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23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'. |
13865 | 'Sortal' concepts show kinds, use indefinite articles, and require grasping identities [Wright,C] |
Full Idea: A concept is 'sortal' if it exemplifies a kind of object. ..In English predication of a sortal concept needs an indefinite article ('an' elm). ..What really constitutes the distinction is that it involves grasping identity for things which fall under it. | |
From: Crispin Wright (Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects [1983], 1.i) | |
A reaction: This is a key notion, which underlies the claims of 'sortal essentialism' (see David Wiggins). |
13866 | A concept is only a sortal if it gives genuine identity [Wright,C] |
Full Idea: Before we can conclude that φ expresses a sortal concept, we need to ensure that 'is the same φ as' generates statements of genuine identity rather than of some other equivalence relation. | |
From: Crispin Wright (Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects [1983], 1.i) |
13890 | Entities fall under a sortal concept if they can be used to explain identity statements concerning them [Wright,C] |
Full Idea: 'Tree' is not a sortal concept under which directions fall since we cannot adequately explain the truth-conditions of any identity statement involving a pair of tree-denoting singular terms by appealing to facts to do with parallelism between lines. | |
From: Crispin Wright (Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects [1983], 3.xiv) | |
A reaction: The idea seems to be that these two fall under 'hedgehog', because that is a respect in which they are identical. I like to notion of explanation as a part of this. |
13898 | If we can establish directions from lines and parallelism, we were already committed to directions [Wright,C] |
Full Idea: The fact that it seems possible to establish a sortal notion of direction by reference to lines and parallelism, discloses tacit commitments to directions in statements about parallelism...There is incoherence in the idea that a line might lack direction. | |
From: Crispin Wright (Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects [1983], 4.xviii) | |
A reaction: This seems like a slippery slope into a very extravagant platonism about concepts. Are concepts like direction as much a part of the natural world as rivers are? What other undiscovered concepts await us? |