Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Events and Reification' and 'Slaughterhouse Five'

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2 ideas

16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes.
     From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396
     A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
Out of more than a hundred planets, Earth is the only one with the idea of free will [Vonnegut]
     Full Idea: I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will'. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.
     From: Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five [1969], Ch.4)
     A reaction: Spoken by the ambassador from the planet Tralfamadore. Possibly the greatest put down of a philosophical idea since Diogenes responded to Plato's definition of a man. I think free will is a non-idea. It is non-sensical, and doesn't exist.