptual nervous system’ describing functional systems that could be mapped onto brain systems. The main components of this conceptual nervous system are the Def BAS: behavioural approach system, which responds to cues for reward, and the Def FFFS: fight-flight-freeze system (FFFS) and the Def BIS: behavioural inhibition system (BIS), which respond to two distinct classes of threatening stimuli (Gray and McNaughton 2000(1); Pickering and Gray 1999)(2). Immediately threatening, punishing or frustrating stimuli activate the FFFS, which produces active avoidance (panic and flight) or attempted elimination (anger and attack). RST: Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory. 1. Gray, J. A. and McNaughton, N. 2000. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system, 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press 2. Pickering, A. D. and Gray, J. A. 1999. The neuroscience of personality, in L. A. Pervin and O. P. John (eds.), Handbook of personality: theory and research, 2nd edn, pp. 277–99. New York: Guilford Press Colin G. DeYoung and Jeremy R. Gray, „ Personality neuroscience: explaining individual differences in affect, behaviour and cognition“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press Corr I 359 Terminology/Gray: Cf. Gray (1982)(1): BIS: (1) The behavioural inhibition system (BIS) was postulated to be sensitive to conditioned aversive stimuli, omission/termination of expected reward, and conditioned frustration (i.e., conditioning to stimuli that signalled expected reward, non-reward), as well as an assortment of other inputs, including extreme novelty, high intensity stimuli and innate fear stimuli (e.g., snakes, blood). The BIS was related to the personality factor of Anxiety (Anx). The neural instantiation of the BIS was postulated to be in the septo-hippocampal system of the brain. FFS: The fight-flight system (FFS) was postulated to be sensitive to unconditioned aversive stimuli (i.e., innately painful stimuli), mediating the emotions of rage and panic. This system was related to the state of negative affect (NA) (associated with pain) and speculatively associated by Gray with Eysenck’s personality factor of Psychoticism (P) (Eysenck and Eysenck 1976)(2). The neural instantiation of the FFS was postulated to be in the periaqueductal grey and (various nuclei of) the hypothalamus. BAS: The behavioural approach system (BAS) was postulated to be sensitive to conditioned appetitive stimuli, forming a positive feedback loop, activated by the presentation of stimuli associated with reward and the termination/omission of signals of punishment. This system was related to state positive affect (PA) and the personality dimension of Impulsivity (Imp). The neural instantiation of the BAS was postulated to be in the mesolimbic dopamine circuit. Cf. >Terminology/Corr: „Post-2000 RST“. 1. Gray, J. A. 1982. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Oxford University Press 2. Eysenck, H. J. and Eysenck, S. G. B. 1976. Psychoticism as a dimension of personality. London: Hodder and Stoughton Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press Corr II 124 Hope-Relief Hypothesis/Gray/McNaughton/Corr: ‘hope = relief hypothesis’ (Gray, 1971(1), 1972(2)), [is] derived from his concept of relieving nonpunishment (a mirror image of frustrative nonreward). Extraverting drugs do not impair avoidance unless some form of conflict is present (i.e., avoidance is passive, not active – a subtle but fundamental distinction). Provided we are dealing with learning, we can see an active avoidance response as one rewarded by stimuli that signal safety and generate the positive emotion of relief; and so we can explain the lack of effect of anti-punishment drugs. 1. Gray, J. A. (1971). The psychology of fear and stress. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 2. Gray, J. A. (1972). Learning theory, the conceptual nervous system and personality. In V. D. Nebylitsyn & J. A. Gray (Eds.), The biological bases of individual behaviour. London, New York: Academic Press. McNaughton, Neil and Corr, John Philip: “Sensitivity to Punishment and Reward Revisiting Gray (1970)”, In: Philip J. Corr (Ed.) 2018. Personality and Individual Differences. Revisiting the classical studies. Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage, pp. 115-136. |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Terminology | Hebb | Corr I 349 Terminology/Hebb: Def cns/Hebb: Hebb 1955)(1) The cns (conceptual nervous system) component of RST (reinforcement sensitivity theory) provides the behavioural scaffolding, formalized within some theoretical framework (e.g., learning theory; see Gray 1975(2); or, ethoexperimental analysis; see Gray and McNaughton 2000)(3); Def CNS/Hebb: the CNS (Central Nervous System) component specifies the brain systems involved, couched in terms of the latest knowledge of the neuroendocrine system (see McNaughton and Corr 2008)(4). As noted by Gray (1972a)(5), these two levels of explanation must be compatible. 1. Hebb, D. O. 1955. Drives and the C. N. S. (Conceptual Nervous System), Psychological Review 62: 243–54 2. Gray, J. A. 1975. Elements of a two-process theory of learning. London: Academic Press 3. Gray, J. A. and McNaughton, N. 2000. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Oxford University Press 4. Corr, P. J. and McNaughton, N. 2008. Reinforcement sensitivity theory and personality, in P. J. Corr (ed). The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality, pp. 155–87. Cambridge University Press 5. Gray, J. A., 1972a. Learning theory, the conceptual nervous system and personality, in V. D. Nebylitsyn and J. A. Gray (eds.), The biological bases of individual behaviour, pp. 372–99. New York: Academic Press Philip J. Corr, „ The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Hebb I Donald O. Hebb The Organization of Behavior Hoboken, NJ 1949 Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Thinking | Maturana | I 54 Def thinking / Maturana: the neurophysiological process, which consists in that the system interacts with some of its own internal states as if these were independent variables. >Systems/Maturana, >Operation/Maturana. Operation mode of the nervous system, which reflects functionally the internal anatomical projection to itself - necessary regardless of language. (Experiments with brain damage). >Language, >Thinking and language, >Thinking without language, >Nervous system. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| World | Radner | I 410 Def Environment/J. von Uexküll/Radner: the factors that affect the animal. Their number and solidarity is determined by the animal's construction plan. Def Inner world/J. v. Uexküll/Radner: consists of the effects produced by the environmental factors in the nervous system. These effects are also ensured and regulated by the construction plan. >Inner world. I 411 For example, the hetero-phenomenological problem of color blindness is essentially an environmental problem. >Heterophänomenology. I 411 Environment/Inner world/Radner: both can be approached from the viewpoint of the 1st and the 3rd person. >First Person. I 412 This distinction does not correspond to that between car and hetero-phenomenology. Hetero-phenomenology: 1st, 3rd Person/environment/inner world: all combination of questions are possible. Environment/hetero-phenomenological: 3rd person: E.g.: "How do things appear to the subject?" 1st Person: E.g. "How would things appear to me if I had a sense device like that of the subject?" >Appearance, >Perception. Inner world/hetero-phenomenological: 3rd person: E.g.: "How are the experiences of the subject?" >Experiences. 1st Person: E.g. "How would my experiences be if I were in the circumstances of the subject and had certain characteristics in common with it?". I 418 Environment/Animal/Radner: the (Uexkull's) environment of an animal can be explored independently of any consideration of its inner world. >Environment/Uexküll, >Environment, >Animals. |
Radner I Daisie Radner "Heterophenomenology. Learning About the Birds and the Bees", in: Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994) pp. 389-403 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| World | Uexküll | Daisie Radner Heterophänomenologie: wie wir etwas über die Vögel und die Bienen lernen in D. Perler/M. Wild (Hg) Der Geist der Tiere Frankfurt 2005 Perler I 410 Definition Environment/J. von Uexküll/Radner: the factors that affect the animal. Their number and shared identity is determined by the construction plan of the animal. >Animals, >Niches. Def inner world/J. v Uexküll/Radner: consists of the factors of the environment caused by the effects of the nervous system. These effects are also backed up and controlled by the construction plan. Central nervous system, >Inner world. I 411 E.g. the hetero-phenomenological problem of color blindness (or that someone perceives two colors where we only see one) is essentially an environmental problem. >Hetero-phenomenology, >Perception, >Qualia, >Sensory impressions, >Colors. |
Perler I Dominik Perler Markus Wild Der Geist der Tiere Frankfurt 2005 |
| |||
