I favour an interpretation of quantum mechanics (the 'Everett interpretation') according to which reality branches in any chancy … - David Papineau

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When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

David Papineau

I favour an interpretation of quantum mechanics (the 'Everett interpretation') according to which reality branches in any chancy quantum situation. On this view, Schrödinger's set-up will give rise to in two future branches of reality, one with a live cat, and one with a dead cat - and the talk of '50% chances' just indicates that the two branches are both equally real futures of the cat that originally entered the box.

Cat, Future, Originally, Real, View, Views

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Of course, there remains the question of why we should find mind-brain identities so persistently counter-intuitive, if they are true. But this is a simple psychological question, and there are a number of plausible explanations. Indeed this is a topic that is quite extensively discussed outside philosophy, by developmental psychologists and theorists of religion among others, under the heading of 'intuitive dualism'. It is rather shocking that so few of the many philosophers working on 'the explanatory gap' are familiar with this empirical literature.

Numbers, Philosophy, Religion, Shocking, Simple, Theorists

Philosophers sometimes also use 'reductionist' more strictly, to mean 'type-identities' between mental and physical categories, and to exclude 'non-reductive physicalisms' like metaphysical functionalism.

Identity, Mean, Mental, Philosophers, Use

I think that there are non-physical laws all right: genuine (if not strict) laws written in the language of biology, economics, and so on. But I don't regard that as a contentious issue. Even reductionists about chemistry will think that there are special chemical laws whose formulation makes essential use of chemical terminology.

Formulation, Issues, Language, Law, Reductionists, Thinking

Even if no learning to speak of was involved in locking my mental term onto doorknobs, it is odd to say that therefore my possession of a doorknob concept is innate, just as it is odd to say that my head-injury-caused singing is innate.

Odd, Possession, Say, Singing, Speak, Term

I do have quite a lot of sympathy for Fodor's picture of concepts as information-free atomic entities which get locked onto their referents causally, and to that extent they needn't involve anything much in the way of learning. But even so it seems perverse to call them 'innate'. Here we see again the oddity of treating 'not learned' as sufficient for innate.

Information, Innate, Learning, Oddities, Sympathy, Way