50 ideas
| 23966 | The personal view can still be objective, so I call sciences 'impersonal', rather than objective [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: 'Objective' is misleading because it is possible to be, from a personal point of view, more or less objective; objectivity admits of degrees… I prefer to speak of sciences as 'impersonal', because the personal view is lost. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This evidently relates to Perry's claim that the world contains additional indexical facts. I think I agree with this thought. Objectivity is a mode of subjectivity. Thermometers are not 'objective'. Physics is certainly impersonal. |
| 13655 | The Löwenheim-Skolem theorems show that whether all sets are constructible is indeterminate [Putnam, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Putnam claims that the Löwenheim-Skolem theorems indicate that there is no 'fact of the matter' whether all sets are constructible. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (Models and Reality [1977]) by Stewart Shapiro - Foundations without Foundationalism | |
| A reaction: [He refers to the 4th and 5th pages of Putnam's article] Shapiro offers (p.109) a critique of Putnam's proposal. |
| 9915 | V = L just says all sets are constructible [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: V = L just says all sets are constructible. L is the class of all constructible sets, and V is the universe of all sets. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Models and Reality [1977], p.425) |
| 9913 | The Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem is close to an antinomy in philosophy of language [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem says that a satisfiable first-order theory (in a countable language) has a countable model. ..I argue that this is not a logical antinomy, but close to one in philosophy of language. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Models and Reality [1977], p.421) | |
| A reaction: See the rest of this paper for where he takes us on this. |
| 9914 | It is unfashionable, but most mathematical intuitions come from nature [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Experience with nature is undoubtedly the source of our most basic 'mathematical intuitions', even if it is unfashionable to say so. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Models and Reality [1977], p.424) | |
| A reaction: Correct. I find it quite bewildering how Frege has managed to so discredit all empirical and psychological approaches to mathematics that it has become a heresy to say such things. |
| 13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The scholastics treated it as a step in the right explanatory direction to analyze a relational statement of the form 'aRb' into two subject-predicate statements, attributing different relational predicates to a and to b. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: The only alternative seems to be Russell's view of relations as pure universals, having a life of their own, quite apart from their relata. Or you could take them as properties of space, time (and powers?), external to the relata? |
| 13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: If we go for the necessity-of-origins view, A and B are different if the origin of A is different from the origin of B. But one is left with the further question 'When is the origin of A distinct from the origin of B?' | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: There may be an answer to this, in a regress of origins that support one another, but in the end the objection is obviously good. You can't begin to refer to an 'origin' if you can't identify anything in the first place. |
| 13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This apparently old-fashioned point appears to be conclusively correct. Modern thinkers, though, aren't comfortable with proper individuation, because they don't believe in concepts like 'essence' and 'substance' that are needed for the job. |
| 13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a contemporary property construal of haecceities, ...and a Scotistic construal as primitive, 'colourless' thisnesses which, unlike singleton-set haecceities, are aimed to do some explanatory work. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.4) | |
| A reaction: [He associates the contemporary account with David Kaplan] I suppose I would say that individuation is done by properties, but not by some single property, so I take it that I don't believe in haecceities at all. What individuates a haecceity? |
| 13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: We could think of 'substance' on the model of a mass noun, rather than a count noun. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: They offer this to help Leibniz out of a mess, but I think he would be appalled. The proposal seems close to 'prime matter' in Aristotle, which never quite does the job required of it. The idea is nice, though, and should be taken seriously. |
| 13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: In the 'blueprint' approach to substance, we confront at least three questions: What is it for a thing to be an individual substance? What is it for a thing to be the kind of substance that it is? What is it to be that very individual substance? | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: My working view is that the answer to the first question is that substance is essence, that the second question is overrated and parasitic on the third, and that the third is the key question, and also reduces to essence. |
| 13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a widespread assumption, now and in the past, that substances are essentially substances: nothing is actually a substance but possibly a non-substance. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that they clearly mean, in this context, that substances are 'necessarily' substances, not that they are 'essentially' substances. I would just say that substances are essences, and leave the necessity question open. |
| 13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern view of essence is that the essence of a particular thing is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to it, and the essence of any kind is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to every possible member of that kind. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus the modern view has elided the meanings of 'essential' and 'necessary' when talking of properties. They are said to be 'functions' from possible worlds to individuals. The old view (and mine) demands real essences, not necessary properties. |
| 17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern essentialist gives the same metaphysical treatment to every grammatical predicate - by associating a function from worlds to extensions for each. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to mean that essentialism is the view that if some predicate attaches to an object then that predicate is essential if there is an extension of that predicate in all possible worlds. In English, essential predicates are necessary predicates. |
| 13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant). |