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author Vs Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burge, T. | Davidson Vs Burge, T. | I (d) 74 Burge: Two types externalism: a) Social: Meaning depends on social practices (community - b) on the causal history of the person. DavidsonVsBurge: a) our intuition does not suggest that the meaning of a speaker is determined by other speakers. b) Which group should be outstanding? c) an unconscious elite in the background is problematic. Cf. >externalism, >internalism. Burge: in order to have a thought about water, you just have to be in contact with water, you don’t have to prove anything. DavidsonVsBurge: even a false thought about water is one about water. - VsBurge: Community not causally involved Burge: radiation patterns or physically described stimuli make everything infinitely complicated. DavidsonVs: Complicated for whom? It is us humans who make all these classifications and groupings! We group according to similarities that are obvious to ourselves. I (e) 116 DavidsonVsPutnam, DavidsonVsBurge: The fact that he focuses so strongly on the everyday situation through the triangulation sets him apart from the externalism of Putnam and Burge. Glüer II 53 DavidsonVsSocial character of meaning: even idiolect interpretable in principle (via causal hypotheses). Glüer II 167 Burge and Dummett think that what speakers mean by their words depended very much on how the community used those words. DavidsonVsDummett, DavidsonVsBurge: Complete nonsense, because it has nothing to do with successful communication! If you speak differently than the community, and someone finds out, then you can communicate all day long. And that happens all the time. Frank I 665 Contents/Thoughts/Externalism/Burge/Davidson: Content is not determined by what is happening in the person, or by what is easily accessible for them through careful reflection. (E.g. incorrectly used terms, information gaps). DavidsonVsBurge: I’m not sure how these assertions are to be understood, because I’m not sure how serious talk of a "direct acquaintance" with a content is to be taken. But the first person authority is seriously compromised by that. Therefore, I must reject one of the premises of Burge. 1) I agree that content is not only determined or "fixed" by what is going on inside me. 2) VsBurge: Vs representation of the way in which social and other external factors control the contents. Fra I 665/666 DavidsonVsBurge: His characteristics are not as relevant as he makes them look: E.g. Suppose I believe that "arthritis" is only used for calcium-induced arthritis. My friend Arthur knows better. We both say honestly to Smith: "Carl has arthritis’. Burge: Then our words mean the same thing, we mean the same and express the same belief. My mistake is irrelevant for what I thought on this occasion. Reason: that’s what everyone (who is not tainted by philosophy) would say about Arthur and me. DavidsonVsBurge: I doubt that he is right, but even if he were right, it would not prove his point: Ordinary attributions of meanings and attitudes are based on far-reaching and vague assumptions about what speaker and listener have in common. If some assumptions are not confirmed, we can change the words we used often change drastically. We usually choose the easy way: we take a speaker by his word, even if that does not fully account for one aspect of his thought. E.g. if Smith informs a third party about what Arthur and I both believe about arthritis, then he may mislead its listeners! Fra I 667 If he is careful, he would add, "But Davidson thinks arthritis is calcium-induced". The fact that this addition is necessary shows that the simple attribution was not right. BurgeVs: could reply that the report is literally correct ((s) because also the wrong-believer sincerely believes that it is arthritis). DavidsonVsBurge: That overlooks the extent to which the contents of a belief depend on of the contents of other beliefs. Therefore, there can be no simple rigid rule for the attribution of a single thought. Burge: social determination of contents also leads to the fact that we usually mean what others mean in the community. "certain responsibility towards the group practice". DavidsonVsBurge: I do not deny it, but that does not show what is supposed to show: a) It is often reasonable to make people responsible for ensuring that they know the meaning of their words. But this has nothing to do with what they want to say! b) As a good citizens, we want to increase the opportunities for communication, but that only explains our "legalistic" attribution of meanings and beliefs. ((s) that the meanings are not so). c) A speaker who wants to be understood, must have the intention that his words are interpreted in a certain way, and consequently the way others do. And vice versa, the listener wants to interpret the words as the speaker does. This has moral weight, but it has no necessary connection with the determination of what anyone thinks. I 667/668 Externalism/Social community/Meaning/Meaning/DavidsonVsBurge: We are not forced to give the words of a person the meanings that they have in their language community. It is also not true that we cannot help but to interpret their propositional attitudes on the same basis. Donald Davidson (1987) : Knowing One's Own Mind, in: Proceedings and Adresses of the American Philosophical Association LX (1987),441 -4 58 Frank I 710 Self-knowledge/Burge: Error excluded (immune), because reflection in the same act. DavidsonVsBurge: that only shows that you cannot make a mistake in identifying the contents. It does not show why you cannot be wrong about the existence of the attitude. Worse: Burge cannot show that the two kinds of knowledge (1st and 2nd order) have the same subject. As long as the asymmetry is not explained by recourse to the social situation (relationships between the speakers), I doubt that a non-skeptical solution is possible. I 711 Representation/Perceptual knowledge/Burge: It cannot generally be wrong that the representations represent that from which they usually originate and to which they are applied. DavidsonVsBurge: I have long been of this view, but I do not understand why Burge is of this view. How do we decide where representations usually originate? Circular: "from what they represent." But which of the many possible causes is the right one? Incidents in the nervous system, stimulation patterns of nerve endings, or a little further out? (proximal/distal). Burge: We should be watch out for the relation of different observers: they have similar perceptions. Perception is "impersonal". DavidsonVsBurge: But that is exactly what should be proved! We need not only causal interaction between different observers and the same objects, but the right kind of causal interaction. |
Davidson I D. Davidson Der Mythos des Subjektiven Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (a) Donald Davidson "Tho Conditions of Thoughts", in: Le Cahier du Collège de Philosophie, Paris 1989, pp. 163-171 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (b) Donald Davidson "What is Present to the Mind?" in: J. Brandl/W. Gombocz (eds) The MInd of Donald Davidson, Amsterdam 1989, pp. 3-18 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (c) Donald Davidson "Meaning, Truth and Evidence", in: R. Barrett/R. Gibson (eds.) Perspectives on Quine, Cambridge/MA 1990, pp. 68-79 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (d) Donald Davidson "Epistemology Externalized", Ms 1989 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (e) Donald Davidson "The Myth of the Subjective", in: M. Benedikt/R. Burger (eds.) Bewußtsein, Sprache und die Kunst, Wien 1988, pp. 45-54 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson II Donald Davidson "Reply to Foster" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 Davidson III D. Davidson Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1980 German Edition: Handlung und Ereignis Frankfurt 1990 Davidson IV D. Davidson Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford 1984 German Edition: Wahrheit und Interpretation Frankfurt 1990 Davidson V Donald Davidson "Rational Animals", in: D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford 2001, pp. 95-105 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 D II K. Glüer D. Davidson Zur Einführung Hamburg 1993 Fra I M. Frank (Hrsg.) Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewusstseins Frankfurt 1994 |
