RE: Clarification of Terms (was RE: What We Can Know About the World)

From: <chales1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 14:20:59 +1000

Lee wrote:
>Interesting note about "mind": there is no German language
>equivalent for it. Another reason to be *very* careful when
>employing it. <Sarcastic comment about the possibility of
>Teutonic zombies elided.>
>
>In a very deep (but non-mathematical) book, "What is Thought?"
>by Eric Baum, the author decides to use "mind" as the name of
>the program the brain runs, and it seems to work out well.
>
>Lee

What is going on? Another book is quoted and it too is right in front of me. I conclude there is a hidden web cam somewhere in my office.... I love causality. :)

As regards the book contents. I have to go through it in more detail but at first run through he makes precisely the same mistakes as all the other functionalists outlined so well in ...

Searle J. R. 1992. The rediscovery of the mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chapter 2

Once again: Baum formulates a metaphor based on a lack of imagination. The fallacy: that because our mind is so adept at constructing ontologies that therefore there is such things as 'things' in the universe. There are ways of constructing 'thought' that have no need for prescription of an ontology of any sort but where it can appear to be that way. Including Germans!

Baum cannot make any empirical predictions of brain matter. Nice read...but no progress has been made except to shoehorn the received view into the limelight.

Are we ever going to get past this?

Cheers

Colin
Received on Mon Aug 01 2005 - 00:25:26 PDT