| 13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: It might be suggested that even the extreme modal realist can countenance transworld identity for abstract objects. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 3.2.2 n46) | |
| A reaction: This may sound right for uncontroversial or well-defined abstracta such as numbers and circles, but even 'or' is ambiguous, and heaven knows what the transworld identity of 'democracy' is! |
| 13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher comfortable with an 'order of being' has richer resources to make sense of the 'in virtue of' relation than that provided only by causal relations between states of affairs, positing in addition other sorts of explanatory relationships. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This might best be characterised as 'ontological dependence', and could be seen as a non-causal but fundamental explanatory relationship, and not one that has to depend on a theistic world view. |
| 24005 | We know other's emotions by explanation, contagion, empathy, imagination, or sympathy [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: We know others' emotions by 1) understanding and explaining them, 2) emotional contagion, 3) empathy, 4) in-his-shoes imagining, and 5) sympathy. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 7 Intro) | |
| A reaction: He says these must be clearly distinguished, because they are often confused. In-his-shoes is 'me in their position', where empathy is how the position is just for them. The Simulationist approach likes these two. Sympathy need not share the feelings. |
| 24006 | Empathy and imagining don't ensure sympathy, and sympathy doesn't need them [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Empathy and in-his-shoes imagining are not sufficient for sympathy. Nor are they necessary. You can even sympathise with another when these are impossible, with the sufferings of a whale or a dog, for example. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 7 'Sympathy') | |
| A reaction: Goldie is right that these distinct faculties are a blurred muddle in most of our accounts of dealing with other people. Empathy with a whale in not actually impossible, because we recognise their suffering, and we understand suffering. |
| 23973 | Unlike moods, emotions have specific objects, though the difference is a matter of degree [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Emotions have more specific objects than moods. The difference is a matter of degree, so emotions don't necessarily have a specific object, and moods are not necessarily undirected towards an object, or lacking in intentionality. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Intentionality') | |
| A reaction: Could you simultaneously have an emotion and a mood which were in conflict, such as joy and misery (singing the blues), or love and hate ('odi et amo')? Could one transition into the other, as the object became clear, or faded away? |
| 23974 | Emotional intentionality as belief and desire misses out the necessity of feelings [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers who discuss the intentionality of the emotions seek to capture the intentionality of the emotions in terms of beliefs, or beliefs and desires. I think this is a mistake, and runs the risk of leaving feelings out of emotional experience. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Intentionality') | |
| A reaction: [He gives a list, which includes Kenny and Davidson] I would have thought that desires, at least, necessarily involve feelings, and neuroscientists seem to find emotions everywhere, including as part of belief. Be more holistic? |
| 23972 | A long lasting and evolving emotion is still seen as a single emotion, such as love [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: In narratives the different elements of an emotion are conceived of as all being part of the same emotion, in spite of its complex, episodic and dynamic features. Verbs expressing emotions don not use continuous tenses, such as 'he is being in love'. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'What') | |
| A reaction: Goldie is keen on seeing emotions as part of a life narrative. An intriguing problem for the metaphysics of identity. If someone's love for a person comes and goes, is it the same love each time? |
| 23978 | 'Having an emotion' differs from 'being emotional' [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: There is a contrast in commonsense psychology between 'being emotional' and 'having an emotion'. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: Is this just that being emotional is displaying the existing emotion? Though we say someone is 'being emotional' when the emotion seems to take control of their actions. |
| 23992 | Some Aborigines have fifteen different words for types of fear [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: The Pintupi Aborigines of the Western Australian Desert have no less than fifteen words for different types of fear, including one for a sudden fear which leads one to stand up to see what caused it. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Evidence') | |
| A reaction: Reminiscent of the many Inuit words for snow, but this time it is about human experience, rather than the environment. We must assume they can distinguish the different types, so these gradations are real. |
| 23979 | Emotional responses can reveal to us our values, which might otherwise remain hidden [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Our emotional responses can reveal to us what we value, and what we value might not be epistemically accessible to us if we did not have such responses. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the question of whether the emotion reveals the value, or determines the value. I suspect it is more the latter, because it is hard to see what art (for example) could have for us if we had no emotional responses. |
| 23976 | If we have a 'feeling towards' an object, that gives the recognition a different content [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: The content of the recognition in 'feeling towards' is different from the content of the recognition where no emotion is involved. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Education') | |
| A reaction: ['Feeling toward' is Goldie's coinage, to capture the intentionality in felt emotion] Interesting, but not convinced. Maybe the emotion just follows fast after the mere recognition. When I recognise a friend in a crowd, that triggers a feeling. |
| 23977 | When actions are performed 'out of' emotion, they appear to be quite different [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Consider striking a blow or seeking safety unemotionally. Now consider when you act out of emotion: angrily striking the blow, or fearfully running away. The phenomenology of such actions is fundamentally different in character. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: True, I guess. This has the behaviourist's problem of Superactors and Superspartans, of pretended or suppressed anger or fear. There is a sliding scale from stone cold to frenzied emotion. |