| Chomsky, N. | Maturana Vs Chomsky, N. | I 128 Syntax / Grammar: If recursion is possible, a closed area can be made of behavior: E.g. dance, human language. Within such a range, the syntactic or grammatical surface structure may be only the description of regularities. In principle, the surface structure can be arbitrary! Reason: its training is consensual coupling is dependent on the history and not a necessary result of any necessary physiology. I 129 Conversely, the "universal grammar" of linguists (MaturanaVsChomsky) is recursive only in the universality of the process of coupling structures. The causes of the ability to recursive structures coupling are not self-consensually. They are structurally and depend exclusively on the operations of the nervous system together as a closed neuronal network. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Churchland, P. | Fodor Vs Churchland, P. | IV 189 Mind/brain/Churchland: thesis: the brain represents different aspects of reality through a position in an appropriate state space. IV 191 FodorVsChurchland/LeporeVsChuchland: Churchland also seems to be guilty of the illusion, that there could ultimately be something empirical, so that conceptual relations could in the end be reduced to relations between observation concepts. Churchland: semantic identity goes back to the special place in the network of semantically relevant sentences (and that is of the whole language). Translation: therefore, we can speak of the equality of sentences across languages! IV 192 Equivalent expressions occupy the same (corresponding) places in the corresponding network of the other language. Nevertheless, translation should always take observability into account. IV 193 Churchland/Fodor/Lepore: Churchland surprisingly begins with feelings, not with intentionality (e.g. with propositional attitudes or concepts). Thesis: if we had adequate access to feelings, it could be generalized to a general mental representation. Churchland: the qualitative nature of our sensations is generally considered as inaccessible for the neurobiological reduction. But even so, we find that a determined attempt to find an order here revealed a sizable chunk of expressible information, e.g. color cubes with frequencies. IV 194 Fodor/Lepore: Churchland actually assumes that this is an access to the sensations (through frequencies!), not only to the discrimination ability of the nervous system. Churchland: thus, the inexpressible can be expressed! The "unspeakable rose" can be grasped by indication of the frequency. This is perhaps a way to replace everyday language. IV 195 Fodor/LeporeVsChurchland: how plausible is this story in terms of sensations? Does it provide a robust notion of equality in general? Qualia/quality/sensation/exchanged spectra/Fodor/Lepore: it is conceptually possible that while you see something red, I see something green. If the exchange is systematic, there is nothing in the behavior that could uncover it. VsBehaviorism/VsFunctionalism: the exchanged spectra thus seem to indicate that behaviorism is wrong and functionalism, too (Block/Fodor, Shoemaker). One might think that a theory of qualitative content could solve the problem. But it is precisely the qualitative content that has been exchanged. And it is precisely the concept of the perceptual identity that becomes ambiguous because of that. VsChurchland: Churchland's approach does not help at all. The labels of the dots on the dice could be exactly reversed. IV 196 Why should a semantic space not be put beside it and the condition added that the dimensions of the semantic space must be semantic? They must designate content states through their contents. E.g. Perhaps we could then identify uncle, aunt, President, Cleopatra, etc. along these dimensions? IV 197 E.g. Cleopatra as a politician is closer to the president in terms of marriageability. Fodor/LeporeVsChurchland: that is what we are really interested in: a robust theory of the equality of content rather than identity of content that has been lost with the analytic/synthetic distinction. Problem: equality presupposes identity and a corresponding theory. >State semantics: deals with the question of how the identity of the state spaces is fixed. IV 200 Representation/neurophysiological/mind/brain/Fodor/LeporeVsChurchland: colors are not represented as frequencies. IV 201 Fodor/LeporeVsChurchland: two different interpretations of his diagrams would also interpret neighborhoods very differently. --- Metzinger II 466 "Eliminative Materialism"/Churchland: eliminative materialism means two things: 1) Materialism is most probably true. 2) Many traditional explanations of human behavior are not suitable for understanding the real causes. II 467 "Request"/"conviction"/Churchland: Paul and Patricia Churchland: we will probably have to drop these "categories" (FodorVsChurchland, SearleVsChurchland). |
F/L Jerry Fodor Ernest Lepore Holism. A Shoppers Guide Cambridge USA Oxford UK 1992 Fodor I Jerry Fodor "Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis", Synthese 28 (1974), 97-115 In Kognitionswissenschaft, Dieter Münch Frankfurt/M. 1992 Fodor II Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Fodor III Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Metz I Th. Metzinger (Hrsg.) Bewusstsein Paderborn 1996 |
| Constructivism | Black Vs Constructivism | III 75 Subjectivity/Objectivity/Science/Black: sometimes these components are not easy to separate, but that can lead to absurdity: (BlackVsConstructivism/BlackVsHoagland: Constructivism/Hudson/Hoagland: ("Some comments on Science and Faith" Conference on Science, Phil. and Faith, 2nd Sympos., (NY 1942 p. 35): Thesis: all knowledge of the universe or even of God comes to us through a series of complex physico-chemical events of the central nervous system (CNS). We do not perceive the properties of objects, but the properties of our own nervous system. BlackVsHoagland: how can he ever know that the "physico-chemical events" are complex? |
Black I Max Black "Meaning and Intention: An Examination of Grice’s Views", New Literary History 4, (1972-1973), pp. 257-279 In Handlung, Kommunikation, Bedeutung, G. Meggle (Hg) Frankfurt/M 1979 Black II M. Black The Labyrinth of Language, New York/London 1978 German Edition: Sprache. Eine Einführung in die Linguistik München 1973 Black III M. Black The Prevalence of Humbug Ithaca/London 1983 Black IV Max Black "The Semantic Definition of Truth", Analysis 8 (1948) pp. 49-63 In Truth and Meaning, Paul Horwich Aldershot 1994 |
| Dawkins, R. | Maturana Vs Dawkins, R. | VIII 116 Behavior / communication / Dawkins: one can say that a survival machine communicates with another, when it affects its behavior or the state of its nervous system. ((s)MaturanaVs: the CNS can for example be influenced by anything from outside.) |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Fodor, J. | Peacocke Vs Fodor, J. | I 208 Perception/Mentalese/MT/Fodor: what happens in perception, is a description of the environment in a vocabulary is not expressible, that refers to the values of physical variables. E.g. "A butterfly is on the lawn" Instead, in Mentalese we shall speak of "light being the magnitude of the retina and region L". PeacockeVsFodor/PeacockeVsMentalese: what is actually the token of Mentalese, that refers to this localization L? There seems to be nothing there. E.g. a different retina area could supply information about a different localization, as well as the original cell. I 209 But that leads to no difference within Mentalese! There is only a difference of the relata: one refers causally to one area of the retina, the other to another one. VsPeacocke: it could be argued that something like "foggy" ("it's foggy here") corresponds to the individual spots. "Foggy" then has no relevant syntactic structure, but when it occurs in a statement, it will refer to a specific place and time. In fact, several central units of the nervous system must somehow receive non-indexical information from the periphery: E.g. someone who receives one hundred telegrams: "it is bright here", "it is raining here", etc. is not in a position to draw a map if he does not know where the telegrams come from. Peacocke: but an indexical strategy cannot work for more complex contents. A given nerve cell may be neurophysiologically indistinguishable from another one, with completely different content conditions for firing. Trivialization/Mentalese: but if these relations should count as part of the syntactic structure of a (mental) state, then the language of the mind is trivialized. There would be no true sentence analogs. Mentalese/Perception/Fodor/Peacocke: a similar argument is about e.g. approved detectors for lines, deep within the perceptual system: these suggest causal relations for perceptions. But possession of a structured content does not require a corresponding physical structure in the state, but there may be in the pattern of relations in which the state stands. Peacocke: a model that satisfies this relational paradigm, but does not require Mentalese must meet several conditions: 1) How can propositional content be ascribed without referring to syntactic structures? I.e. relatively complex contents must be attributed to syntactically unstructured (mental) states. 