Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 255
Generality/Animal/Thinking/Papineau: no simple organism explicitly represents general facts. E.g. it is one thing to represent the location of a particular pond, that water is in ponds is quite another matter. This corresponds to the question: which animals can have beliefs?
>Animals, >Thinking, >World/thinking, >Thinking without language, >Spatial localization, >Representation.
I 256
Purpose-means-thinking/Papineau: I have not defined this concept in terms of beliefs but of design: as the use of general representations. I avoid the concept belief.
>Beliefs, >Content.
Representation/Papineau: why should an animal have no general representations?
I 257
After all, it has this disposition right now, because its behavior in the past has led to this result.
>Generalization.
Disposition/Representation/Papineau: should the disposition itself not be regarded as the incarnation of the general information "Drinking supplies water"?
>Disposition, >Information.
I do not want to dispute such content attribution. The disposition represents information about the general "connection of reaction with result" (B&T, V>R).
Purpose-Means-Thinking/Papineau: if it requires explicit representations, it no longer follows that simple creatures can be considered ZM thinkers.
I 258
Explicit representation requires physical tangibility.
Vs: all behavioral dispositions must have some kind of physical embodiment.
>Behavior, >Embodiment.
I 259
Explicit/implicit: if an organism has implicitly different pieces of general information in different dispositions ("water is in ponds"), it still has no system to combine them.
>Complexity, >Parts, >Whole, >Sense.