Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Doing Without Concepts' and 'works'

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2 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
We can identify a set of cognitive capacities which are 'higher order' [Machery]
     Full Idea: Categorization, deduction, induction, analogy-making, linguistic understanding, and planning - all of these are higher cognitive capacities.
     From: Edouard Machery (Doing Without Concepts [2009], 1.1)
     A reaction: His 'lower' competences are perceptual and motor. I say the entry to the higher competences are abstraction, idealisation and generalisation. If you can't do these (chimpanzees!) you will not be admitted.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / g. Controlling emotions
Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato]
     Full Idea: Plato put high on his agenda a project which did not figure in Socrates' programme at all: the hygienic conditioning of the passions. This cannot be an intellectual process, as argument cannot touch them.
     From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.88
     A reaction: This is the standard traditional view of any thinker who exaggerates the importance and potential of reason in our lives.