Reading Notes: May 3rd, 2022

“All colour is spread out in space of two dimensions, and every coloured surface has a definite position relatively to other coloured surface. The same is true of tangible qualities, such as roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness, hotness and coldness. But the same place cannot be simultaneously occupied by different colours, and it cannot at the same time be both hot and cold, both hard and soft, both rough and smooth. These are mutually exclusive, because they are specific variations in the same respect of the same generic quality. On the other hand, specific variations of different generic qualities, or of the same in different respects, can occupy the same place. A body may be hot, hard, and smooth in the same place. In particular, visible and tangible qualities are capable of having an identical position in space, and, as a rule, they are actually apprehended as spatially coincident and co-extensive on the bounding surfaces of material things. The exceptions are confined to instances, such as that of the air, in which a thing is tangible but not visible.” (Stout, The Common-Sense Conception of a Material Thing, 34-35) 

“No combination of surfaces can constitute solid thickness; the solid thickness is always apprehended as lying between them; they cannot constitute it just because they have no solid thickness themselves, and, if they had, would cease to be mere surfaces. The surface is in space of three dimensions what the line is in space of two dimensions, merely a boundary. The line formed by the meeting of two coloured surfaces is no part of either of them. Similarly, the surfaces, disclosed by slicing an apple form no part of the solid content of either half of the apple.” (Stout, The Common-Sense Conception of a Material Thing, 35-36) 

“In ordinary language it seems strange to speak of sensations as extended. The reason is that they are not extended in the same sense as corporeal things. Bodies are extended in space. But touch and sight sensations do not occupy any part of the single, homogenous, infinite space which embraces all material things and their distances. They do not occupy any part of the space in which Cardiff or Oxford is so many miles from London, and in which bodies attract each other inversely as the square of their distance. None the less, touch and sight sensations have an intrinsic character correlated with spatial size and shape, just as the quality of sensations of yellow is correlated with the yellowness of buttercups arid oranges. We may call this intrinsic character sensible extension. Since in ordinary life we are interested in sensible extension mainly as an expression or manifestation of spatial extension, spatial extension may be called real and sensible extension apparent. Thus, we contrast the apparent size of a thing as seen at this or that distance from the eye with its real size as measured in feet or inches. Spatial or real extension is throughout homogeneous; sensible extension is of two kinds, the visual and the tactual. Their difference is perhaps comparable to that of the intensity of light sensations and the intensity of sound sensations.” (Stout, Primary and Secondary Qualities, 51-52) 

“Consider first visual extension. On closing the eyes though we cease to see external objects or any part of our own bodies, there is still a field or expanse of visual sensation which may be entirely grey or variegated with colour. Each distinguishable part of this field or expanse has local relations of position and distance to other parts, and the whole is a single continuous extensive quantum. Yet the visual expanse thus presented for our attentive scrutiny does not occupy any part of space. If it is in space it must be here or there. But we cannot from the nature of the case say where it is. There is no room for it in the space occupied by bodies. Again, if the expanse of visual sensation occupies any portion of space it must be conterminous with other outlying portions of space. But in this sense, it is boundless though not of course infinite in magnitude. Parts within it are bounded by other contiguous parts, but in its totality,  it does not form part of a more extensive whole, and it has therefore no limits which are in any sense spatial. It has no shape. If you doubt this try to discover what its shape is. In the next place, if it occupied space, it would be commensurable with other spatial quanta. It ought to be possible to express its magnitude in feet or inches. But this is an intrinsic impossibility. We cannot, for instance, say that it is equal in extent to the total tract of the external world which comes within the range of vision when the eyes are open. For what we can thus embrace in one view may vary indefinitely in extent. It may include the expanse of the starry heavens or it may be confined to the walls of room. Again, a part of space may be conceivably empty; but the conception of a vacuum has no application to visual extension. There is no visual extension where there are no colour and brightness sensations.” (Stout, Primary and Secondary Qualities, 53-54) 

“There could be no knowledge without that antithesis between knowledge and the known; even omniscient knowledge could not transcend it, for it is implied in the very notion of knowledge. To demand of knowledge that it shall be one with the object known is tantamount to demanding that knowledge shall both be and not be knowledge….The activity of knowing throws no colour of its own upon that representation of the world of fact which through it is possible, simply because it has no colour of its own to throw.” (Hicks, Sense-Presentation and Thought, 153)\ 

