display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
4906 | Babies show highly emotional brain events, but may well be unaware of them [Carter,R] |
Full Idea: Babies show emotion dramatically, but the areas of the brain that in adults are linked to the conscious experience of emotions are not active in newborn babies. Such emotions may therefore be unconscious. | |
From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p. 19) | |
A reaction: Traditionally, 'unconscious emotion' is a contradiction, but I think we should accept this new evidence and rethink the nature of mind. Not only might emotion be non-conscious, but we should even consider that rational thinking could be too. |
4909 | The only way we can control our emotions is by manipulating the outside world that influences them [Carter,R] |
Full Idea: We try to manipulate our emotions all the time, but all we are doing is arranging the outside world so it triggers certain emotions - we cannot control our reactions directly. | |
From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.155) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to throw a very illuminating light on a huge amount of human behaviour, such as going to the cinema or listening to music. The romantic movement encouraged direct internal manipulation. Compare sex fantasies with viewing pornography. |
4914 | A frog will starve to death surrounded by dead flies [Carter,R] |
Full Idea: A frog will starve to death surrounded by dead flies. | |
From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.195) | |
A reaction: A nice warning against assuming that rationality is operating when a frog feels hungry and 'decides' to have lunch. We should take comfort from the fact that humans are NOT this stupid, and philosophers should try to accurately describe our gift. |
13239 | Judgement is always predicating a property of a subject [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: All judgement, for Kant, is essentially the predication of some property to some subject. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
A reaction: Presumably the denial of a predicate could be a judgement, or the affirmation of ambiguous predicates? |
6097 | The theory of error seems to need the existence of the non-existent [Russell] |
Full Idea: It is very difficult to deal with the theory of error without assuming the existence of the non-existent. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism [1918], §IV.3) | |
A reaction: This problem really bothered Russell (and Plato). I suspect that it was a self-inflicted problem because at this point Russell had ceased to believe in propositions. If we accept propositions as intentional objects, they can be as silly as you like. |