2) It must be shown how these states interact with perception and behavior. I 215 Computation/Language/Mentalese/PeacockeVsFodor: not even computation (calculation of behavior and perception) seems to require language: E.g. question whether the acting person should do φ. Fodor: E.g. the actor is described as computing the anticipated benefit of φ-s under the condition C. Peacocke: the extent to which the subject has the corresponding belief "C given that I φ" may consist in the presence of a corresponding physical state to a certain extent. That would in turn only be a matter of pure relations! The same applies to reaching the state "C and I φ". The states can interact without requiring syntactic structures. Def Computation/Peacocke: (calculation) is a question of states with content that emerge systematically from each other. This requires certain patterns of order and of causal relations, but no syntactic structure. PeacockeVsFodor: it does not necessary apply: "No representation, no computation". I 215/216 Mentalese/Fodor: (Language of Thought, p. 199) Thesis: there can be no construction of psychology without assuming that organisms possess a proper description as instantiation (incarnation) of another formal system: "proper" requires: a) there must be a general procedure for the attribution of character formulas (assigning formulae) to states of the organism b) for each propositional attitude there must be a causal state of the organism so that c1) the state is interpretable as relation to a formula and c2) it is nomologically necessary and sufficient (or contingently identical) to have these propositional attitudes. d) Mental representations have their causal roles by virtue of their formal properties. VsMentalese/PeacockeVsFodor: we can have all of this without Mentalese! Either: 1) There are really sentence analogues in the brain or: 2) Fodor's condition could be met otherwise: there could be a semantics that is correlated with Frege's thoughts. |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Freud, S. | Searle Vs Freud, S. | I 175 SearleVsFreud: it is clear that we envision the unconscious along the lines of the subconscious. The unconscious in Freud is based on a fairly simple model of conscious states. Like fish deep down in the sea. The fish that we cannot see below the surface, have exactly the same shape when they come to the surface. They are like objects that are stored in the dark attic of the mind. Could there be unconscious pain? >Unconscious. I 188 Example Suppose we have a case in which we had use for terms "unconscious pain". Shall we say that during sleep actually no pain was present, that it rather only began at opening? I 189 Or that it continued, was however unconscious during sleep? Searle: here it is not about a dispute with a tangible content. There is simply a different vocabulary to describe the same fact. Freudians insist that there really are unconscious mental states. The other side says that conditions in which there really are mental states, then surely must be conscious. I 190 But what facts in the world are to meet these two different statements? E.g. someone crawls under hypnosis around on the floor. After waking up, he turns a seemingly rational explanation: like, that he would have probably lost his watch somewhere. Question: what is the ontology of the unconscious supposed to be exactly in this moment? What kind of a fact corresponds to the attribution? Example The reason of the adolescent boy who revolted against the authority of the school is that he hates his father, so they say. Nevertheless, we have to ask again: what is the ontology of the unconscious supposed to be as long as it is unconscious? I 190/191 As with hypnosis, it must be also implied here that in neurophysiology the ability exists to produce a conscious thought with precisely this aspect figure. (SearleVsFreud). Then apparently the ontological question "do unconscious mental states really exist?" cannot have any factual substance. The question can only mean: there are non-conscious neurophysiological states of the brain that are able to develop conscious thoughts and the corresponding behavior. That was not a point of contention in ontological reality. Def Consciousness: manner of perception of states that are in their mode of existence unconsciously. Freud thinks that our unconscious minds are at once both unconsciously and intrinsically intentional, even if they are unconscious, they are actually present. They are like furniture in the attic of the mind that we spotlight with the torches of our perception. >Consciousness. I 193 SearleVsFreud: 1. is not to reconcile with what we know about the brain. 2. can I not formulate the comparison between perception and consciousness so that it is coherent. Regarding 1.: Suppose I go through a sequence of unconscious mental states without having any consciousness, then only neurophysiological processes are playing. What a fact is it now to make that they are unconscious mental states? If we consider what characteristics must have unconscious mental states as mental states: 1. an aspect shape, 2. they must be "subjectively" in any sense. But how can the unconscious neurophysiology at the times during which it is unconscious have aspect shape and subjectivity? Freud obviously means that there are also still some description level at which they invariably have all the features of conscious mental states, despite their complete unconsciousness (also intentionality and subjectivity). I 194 The unconscious has everything the conscious has only minus consciousness. He has, however, not made to understand what might happen in the brain via the neurophysiological events out of events to form unconscious subjectivity and intentionality. Freud's evidence for the existence of the unconscious is always the patient's behavior, that it is as if he was in a certain state of mind. And because we know it independently, that the patient has no conscious mental state of this kind, Freud postulated an unconscious state of mind. A verificationist would say that this postulate has only one meaning: the patient behaves in such and such a manner, and such behavior would usually be caused by a state of consciousness. But Freud is no verificationist. It's hard for to find an interpretation which implies no dualism, since Freud does not postulate neurophysiological mental phenomena. It looks as if this opinion has the consequence that consciousness is something completely externalistic. So nothing much what is linked to any state of consciousness. The analogy between consciousness and perception is an attempt to let the consciousness still fit into the picture. I 195 We are forced to postulate that consciousness is a kind of perception of conditions and events that have their intrinsic nature unconsciously. However, this solution leads us from bad to worse. In the investigation of introspection we had seen that the model of perception based on the fact that there is a difference between perceived object and perceptual. If I take away the bike, a perception remains to me that has no object (a hallucination, for example). But precisely this distinction we cannot do in the case of conscious thought. There seems to be an infinite regress: what about the act of perception: is it a mental phenomenon? If so, it has to "per se" be unconscious, and then I would probably need some higher stage of act of perception of my act of perception to be aware of this act. >Perception. I 195/196 Recent problems with this analogy: perception works because the object perceived exerts causal effect on my nervous system. But how can this work in the case where the object perceived is an unconscious experience itself? |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Functionalism | Dennett Vs Functionalism | II 87 Functionalism/Dennett: widely spread in everyday life. Basic idea: E.g. "noble is who does nobly", "Not what it is made of makes a mind (or a belief, a pain, a fear), but what it can do." In common linguistic use of functionalism, such entities defined by their function allow multiple realizations. Why can an artificial mind not be made like an artificial heart with almost any material? II 88 DennettVsFunctionalism: he deliberately abstracts from the inscrutable details of performance and focuses on the work that is actually done. But he simplifies too much. II 95 Information Processing/DennettVsFunctionalism: one thing was always clear: as soon as there are transducers and effectors in an information system, its "media neutrality" or multiple realization disappears. (VsPutnam, VsTuring). E.g. To receive light something light-sensitive is needed. E.g. Controls for ships or factories are media-neutral, as long as they fulfill their task in the time available. But to the nervous system applies that much less time is available. The realization of the nervous system is not a media-neutral. And that is not because it would need to have a certain aura of a particular material or of living being, but because it originated in evolution as the central control system of living beings who’ve been abundantly equipped with very decentralized control systems. The new systems had to be set up above them, but in very close collaboration with them. There was an astronomical number of conversion points. |
