Michele Pasin / Quotes

Idealism and materialism as two kinds of monism

The dualists said that there are two kinds of things or properties in the universe, and with the failure of dualism, it is natural to suppose that maybe there…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #materialism #metaphysics #mind

Behaviorism smuggles desire back in

I said earlier that the behaviorists would analyze Jones’s belief that it is going to rain into sets of statements about his rain-avoidance behavior. But the…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #behaviorism #beliefs #reductionism

Causal reduction without ontological reduction

On the dualist’s conception, consciousness is definitely something over and above its material substrate. Indeed the dualist supposes that the irreducibility…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #reductionism #ontology #consciousness #cause

For consciousness, appearance is reality

But why couldn’t we show that consciousness was an illusion like sunsets and thus do an eliminative reduction? Eliminative reductions rest on the distinction…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #consciousness #illusion #reductionism

Mud, Beethoven and surface features

So consciousness differs from other phenomena such as liquidity and solidity that have surface features, in that we are reluctant to carve off the surface…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #reductionism #consciousness #music

Pain and our definitional practices

there is an asymmetry between colors on the one hand and pains and consciousness on the other, because we would lose the point of having the concepts of…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #reductionism #pain #definition #consciousness