Skip to main content

questions for a reductive materialist, the one and the many, numerical vs. formal identity

When I entertain the same belief at two different times, it seems that two acts are directed toward numerically one object.

If so, then how does it even seem to be the case that the two different acts are directed toward the same object?

Surely it cannot be through the formal identity of the two: that may (or may not) be a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one.  For example, I may do the following:

1. think the same thing twice without reflecting the second time on the fact that I have previously thought it.

In such a case, formal identity might suffice for the sameness of the object of two belief acts.  But something more seems to be going on in the situation that I describe below

2. think not only of the same sort of thought directed toward the same object twice, but also to note the sameness of these two thoughts.

The second case would seem to involve something more than formal identity of the second act with the first--otherwise there would be no difference between the two cases.

One may try to solve this problem by proposing that the something extra found in the case number two a representation of the first act.  But in response to this proposal I must ask, "how does one know that this representation is a representation of the first?

I don't think that one who relies upon inner representation can give a satisfactory answer to this question, for it leads to an infinite regress of representations.

My answer would be that there  must be some way in which we are non-representationally aware of the previous act as directed toward that same as that toward which we are presently directed.

I tend to think that the closer a theory of mind is to reductive materialism, the more it will be beset by the sorts of the problems just laid out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Post a Comment
Read more

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....
Post a Comment
Read more

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...
2 comments
Read more