Dennett I D. Dennett Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York 1995 German Edition: Darwins gefährliches Erbe Hamburg 1997 Dennett II D. Dennett Kinds of Minds, New York 1996 German Edition: Spielarten des Geistes Gütersloh 1999 Dennett III Daniel Dennett "COG: Steps towards consciousness in robots" In Bewusstein, Thomas Metzinger Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 1996 Dennett IV Daniel Dennett "Animal Consciousness. What Matters and Why?", in: D. C. Dennett, Brainchildren. Essays on Designing Minds, Cambridge/MA 1998, pp. 337-350 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Gould, St. J. | Pinker Vs Gould, St. J. | I 212 Evolution/PinkerVsGould: many alleged misconstructions in nature turn out to be old wives' tales. (Gould, "pieced together partial solutions"). Selection/Gould: can barely influence basic body plans. (e.g. vessel, nervous system of vertebrates has been unchanged for several hundred million years) I 214 PinkerVsGould: Selection should not be played against phylogenetic constraints. As hindering the dichotomy between innate and learned behavior. Pointless Questions/Pointless/Pinker: E.g. "Why does a creature have this or that organ?" Only makes sense if a comparison follows. Feathers/Wings/Pinker: that they first developed the feathers for thermal insulation is a widespread rumor. "They cannot fly with half a wing." PinkerVs: but there are not few birds that can fly a little: chicken, animals that let themselves fall from trees, etc. I 373 Exaptation/PinkerVsGould: I agree with Gould when it comes to the development itself: E.g. jawbone to ossicles). But: question: who or what performs the development or the functional takeover? Why were the earlier structures appropriate to take on new functions? |
Pi I St. Pinker How the Mind Works, New York 1997 German Edition: Wie das Denken im Kopf entsteht München 1998 |
| Grice, P.H. | Millikan Vs Grice, P.H. | I 3 Speech patterns/language device/terminology/Millikan: by that I mean words, syntactic forms, accentuation, accents, punctuation, etc. Thesis: such patterns have survived only because stable overt and covert responses of a cooperative partner are also handed down (have prevailed). Standardization/Millikan: the (voice) pattern exerts its own function only with a partner, but with anyone. Therefore, it must be standardized. Stabilization/Millikan/(S): (in time) with recurring token resemblance to earlier ones must be given. Stabilization/standardization/Millikan: two sides of a coin. Speech patterns/Millikan: can often be used in a parasitic way (diverted use). I 4 Ex metaphor, sarcasm, lying, irony. Standard: even if they are not being used in a deviating way the pattern may yet fail in use. Standardization/stabilization: therefore, they are not an "average function", but have to do with a "critical mass" of cases; they form a "center of gravity". Solution: can not be found by forming an "average" of idiolects. I 5 Characteristic function/language/meaning/MillikanVsGrice: we therefore do not take the meaning of the speaker as the fundamental concept. Meaningfulness/Millikan: we do not it explain with typical use. belief/wishes/intention/Millikan: thesis: can be explained without reference to language. I 51 quotation from Stevenson's "Kidnapped". I 52 Literature/Millikan: there are more ((S) fine) differences within the literature as many philosophers have opened up. Language/Millikan: in this chapter: what are there relations between 1. the stabilizing function of a speech pattern 2. its literal use 3. the speaker's intentions. Stabilizing function/Millikan: thesis of next chapter: an aspect of the meaning of words, of the syntactic form is the focused stabilizing function. literal use/Millikan: corresponds to no stabilizing function (see below). Intention according to Grice/MillikanVsGrice/Millikan: thesis: Grice's intentions are not what drives usage and understanding. I 61 Understanding/MillikanVsGrice/Millikan: thesis: is a direct perception of what a speech is about (aboutness), not a conclusion from the clauses heard! And certainly not a conclusion on speaker intentions. I 62 Conviction/Millikan: 1. arises partly from the internal composition of the subject (nerves, interconnection, etc.) but two people with the same interconnections need not have the same beliefs. I 63 2. not all the internal hardware is in use if you believe something. Belief/having/use/Millikan: I may have a conviction but not use is, Ex I almost never need the conviction that Columbus discovered America, especially not when I'm brushing my teeth. Discovery/Conviction/Millikan: Ex a mathematician who is awake and looking for a proof and finally finds it: one can not say of him_her that he_she has previously believed it! Imperative/Millikan: now, it is certainly the case that a listener when asked if the speaker had intended that s_he obeys the command, certainly will immediately answer "yes". I 64 But that does not mean that s_he has used this belief during obedience. Intentions according to Grice/MillikanVsGrice/Millikan: are therefore superfluous. And they also can not help to distinguish non-natural meaning from less interesting things. Anyway, we do not need to consider Grice's intentions that are subject the only potential and not actual modifications of the nervous system. I 65 VsMillikan: it could be argued that one might have reasons for an act without these reasons being activated in the anatomy. Millikan: when I stop to believe in something, I'll refrain from the corresponding actions. Intentions according to Grice/Millikan: the only interesting question is whether they are actually realized inside while speaking. Ex Millikan: the sergeant says, "the next time I say 'stop' do not stop!" There is a similar Ex by Bennett. Problem: the training was so effective that the soldier is not able not to stop. I 66 Bennett: the conclusion is made in a non-Grice manner. Rationality/Bennett/Millikan: it seems that as a rational person one should not choose "shortcuts". That is, one must not only take account of positive evidence, but also of negative. ((S) The idea is that what has been rationally learned covers what is rationally demanded. But both times it is about speaker intentions, one time past ones, another time present ones). generally/formally: Ex Suppose John believes "Usually: if A then B" and also: "Non- (usually: if A-and-not-C, then B)" rational: then would follow that John had to believe. a) "usual: if A then C" and b) if A and C, then B. Then there are the following possible cases. 1. the only evidence of C comes from the fact that John knows that usually, if A then C. Then he should just move from A to B. 2. John has independent ways to believe C on the basis of evidence. And he encounters A, while he already has evidence of non-C. I 67 Then, rationally, he should also believe that non-C and not conclude from A to B. 3. John has independent evidence according to which he could know C, but this time he does not know beforehand, whether C. Question: to be rational, does he have to check beforehand whether C? Millikan: we assume that he has to. Problem: if again, that only depends on him believing: "Usually, if D, then C" etc. Rationality/Millikan: Problem: the more knowledge one then acquires, the more of an effort one must make to be rational at all. Would it not be better to omit all this verifying? |
Millikan I R. G. Millikan Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism Cambridge 1987 Millikan II Ruth Millikan "Varieties of Purposive Behavior", in: Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, R. W. Mitchell, N. S. Thomspon and H. L. Miles (Eds.) Albany 1997, pp. 189-1967 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Hume, D. | Quine Vs Hume, D. | Hume I 115 Time/Hume was structure of the mind, now the subject turns out to be a synthesis of the time. Memory/Hume: the re-emergence of an impression in the form of a still vivid imagination. ((s) QuineVsHume). Memory itself does not cause a synthesis of time. It does not overcome the structure. I 178 The achievement of memory does not consist in holding on to individual imaginations, but in retaining their order. Quine V 19 Cause/Regularity/QuineVsHume: Problem: you can just take the two single classes in regularity consisting of a and b. Then one succumbs to the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc. Dispositions: here there is the same problem. V 88 Identity/Identity Predicate/Language Learning/Quine: it seems as though we have recognized the emergence of the identity predicate: it is nothing but a common constituent of various relative observation terms for substances such as V 89 e.g. "the same dog as" or even less: a word for the temporal extension of referencing (pointing). Identity/Locke/Hume: only useful for appearances of the same object at different times. QuineVsLocke/QuineVsHume: that fits very well with our present purpose of the individuation of things. However, identity goes beyond that. V 177 Past/Observation/Quine: but there are also reports of earlier observations, where the term was learned by definition instead of by conditioning. Since you can replace a defined term by its definiendum this amounts to a composite observation term. Example "I have seen a black rabbit": Learning situation: one for black, one for rabbits, as well as attributive composition. Imagination/Memory/Quine: in the language of mental images we can say that these are caused, even if the corresponding object does not exist. But now we must go further and assume even more skills: the child has to distinguish between two types of mental images: a) Fantasies b) Memories. V 178 QuineVsHume: referred unconvincingly to liveliness as a differentiator. Def Memory/Hume: attenuated sensation Def Fantasy/Hume: attenuated memory. Def Mental Image/QuineVsHume: is an event in the nervous system that leads to a state of readiness for a corresponding stimulus. This ostensive nervous process is perceived by the subject, i.e. it must be able to react specifically to it in two different ways: a) Summary of previously learned items e.g. "black" and "rabbit" b) strengthened by acquaintance: i.e. real earlier encounter with a black rabbit. Basis for affirmation. V 179 Observation Sentence/Complete Thought/Reference/Quine: refers to the object and the calendar clock and, where appropriate, to a location. Complex observation term. >Protocol Sentence: timeless sentence (forever-lasting) if location and times complete. Quine VII (d) 65 Objects/Individual Things/Thing/Hume: the notion of physical objects arises from a mistake in identification. In reality, we invent a new item every minute! QuineVsHume: we do not need to share it. Quine XI 112 Causality/QuineVsRegularity/QuineVsHume/Lauener: E.g. to what type of events does the cry of the geese heard on Capitol Hill belong and to which the fact that Rome is saved? |
