快猫短视频

That familiar phrase 鈥渄efine your terms鈥� can halt seminars, end tedious argument, and buy you thinking time. It is also a serious imperative for our times, particularly when trying to marry the two halves of scientific enquiry: broad narrative and detailed evidence.

The narrative and the evidence for the relationship between the mind and the body, for example, don鈥檛 match. This burdens our attempts to explain what it is that we understand, even what knowledge is. The title of There鈥檚 Something About Mary, edited by Peter Ludlow and others (MIT Press, $35, 拢22.99), comes from a fascinating thought experiment by Frank Jackson. Mary is a scientist trapped in a life without colour. She learns about the world through black-and-white media, from books to TV. She knows everything we know about how colour perception works. What happens when she sees red for the first time?

Jackson suggests that we need to sort out the ontology of what we study or discuss 鈥� what entities exist? Then, how do we get from matter to mind? Framing that query is a minefield in itself. The psychology of seeing the colour red doesn鈥檛 seem to fit into the defining of terms and theory-building that is common practice in physical and biological sciences. Here are 20 essays by Jackson and others to boggle your brain/mind about all this.