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Ideas for 'works', 'works' and 'works'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / a. Nature of emotions
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'.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / a. Artificial Intelligence
Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey]
     Full Idea: The modest mentalism of the Computational/Representational Theory of Thought (CRTT), associated with Fodor, says mental processes are computational, defined over syntactically specified entities, and these entities represent the world (are also semantic).
     From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3
     A reaction: This seems to imply that if you built a machine that did all these things, it would become conscious, which sounds unlikely. Do footprints 'represent' feet, or does representation need prior consciousness?
18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content
Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor]
     Full Idea: Fodor is concerned with producing a realist and physicalist account of 'narrow content' (i.e. wholly in-the-head content).
     From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.54
     A reaction: The emergence of 'wide' content has rather shaken Fodor's game plan. We can say "Oh dear, I thought I was referring to H2O", so there must be at least some narrow aspect to reference.