Quine I W.V.O. Quine Word and Object, Cambridge/MA 1960 German Edition: Wort und Gegenstand Stuttgart 1980 Quine II W.V.O. Quine Theories and Things, Cambridge/MA 1986 German Edition: Theorien und Dinge Frankfurt 1985 Quine III W.V.O. Quine Methods of Logic, 4th edition Cambridge/MA 1982 German Edition: Grundzüge der Logik Frankfurt 1978 Quine V W.V.O. Quine The Roots of Reference, La Salle/Illinois 1974 German Edition: Die Wurzeln der Referenz Frankfurt 1989 Quine VI W.V.O. Quine Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge/MA 1992 German Edition: Unterwegs zur Wahrheit Paderborn 1995 Quine VII W.V.O. Quine From a logical point of view Cambridge, Mass. 1953 Quine VII (a) W. V. A. Quine On what there is In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (b) W. V. A. Quine Two dogmas of empiricism In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (c) W. V. A. Quine The problem of meaning in linguistics In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (d) W. V. A. Quine Identity, ostension and hypostasis In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (e) W. V. A. Quine New foundations for mathematical logic In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (f) W. V. A. Quine Logic and the reification of universals In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (g) W. V. A. Quine Notes on the theory of reference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (h) W. V. A. Quine Reference and modality In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (i) W. V. A. Quine Meaning and existential inference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VIII W.V.O. Quine Designation and Existence, in: The Journal of Philosophy 36 (1939) German Edition: Bezeichnung und Referenz In Zur Philosophie der idealen Sprache, J. Sinnreich (Hg) München 1982 Quine IX W.V.O. Quine Set Theory and its Logic, Cambridge/MA 1963 German Edition: Mengenlehre und ihre Logik Wiesbaden 1967 Quine X W.V.O. Quine The Philosophy of Logic, Cambridge/MA 1970, 1986 German Edition: Philosophie der Logik Bamberg 2005 Quine XII W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York 1969 German Edition: Ontologische Relativität Frankfurt 2003 Quine XIII Willard Van Orman Quine Quiddities Cambridge/London 1987 |
| Identity Theory | Searle Vs Identity Theory | I 52 SearleVsIdentity theory: a) common sense puts the identity theory in the following dilemma: Assuming that the theory is actually empirically true: then there must be logically independent from each other features of each concerned phenomen that clearly characterize this same phenomenon in two different ways: as that is identified on the left side of the identity statement, on the other hand, as it is identified on the right side (Stevenson 1960)(1). Then there must be two features: pain features and neurophysiological characteristics. We understand such a statement because we understand as follows: one and the same event has been identified with the help of two types of properties. Dilemma: either the pain features are subjective, mental, introspective features - if they are this, then we have not really gotten rid of the mind. We will still have to deal with a variety of dualism. Otherwise, if we understand the word "pain" in a way that it does not describe a subjective mental feature, then the meaning of the word remains completely mysterious and unexplained. I 53 As with behaviorism the mind is skipped here again. Either the identity-theoretical materialism merges the mind, or it does not ignore it; if it ignores it, it is wrong; if it does not ignore it, it is not materialism. Smart wanted to describe the so-called mental features in a "Topic-neutral" vocabulary that left the fact of its mindness unmentioned (Smart 1959)(2). SearleVsSmart: but that one can talk about a phenomenon without mentioning it's essential characteristics, does not mean that this phenomenon exists, or does not have these essential characteristics. Technical objection VsIdentitätstheorie: it is unlikely that there is a for each type of mental state one and only one type of neurophysiological state. Yet it seems too much to ask for that anyone who believes that Denver is the capital of Colorado has a neurophysiologically seen identical configuration in his brain. (Putnam 1967(3) and Block and Fodor 1972(4)). I 54 We do not rule out the possibility that in another species pain is perhaps identical to any other types of neurophysiological configuration. In short, it seems too much to ask for that each type of mental state is identical to a type of neurophysiological state. 3. Technical objection derives from Leibniz law. LeibnizVsIdentity theory: if two events are identical if they share all their properties, then mental states cannot be identical with physical states clearly, the mental states have certain characteristics, do not have the physical states. E.g. my pain is in the toe, while my corresponding neurophysiological state ranges from the toe to the brain. So where is the pain really? The identity theorists had not such a big problem with this. They stated that the analysis unit is in reality the experience of pain and that this experience (together with the experience of the whole body image) presumably takes place in the central nervous system. Searle: so you're right. 4. more radical technical objection: Kripke (1971)(5): Modal argumentation: if it were really true that pain with C fiber stimulation is identical then it would have to be a necessary truth. 1. J. T. Stevenson, Sensations and Brain Processes: A Reply to J. J. C. Smart, Philosophical Review 69, 505-510 2. J. J. C. Smart, Sensations and brain processes. Philosophical Review 68, 1959: pp.141-56 3. H. Putnam, “The Mental Life of Some Machines” in: H. Castaneda (Ed) Intentionality, Minds, and Perception, Detroit MI 1967 4. N. Block and J. Fodor, What psychological states are not; Philosophical Review 81, 1972 5. S. A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Reprint: Cambridge 1980 |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Identity Theory | Verschiedene Vs Identity Theory | Lanz I 280 VsIdentity Theory: Sensations cannot be identical with brain processes, because one can know that one feels something certain without knowing that the corresponding brain process takes place. Complete ignorance of neurophysiology does not prevent anyone from being a good everyday psychologist. Identity/Leibniz: (VsIdentity Thesis) all characteristics must be shared. Popular argument against the identity thesis: if one finds characteristics that possess mental phenomena, but not the supposedly identical neural states or processes, one believes that the thesis is done. For example, pain can be like stabbing, neuronal events cannot, thoughts can be astute, neural states cannot, my memory picture of the Eiffel Tower has shape, form and color, but not the neural state, thoughts cannot be localized, but neuronal processes, etc. Allegedly, a category mistake is made here. VsVs: confusion of word and object, word meaning (description) different, nevertheless the object can be the same. Te I 45 Mind/Brain/TetensVsIdentity Theory: the answer to the question: "are mental states brain states? In the end it turns out to be more complicated: on the one hand, they are revealed as causes of behaviour: Te I 145 No identity due to psycho-physical laws, the same behavior can be accompanied by different brain states (>Davidson). On the other hand, we refer to interaction patterns that include the attribution of mental states. In this respect, it makes no sense to say that we only refer to brain states. So there is no unambiguous answer for an identity of both states. Te I 147 TetensVsIdentity Theory: this leaves out the effectiveness of the attributions of mental states for interactions. Vollmer I 108 Identity Theory/Monism/Vollmer: most important monistic theory: mind is a function of the central nervous system that only emerges at a certain evolutionary level. Representative: Feigl, Armstrong, Smart, Place, Bunge, Lewis. Function/Explanation/Evolution Theory/Vollmer: by evolution one can explain a function only if this function means a selective advantage. For example memory, representing function of our central nervous system, simulation function. VsIdentity Theory/Vollmer: there is an evolutionary argument: if mental processes are identical with physical processes, then the selective advantage of mental processes must be an advantage of physical processes at the same time. But then this advantage would also exist if the physical processes had no internal aspect at all. The biological significance (and selective advantage) would be ensured without any psychological by-products (>epiphenomenalism). Then the whole internal aspect, that the world somehow feels to us, is unexplained, superfluous. Then why did it develop at all? Vollmer II 89 VsIdentity Theory/Vollmer: psychological processes are subjective, but undeniable! In this respect it is easier to doubt the existence of matter (>Descartes). II 90 VsIdentity Theory/Vollmer: psychological and physical processes seem completely incomparable. Neuronal processes are localized, consciousness is not. Vollmer:(pro identity theory): Some identity theorists do not take this seriously at all, but the argument is not a threat: we can interpret difference projectively: as subjective and objective aspects of one and the same thing. For example, a cylinder appears from different sides as a circle or cuboid. VollmerVsVs: Identity: not all properties must match: the optical and haptic impression of an apple are also not identical. |