“It makes no sense to ascribe psychological predicates (or their negations) to the brain, save metaphorically or metonymically. The resultant combination of words does not say something that is false; rather, it says nothing at all, for it lacks sense. Psychological predicates are predicates that apply essentially to the living animal as a whole, not to its parts. It is not the eye (let alone the brain) that sees, but we see with our eyes (and we do not see with our brains, although without a brain functioning normally in respect of the visual system, we would not see). So, too, it is not the ear that hears, but the animal whose ear it is. The organs of an animal are parts of the animal, and psychological predicates are ascribable to the animal as a whole, not to its constituent parts. Mereology is the logic of part/whole relations. The neuro-scientists’ mistake of ascribing to the constituent parts of an animal attributes that logically apply only to the animal as a whole we shall call ‘the mereological fallacy’ in neuroscience. The principle that psychological predicates which apply only to human beings (or other animals) as wholes cannot intelligibly be applied to their parts, such as the brain, we shall call ‘the mereological principle’ in neuroscience. Human beings, but not their brains, can be said to be thoughtful or thoughtless; animals, but not their brains, let alone the hemispheres of their brains, can be said to see or not to see, to hear or not to hear, to smell or not to smell and to taste or not to taste things; people, but not their brains, can be said to be decisive or to be indecisive.” (Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, 83-84) 

“For while it may be harmless to talk of ‘maps’—that is, of mappings of features of the perceptual field on to topographically related groups of cells that are systematically responsive to such features—it is anything but harmless to talk of such ‘maps’ as playing ‘an essential part in the representation and interpretation of the world by the brain, just as the maps of an atlas do for the reader of them’ (our italics). In the first place, it is not clear what sense is to be given to the term ‘interpretation’ in this context. For it is by no means evident what could be meant by the claim that the topographical relations between groups of cells that are systematically related to features of the perceptual field play an essential role in the brain’s interpreting something. To interpret, literally speaking, is to explain the meaning of something, or to take something that is ambiguous to have one meaning rather than another. But it makes no sense to suppose that the brain explains anything, or that it apprehends something as meaning one thing rather than another. If we look to J.Z. Young to find out what he had in mind, what we find is the claim that it is on the basis of such maps that the brain ‘constructs hypotheses and programs’ – and this only gets us deeper into the morass.” (Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, 91) 

“It is true that we do, in casual parlance, say that computers remember, that they search their memory, that they calculate, and sometimes, when they take a long time, we jocularly say that they are thinking things over. But this is not a literal application of the terms ‘remember’, ‘calculate’ and ‘think’. Computers are devices designed to fulfil certain functions for us. We can store information on a computer, as we can in a filing cabinet. But filing cabinets cannot remember anything, and neither can computers. We use computers to produce the results of a calculation, just as we used to use slide-rules or cylindrical mechanical calculators. Those results are produced without anyone or anything literally calculating—as is evident in the cases of a slide-rule or mechanical calculator. In order literally to calculate, one must have a grasp of a wide range of concepts, follow a multitude of rules that one must know, and understand a variety of operations. One must view the results of one’s calculation as warranted by the premises. Computers do not and cannot.” (Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, 93) 

“An illustration of [the intentional fallacy] would be to argue that a sensation is not a brain process because a person can be talking about a sensation and yet not be talking about a brain process. The verb “to talk about” might be called an “intentional” verb, and this fallacy committed with it might be called “the intentional fallacy”. Other intentional verbs would be “to mean”, “to intend”, “to know”, “to predict”, “to describe”, “to notice”, and so on….The verb “to explain” is also an intentional verb….I wonder if Smart has not reasoned fallaciously, somewhat as follows: If a sudden thought is a certain brain process, then to explain the occurrence of the brain process is to explain the occurrence of the thought. Thus there will be just one kind of explanation for both thoughts and brain processes….If a thought is identical with a brain process, it does not follow that to explain the occurrence of the brain process is to explain the occurrence of the thought. And in fact, an explanation of the one differs in kind from an explanation of the other. The explanation of why someone thought such and such involves different assumptions and principles and is guided by different interests than is an explanation of why this or that process occurred in his brain. These explanations belong to different systems of explanation. I conclude that even if Smart were right in holding that thoughts are strictly identical with brain processes…he would not have established that there is one and the same explanation for the occurrence of the thoughts and for the occurrence of the brain processes. If he were to appreciate this fact then…he would no longer have any motive for espousing the identity theory. For [Smart’s theory] would not advance us one whit towards the single, homogeneous system of explanation that is the goal of Smart’s materialism.” (Malcom, Scientific Materialism and the Identity Theory, 178-179)  

“Could a brain have thoughts, illusions, or pains? The senselessness of the supposition seems so obvious that I find it hard to take it seriously. No experiment could establish this result for a brain. Why not? The fundamental reason is that a brain does not sufficiently resemble a human being. What can have ked Smart to suppose that a brain can have thoughts? The only explanation which occurs to me is that he thinks that if my thought is in my brain, then my brain has a thought. This would be like thinking that if my invitation to dinner is in my pocket, then my pocket has an invitation to dinner. One bad joke deserves another.” (Malcom, Scientific Materialism and the Identity Theory, 179-180)