display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 4015 | For Descartes passions are God-given preservers of the mind-body union [Descartes, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: Descartes sees passions not as opinions, but as functional devices that the Creator has designed for us to help preserve the body-soul substantial union. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §8 | |
| A reaction: I wonder what Descartes would have made of the theory of evolution? |
| 4313 | Are there a few primary passions (say, joy, sadness and desire)? [Descartes, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Descartes says there are six primary passions (wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness); Spinoza says there are just three (joy, sadness and desire). | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.172 | |
| A reaction: A dubious project. However, it is now agreed that there are a few (six?) basic universal facial expressions, to which these passions may correspond. |
| 23989 | There are six primitive passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness [Descartes, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Descartes said there are six primitive passions, namely wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. The others are either species of these, or composed of them. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649], 353) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: [not sure about ref] It's a nice touch to add 'wonder', which doesn't make it onto anyone else's list. |
| 7654 | What matters about neuro-science is the discovery of the functional role of the chemistry [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Neuro-science matters because - and only because - we have discovered that the many different neuromodulators and other chemical messengers that diffuse throughout the brain have functional roles that make important differences. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I agree with Dennett that this is the true ground for pessimism about spectacular breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, rather than abstract concerns about irreducible features of the mind like 'qualia' and 'rationality'. |