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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'What is an Emotion?' and 'The Meaning of 'Meaning''

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4 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / a. Nature of emotions
Rage is inconceivable without bodily responses; so there are no disembodied emotions [James]
     Full Idea: Can one fancy a state of rage and picture no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action? …A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
     From: William James (What is an Emotion? [1884], p.194), quoted by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 3 'Bodily'
     A reaction: Plausible for rage, but less so for irritation or admiration. Goldie thinks James is wrong. James says if intellectual feelings don't become bodily then they don't qualify as emotions. No True Scotsman!
18. Thought / C. Content / 5. Twin Earth
If Twins talking about 'water' and 'XYZ' have different thoughts but identical heads, then thoughts aren't in the head [Putnam, by Crane]
     Full Idea: Putnam claims that the Twins have different thoughts even though their heads are the same, so their thoughts (about 'water' or 'XYZ') cannot be in their heads.
     From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Tim Crane - Elements of Mind 4.37
     A reaction: Is Putnam guilty of a simple confusion of de re and de dicto reference?
We say ice and steam are different forms of water, but not that they are different forms of H2O [Forbes,G on Putnam]
     Full Idea: Putnam presumes it is correct to say that ice and steam are forms of water, rather than that ice, water and steam are three forms of H2O. If we allow the latter, then 'water is H2O' is not an identity, but elliptical for 'water is H2O in liquid state'.
     From: comment on Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 8.2
     A reaction: This nice observation seems to reveal that the word 'water' is ambiguous. I presume the ambiguity preceded the discovery of its chemical construction. Shakespeare would have hesitated over whether to say 'water is ice'. Context would matter.
Does 'water' mean a particular substance that was 'dubbed'? [Putnam, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Putnam argued that "water" refers to H2O by virtue of causal chains extending from present use back to early dubbing uses of it that were in fact dubbings of the substance H2O (although, of course, the original users of the word didn't know this).
     From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 9.2.1
     A reaction: This is the basic idea of the Causal Theory of Reference. Nice conclusion: most of us don't know what we are talking about. Maybe the experts on H2O are also wrong...