p.8 What minds do is think about things. [JLJ - no, what minds do is think about prioritized sets
of problems - things are just the pieces of the problems. The mind is a swiss army knife, neatly folded, which is prepared
to deploy and attempt to solve any kind of problem whatsoever. Sometimes it deploys on its own, sometimes you get to deploy
it, sometimes it malfunctions. When your house is on fire, your mind does not contemplate the universe. I'm starting to get
the hang of this psychology thing. You just find something that someone has said, and then disagree with it. After picking
a fight with that guy, you then go and find something someone else has said, and disagree with that, then continue (infinitely).]
p.13 You can't think up a plan unless you can think about how the world would be if the plan succeeds. [JLJ
- The plan can be to simply get into the future, where the future is unknowable. Your plan would then be for
adaptive capacity - the future will emerge, and then you adapt to it using the adaptive capacity you have carefully accumulated
and developed. "How the world would be" is guesswork and is likely wrong. Your "plan" should be to prepare yourself for whatever
emerges - including the likely failure of the plan itself.]
p.23 I am already quite confused enough to be getting on with. [JLJ - and you're the one writing the book?
Where does that place your readers?]
p.25 If RTM [representational theory of mind] is correct, then concepts are:
- constituents of beliefs
- the units of semantic evaluation
- a locus of causal interactions among mental representations
- formulas in Mentalese.
p.81 the very most you can claim to have is a batch of tricks, all more or less ad hoc
p.87 In the long run, computational psychology is a sort of trick that Turing invented to make it seem that
there are senses and that they cause things
p.143 The trick, in naturalizing reference, is to hold onto the mind-world correlations while quantifying
over whatever it is that sustains them.
p.148-149 How is it that so many of our concepts fit the world? [JLJ - because the purpose of the mind is
to understand and potentially solve any problem that might arise. Concepts that fit the world are available for potential
problem solving purposes.]
p.149 So, then, why do so many of our concepts have instances? [JLJ - because in order to solve a problem
it must become real or instantiated at some part of its solution. The pieces which make up problem solving must have some
portion or some link to a part that is instantiated, because we ultimately must make our solution real.]
p.153 Assuming that forming a stereotype is typically a stage in concept acquisition might do the trick
