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Single Idea 23975

[filed under theme 18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / g. Controlling emotions ]

Full Idea

The process of teaching a child how to identify things which are dangerous is typically one and the same process as teaching that child when fear is merited. ...'Dangerous' is an evaluative property, meriting a certain sort of response.

Gist of Idea

Learning an evaluative property like 'dangerous' is also learning an emotion

Source

Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Education')

Book Ref

Goldie,Peter: 'The Emotions' [OUP 2002], p.30

A Reaction

I like this, because it shows the unity between our inner life and our experience of the external world. Concepts and emotions are usually responses, rather than private initiatives.

The 13 ideas with the same theme [limits and ways of controlling emotions]:

23997 Plato saw emotions and appetites as wild horses, in need of taming [Plato, by Goldie]
1651 Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato]
5160 There is a mean of feelings, as in our responses to the good or bad fortune of others [Aristotle]
23913 Nearly all the good and bad states of character are concerned with feelings [Aristotle]
7832 Stoics want to suppress emotions, but Spinoza overcomes them with higher emotions [Spinoza, by Stewart,M]
4863 An emotion comes more under our control in proportion to how well it is known to us [Spinoza]
24009 Moral education must involve learning about various types of feeling towards things [Williams,B]
4909 The only way we can control our emotions is by manipulating the outside world that influences them [Carter,R]
23975 Learning an evaluative property like 'dangerous' is also learning an emotion [Goldie]
23983 We call emotions 'passions' because they are not as controlled as we would like [Goldie]
23999 Emotional control is hard, but we are responsible for our emotions over long time periods [Goldie]
23994 Emotions are not easily changed, as new knowledge makes little difference, and akrasia is possible [Goldie]
23998 Emotional control is less concerned with emotional incidents, and more with emotional tendencies [Goldie]