Lanz I Peter Lanz Vom Begriff des Geistes zur Neurophilosophie In Philosophie im 20. Jahrhundert, A. Hügli/P. Lübcke Reinbek 1993 Vollmer I G. Vollmer Was können wir wissen? Bd. I Die Natur der Erkenntnis. Beiträge zur Evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie Stuttgart 1988 Vollmer II G. Vollmer Was können wir wissen? Bd II Die Erkenntnis der Natur. Beiträge zur modernen Naturphilosophie Stuttgart 1988 |
| Lewis, D. | Verschiedene Vs Lewis, D. | Metz II 274 Nida-RümelinVsLewis: this objection is off the table here after we have shown that on the 1st level (Marianna finds a colorfully furnished room with partly wrongly colored prints) the alternatives come into view, which are then excluded on the 2nd level. Real phenomenal knowledge. Lewis I 9 ShafferVsIdentity Theory: it cannot be true because experiences with analytical necessity are not spatial while neural events take place in the nervous system. LewisVsShaffer: this is not analytical or otherwise necessary. And neural events are also abstract. Whatever results from considerations about experiences as an argument for nonspatiality should also apply to neural events. - VsLewis: it is nonsense to consider a mere sound chain or character string as a possible carrier of a meaning or a truth value. Meaning/Carrier: Carriers of meaning are only single speech acts! II 213 LewisVsVs: my assertion is not that sounds and characters are carriers of meaning, but that they carry meaning and truth relatively to a language or population. A single speech act can be the bearer of meaning because in most cases it unambiguously determines the language used in its particular enforcement situation. - VsLewis: A meaning theory recurred to a possible world is circular. - Def Possible World/VsLewis): The concept of a possible world can itself be explained by recourse to semantic terms. Possible worlds are models of the analytical propositions of a language or diagrams or theories of such models. -LewisVs: Possible world cannot be explained by recourse to semantic terms. Possible worlds exist and should not be replaced by their linguistic representations. 1. Such a substitution does not work properly: two worlds which are not different in the representing language get (wrongly) assigned to one and the same representation. II 214 ++ 2. Such a replacement would also be completely unnecessary: the concept of possible worlds is perfectly understandable in itself. II 216 Hypostatization of meaning - VsLewis: not just words, things exist! - VsVs: we can form a grammar II 221 VsLewis: maybe internal representation? VsVs: that does not help! II 222 Convention is more than agreement: the others must believe in it! II 223 VsLewis:Language conventions are no better than our infamous obscure old friends, the language rules. VsVs: A convention of truthfulness and trust could be called a rule. II 224 VsLewis: Language is not conventional. LewisVs: There may be less conventionality than we originally thought. However, there are conventions of language. II 225 VsLewis: Only those who are also set theorists can expect others to adhere to regularity. LewisVs: An ordinary person does not need to possess a concept of L in order to be able to expect that the others are truthful and trusting in L. He only needs to have expectations about action. II 226 VsLewis: Using language is almost never a rational matter. LewisVs: An action can be rational and explainable even if it is done out of habit and without thought. II 227 VsLewis: Language cannot possibly be traced back to conventions. It is impossible to agree on everything at any time. LewisVs: Admittedly, the first language cannot possibly go back to a convention. II 227 VsLewis: E.g. Suppose a lifelong isolated person could one day spontaneously start using a language due to his ingenious talent. LewisVs: Even people living in isolation always adhere to a certain regularity. II 228 VsLewis: It is circular to define the meaning in P of sentences using the assumptions made by the members of P. LewisVs: It may be so, but it does not follow that making an assumption should be analyzed as accepting sentences. II 229 VsLewis: E.g. Suppose population of notorious liars. LewisVs: I deny that L is used in this population! II 229 E.g. Ironist: these people are actually true in L! But they are not literally true in L! I.e. they are truly in another language, connected with L, which we can call "literal-L". II 232 VsLewis: Truthfulness and trust (here not in L) cannot be a convention. LewisVs: The convention is not the regularity of truthfulness and trust par excellence. It is in a certain language! Its alternatives are regularities in other languages! II 233 + VsLewis: Even truthfulness and trust in L cannot be a convention. Moral obligation/Lewis: a convention continues to exist because everyone has reason to abide by it, if others do, that is the obligation. VsLewis: Why communication when people can draw completely different conclusions from a statement? II 234 VsVs is quite compatible with my theory. But these are not independent conventions but by-products. II 235 VsLewis: not only one language, but an infinite number of fragments (e.g. interest in communication etc.) VsVs: this is indeed the case, the language is inhomogeneous e.g. educated/uneducated. II 237 VsLewis: silence is not untruthful. VsVs: Right expectation of truthfulness, but no trust! II 238/239 VsLewis: either analytical or not, no smooth transition! VsVs: fuzzy analyticity with the help of gradual conventionality: regarding the strength of assumptions or the frequency of exceptions, or uncertainty as to whether certain worlds are actually possible. II 240 VsLewis: thesis and anti-thesis refer to different objects: a) semantic (artificial) languages, b) language as part of natural history - VsVs: no, there is only one philosophy of language, language and languages are complementary! |
Lewis I David K. Lewis Die Identität von Körper und Geist Frankfurt 1989 Lewis I (a) David K. Lewis An Argument for the Identity Theory, in: Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (b) David K. Lewis Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications, in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1972) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (c) David K. Lewis Mad Pain and Martian Pain, Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1, Ned Block (ed.) Harvard University Press, 1980 In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis II David K. Lewis "Languages and Language", in: K. Gunderson (Ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. VII, Language, Mind, and Knowledge, Minneapolis 1975, pp. 3-35 In Handlung, Kommunikation, Bedeutung, Georg Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1979 Lewis IV David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd I New York Oxford 1983 Lewis V David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd II New York Oxford 1986 Lewis VI David K. Lewis Convention. A Philosophical Study, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Konventionen Berlin 1975 LewisCl Clarence Irving Lewis Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis Stanford 1970 LewisCl I Clarence Irving Lewis Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) 1991 |
