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Ideas for 'works', 'Vagaries of Definition' and '(Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics'

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2 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 / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / a. Concepts and language
Concepts in thought have content, but not meaning, which requires communication [Harman]
     Full Idea: Concepts and other aspects of mental representation have content but not (normally) meaning (unless they are also expressions in a language used in communication).
     From: Gilbert Harman ((Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics [1987], 12.1.2)
     A reaction: Given his account of meaning as involving some complex 'role', he has to say this, though it seems a dubious distinction, going against the grain of a normal request to ask what some concept 'means'. What is 'democracy'?