[...] this does not mean that there is no reliable or stable science at all and that there can be no lasting scientific results. Now that we have photographs of the earth from the moon, any lingering doubts that the earth is round have been removed. [...] Many scientific results are stable.This is also true of the science of the mind. [...] Much of what we have learned about the brain and the mind is now stable knowledge,
[...] what are the most basic specific forms of Being? Aristotle answer was his famous enumeration of categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, condition, action, and passivity.[...] The idea that we can study the world by studying language has come down to us in Anglo-American analytic philosophy. It was by such a method that Aristotle distinguished his ten basic categories.
Aristotle gave us the doctrine of the four types of causes: material, formal, efficient, and final.
[...] the classic Aristotelician logical principles:
- The Law of Excluded Middle [...]
- Modus Ponens [...]
- Modue Tollens [...]
Literalist theories of meaning and theories of metaphor like Aristotle's are not of mere historical interest. They dominate much of philosophy today.
The first sentence if “first-order,” since x varies over entities, in particular, human beings. But the second sentence is “second-order”, since f varies over properties of entities.
- Rich people are selfish [For all x, if x is a person and x is rich, the x is selfish.]
- Fido has remarkable properties [There are properties f that Fido has and that are remarkable.]
The central portions of Quine's philosophy follow from an important result in first-order logic—the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. [...]If a class of quantificational schemata is consistent, all its members come out true under some interpretation in the universe of positive integers.The shocking aspect of the theorem, as Quine says, is that
the truths about real numbers can by a reinterpretation be carried over in truths about positive integers. This consequence has been viewed as paradoxical, in the light of Cantor's proof that the real numbers cannot be exhaustively correlated with integers. But the air of paradox is dispelled by this reflection: whatever disparities between real numbers and integers may be guaranteed in those original truths about real numbers, the guarantees are themselves revised in the reinterpretation.[...] From Quine's point of view, this mathematical theorem has far-reaching implications for formalist philosophy of language: The symbols of a formal language, in themselves, are meanlingless. [...] the axioms of a formal logic, being nothing but meanlingless symbols, cannot be assumed to have any meaning at all until all the symbols are interpreted. [...] This is called meaning holism [...]
[...] individual theoretical sentences [...] can be confirmed or disconfirmed only by their role in the entire theory in which they are embedded. This is commonly called the Quine-Duhem thesis.
This book is primarily about the conflict between a priori philosophies and empirical findings in cognitive science.
This book is centrally concerned with the relationship between science and philosophy.
[...] a grammar is not an abstract formal system, but a neural system. The properties of grammars are properties of humanly embodied neural systems, not of abstract formal systems.
The very notion of a well-defined, global, and consistent “self-interest” for any human being over any significant length of time makes no sense.
Understanding the meaning of grasping and reasoning about grasping may activate the motor schema in the brain for grasping even though our muscles are not engaged.
The same neural circuitry that can move the body can be used to reason with.