Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!festival!edcogsci!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Reductionist Materialism (was Re: I lie therefore I am?)
Message-ID: <CzqI8J.23J@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (C News Software)
Nntp-Posting-Host: bute-alter.aiai.ed.ac.uk
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
References: <CzDLDA.HBF@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <CzFvAv.Azq@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <CzH81J.6w8@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 19:02:43 GMT
Lines: 31

In article <CzH81J.6w8@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <CzFvAv.Azq@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>In article <CzDLDA.HBF@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>>>In article <CzBuxE.434@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>>>In article <1994Nov14.203936.12341@seas.smu.edu>,
>>>>Kenneth J. Hendrickson <kjh@seas.smu.edu> wrote:
>>>>>You beg the question.  You first assume that material stuff is all that
>>>>>exists, and then assume (correctly based upon the assumption) that ideas
>>>>>must exist in material media.  I will concede to you that for beings
>>>>>such as humans, who have both physical and non-physical components, a
>>>>>physical medium is necessary for communication of ideas.  However, while
>>>>>you use your physical brain for perception, you don't use it for storing
>>>>>ideas.  Ideas have ABOUTness.  It is not possible for any arrangement of
>>>          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>>It may be worth pointing out that this is untrue. ABOUTness is not a property
>>>of ideas, it is a property which is assigned to them by brains. This can be
>>>easily seen from the fact that the same idea can have different ABOUTness
>>>for different people. To stick to an example used some time ago in this 
>>>group, for A 'love' may be about having sex with B, and for B it may be about
>>>getting flowers (and/or jewelry) from A.
>>
>>What makes you think A and B have the same idea in this case?
>>I'd say they have different ideas, but both are labeled "love".
>>
>How do you then determine what idea corresponds to a given label and what
>its "ABOUTness" is, independent of minds/brains?

What makes you think A and B have the same idea in this case?

-- jd