| Maturana, H. | Searle Vs Maturana, H. | III 168 Maturana: rejects the idea of an "objective reality" in favor of the idea that the nervous systems as autopoietic systems creates its own reality. Since we have no idea and no access to the reality except through the social construction, there is no independent reality. SearleVsMaturana: from the fact that our knowledge/idea/image of the reality is constructed by human brains in social interactions, does not follow that the reality has been created by human brains. III 169 Genetic fallacy: Problem beyond: would the interactions then themselves also be constructed by interaction? (Regress). |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Psychologism | McGinn Vs Psychologism | II 113/114 Def panpsychism/McGinn: moves the mind back in the material world (VsHyperdualism). ("Elvis Is Everywhere"). He states that consciousness is everywhere and wafts through space. II 115 a) Hard version of panpsychism: the neurons in the brain literally feel the pain, see yellow, think about dinner - and electrons and stars do the same. McGinnVsPanpsychism: 1. this is obviously not the case. Regular matter doesn't show any sign of thirst or pain. II 116 2. The problem with panpsychism is that it makes our mind look like an epiphenomenon! Since our mind is allegedly composed of all the states of mind that were intrinsic to matter before being formed into our brains. II 117 3. If all matter had mature thoughts and feelings, why do organisms then need nervous systems and brains to be able to think and feel? b) Soft panpsychism: obvious that atoms do not have mental states, but could they not contain the mind in a diluted form or on a lower level? McGinnVsPanpsychism (soft form): Problem: It is difficult to define what that means. If dilute states should be approximately like the consciousness before falling asleep, that leads back to the hard version. Stones would therefore have something like "proto mental" states, defined as any property of matter that allows for consciousness. II 118 McGinnVs: this theory is empty. It is true of course that matter has this or that property. And of course, matter must have the ability to give rise to consciousness, because it does so constantly. b) brain plays an active role: the brain makes use of the properties of matter and transforms it by virtue of its particular structure in consciousness. McGinn pro! McGinn pro panpsychism: all matter must have the potential to co-create consciousness because in the matter of which the brain tissue is constructed there is nothing really special (!). Ultimately, all traces of matter can be traced back to the Big Bang. |
McGinn I Colin McGinn Problems in Philosophy. The Limits of Inquiry, Cambridge/MA 1993 German Edition: Die Grenzen vernünftigen Fragens Stuttgart 1996 McGinn II C. McGinn The Mysteriouy Flame. Conscious Minds in a Material World, New York 1999 German Edition: Wie kommt der Geist in die Materie? München 2001 |
| Shaffer, J. | Lewis Vs Shaffer, J. | I (a) 9 ShafferVsIdentity theory: it cannot be true because experiences with analytical necessity are not spatial while the neural events take place in the nervous system. LewisVsShaffer: this is not analytical or otherwise necessary. And neuronal events are also abstract. Whatever emerges from considerations about experiences as an argument for non-spatiality, should also apply to neuronal events. |
Lewis I David K. Lewis Die Identität von Körper und Geist Frankfurt 1989 LewisCl I Clarence Irving Lewis Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) 1991 |
| Various Authors | Peacocke Vs Various Authors | I 59 Representational Content/Peacocke: the acoustic experience itself could have a representational content, ((s) namely, the that-sentence that a sound comes from the left.) weaker: in conjunction with the other attitudes of the subject. But for that the subject needs spatial concepts. Bower: his problem is, what it means to have spatial concepts. Stimulus-Response Scheme/S-R System/SR Psychology/Peacocke: a distinction is made between mental states with content and those that can only be explained by the stimulus-response scheme. But stimulus-response systems have complex internal information processing. Nor os it about the distinction conscious/unconscious. A stimulus-response psychology can reduce reactions not only to physical stimuli, but also to sensations! And these can also have a primitive form of consciousness. This is about the problem of the attribution of propositional content. Not all sensations do indeed have representational content. Bower: appropriate spatial response confirms the attribution of spatial content. Peacocke: is that correct? Causality/Psychology: Problem: There are several levels of incoming causal chains and also several levels of outgoing causal chains (input/output). I 60 Some of these levels, apart from the external objects, have the ability to involve objects that can play a role in both inbound and outbound in causal chains. E.g. the retina. Proposition/Propositional Content/SR System/Peacocke: we must first assume propositional attitudes about objects and places in the vicinity of the subject, which do not yet constitute an stimulus-response scheme, and motor instructions that actually consist in spatial reactions acting over a distance to be able to ascribe spatial terms. PeacockeVsBower: of course it goes without saying that if the child intentionally puts out its hand, it then there sees the object. The problem is what constitutes the intention with the content: "reach out to the object"? A spatial response that is supposed to be caused by the spatial properties of the object is not an explanation for an intention. Nor is it an explanation for the intention that the subject is disappointed if the object is not located there. (!) Whether there are innate, half-wired or acquired connections, you just need not assume any spatial concepts to explain the disappointment . I 61 Content/Attribution/PeacockeVsBower: if you want to attribute content, you should always ask: could a stimulus-response system do that as well? If so, we do not need content. Or the conditions are not sufficient to attribute content. Def Registering/Bennett/Peacocke: ("Linguistic Behavior", Cambridge, 1976): Def "a registers that p": if a is in an environment that is similar in relevant respects with an environment where p is clearly the case, then a registers that p. Def Relevantly Similar: an environment that does not differ in any respect in which a is sensitive (of an environment in which p is present). There is also room for learning and curiosity: Trainable: such an organism will respond quickly. Curious: such an organism will try many different reactions. Perspective/Peacocke: there are also complementary characteristics to investigate in perspective sensitivity: E.g. when the subject as is familiar, e.g. with the types of objects in its environment, it requires less efferent information. Def Efferent: from inside, from the central nervous system. In our oversimplified model here we assume subjects with perfect memory and a single goal. I 70 But there is independent evidence for memory errors and assumed obstacles or multiple goals. Such assumptions do not empty the thesis of perspective sensitivity. Perspective sensitivity is necessary to attribute attitudes in the basic case. But that is a weaker necessity than we need. E.g. (see above) the animal that eats fruits: the food could be covered and after a period of training the animal manages to solve this problem. Namely, by the shortest route, regardless of the angle at which it had originally perceived the food. That would be a case of perspective sensitivity. Nevertheless, it is possible that this is merely a stimulus-response system! Therefore, we do not know fully what the requirement of perspective sensitivity is. We cannot exclude this possibility by referring to past experiences or beliefs of the subject. Proposal: that the behavior of the animal is not causally sensitive to past spatial experiences that are currently not perceived, Vs: but this condition would also be met if the animal turned its head on its way to the food without interrupting its way. So this cannot be the crucial difference for the attribution of spatial Concepts. I 71 We would like to say that a person's behavior with attitudes about objects depends on how these objects are arranged around him. PeacockeVsBower: but we have already seen above that this leads to nothing. I 76 Mental Map/Perspective/Peacocke: initially it is harmless to attribute spatial behavior to the existence of an "internal map". But from this do not follow two stronger assumptions that want to derive perspective sensitivity from this: 1) Ulrich Neisser: every living being that can anticipate an environment has cognitive maps. PeacockeVsNeisser: it is not plausible that "cognitive maps" should be a particular type of image. 2) even if someone has a real, physical, external map, it cannot be a general explanation of the perspective sensitivity of his behavior. To use the map, you have to be able to trace the trail of your own movements. But then you already have the perspective sensitivity that should be explained first. (Circular). |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
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The author or concept searched is found in the following theses of the more related field of specialization.
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| Constructivism | Black, Max | III 75 Constructivism / Hudson Hoagland: thesis: we do not perceive the properties of objects , but the properties of our own nervous system. BlackVsHoagland: how can he know at all, since the physico-chemical events are complex. |
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