My Brain Hurts

I read two articles by James Ross today. Now my brain hurts. In general, these articles are a critque of naturalistic philosophies of mind, from the analytic philosophical tradition. The first is arguing for the logical impossibility of arguing that thoughts are purely physical, because thoughts have features that physical things cannot possibly have. The second is entitled Aristotle's Revenge. I like this already, Aristotle usually gets the last laugh on his detractors. This is a talk given to a philosophy conference, and is rather funny (for philosophy). The talk mostly pokes fun at the analytical tradition for failing to even bother to see what prior philosophers might have had to say on a problem, leading to uncritical acceptance or derision of many ideas. Much of this can be traced back to Descartes. Many modern philosophers look back only to Descartes, and even if they rearrange the Cartesian furniture, they never look at the foundations.

My summary ought to be regarded as the 10¢ tour, and no substitute for the real thing. James Ross is extraordinarily subtle, and is confusing even to me. I need to study more to understand him.

h/t Edward Feser