| 23980 | It is best to see emotions holistically, as embedded in a person's life narrative [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: The best understanding of a person's emotions …will be holistic in its overall approach, seeing feelings as embedded in an emotion's narrative, as part of a person's life. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 3 Intro) | |
| A reaction: Sounds reasonable, but I didn't find it very helpful. When told that my Self or my life has a 'narrative' I don't learn much. The concept of narrative relies on selves and lives. Ditto for being told that emotions or language are 'holistic'. |
| 23982 | If emotions are 'towards' things, they can't be bodily feelings, which lack aboutness [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: If emotion has the world-directed intentionality of 'feeling towards' it follows that it is not bodily feeling, for bodily feelings lack the required 'direct' (as contrasted with 'borrowed') intentionality. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 3 'Towards') | |
| A reaction: This is a direct response to William James's view, and seems correct. It is a widely held view that emotions are usually 'about' something, and it is hard to see how getting red in the face could do that. |
| 23968 | If reasons are seen impersonally (as just causal), then feelings are an irrelevant extra [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: If someone thought that reasons can be characterised impersonally, say in terms of causal role …it is then glaringly obvious that feelings cannot be left out, so they have to be added on. Hence I introduce the idea of 'feeling towards'. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] That is, he wants us to see feelings as intentional, active, motivating and causal, and not the marginal epiphenomena implied by an impersonal account. I think he is right. |
| 23969 | We have feelings of which we are hardly aware towards things in the world [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: One can be unreflectively emotionally engaged with the world, having feelings towards some object in the world, and yet at that moment not be reflectively aware of having those feelings. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm thinking that we do not just await some 'object' to trigger a background feeling, because we always have feelings. They are the continuous shifting wallpaper of our mental dwellings - which we sometimes notice. |
| 23984 | An emotion needs episodes of feeling, but not continuously [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: I see no need to insist that feelings …must be present at all times whilst you are having an emotion, …but without at least episodes of feeling, of which you can be more or less aware, an experience would not be an emotional one. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 3 'Unreflective') | |
| A reaction: [He cites William James] An odd situation, but it is the same as many chronic illnesses. Presumably because of the actual episodes the person will be aware of the emotion as a background state of potential episodes. |
| 24001 | Moods can focus as emotions, and emotions can blur into moods [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: A mood can focus into an emotion, and an emotion can blur out of focus into the non-specificity of mood. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 6 'Mood') | |
| A reaction: I am struck by how the strong emotion of a vivid dream can remain as an inarticulate mood for the rest of the day. |
| 23970 | Emotions are not avocado pears, with a rigid core and changeable surface [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: In an evolutionary and cultural account of emotions, I resist the 'avocado pear' conception of emotions, that our emotional behaviour comprises an inner core of 'hard-wired' reaction, and an out element which is open to cultural influences. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: He is concerned with whether emotions can be educated, and defends the view that they can all be channelled or changed. In particular he rejects the idea that the stone consists of 'basic' emotions, which are untouchable. |
| 23985 | A basic emotion is the foundation of a hierarchy, such as anger for types of annoyance [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: The idea of basic emotions is that our concepts of emotions are hierarchically organised. For example, if anger is a basic emotion, then less basic species of anger might be annoyance, fury, rage, indignation, and so forth. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Evidence') | |
| A reaction: Most modern theorists seem to reject this idea. In a family of related emotions (each having a similar focal object), it is hard to see which one of them is basic, other than being the best known. Maybe the weakest one is basic? |
| 23986 | Early Chinese basic emotions: joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, disliking, and liking [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: The Chinese Li Chi encyclopaedia (1st century BCE) says there are seven 'feelings of men': joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, disliking, and liking. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Evidence') | |
| A reaction: [In J.Russell 1991] Love sounds like a stronger version of liking. If you are trying to train your feelings, it is helpful to have a basic list of them, even if the list is rather speculative. |
| 23991 | Cross-cultural studies of facial expressions suggests seven basic emotions [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: It has been suggested that there are seven 'basic' emotions, based on cross-cultural studies of facial expressions. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Evidence') | |
| A reaction: [Paul Ekman is cited] This makes the idea of universal basic emotions much more plausible. Goldie respects the research, but is cautious about inferences, mainly because digging deeper (such as interviews) makes it more complex. |
| 23967 | Some emotions are direct responses, and neither rational nor irrational [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: It is perfectly intelligible and entirely human to experience an emotion when seeing a low-flying bat, where we would not want to say that the experience was either rational or irrational. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Goldie is attacking the common tendency of philosophers to over-intellectualise emotions. This example makes his point conclusively. |
| 23971 | Emotional thought is not rational, but it can be intelligible [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Emotions are not based on syllogistic reasoning ….but the thoughts involved in an emotion can show it to be intelligible, intelligibility being a thinner notion than rationality. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 1 Intro) | |
| A reaction: A nice distinction. The emotion is the best explanation. Compare 'intuition' and 'sensible' behaviour as also intelligible. An obvious problem is that if a person runs amok because they have a brain tumour, that is intelligible, but in no way rational. |
| 23975 | Learning an evaluative property like 'dangerous' is also learning an emotion [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: The process of teaching a child how to identify things which are dangerous is typically one and the same process as teaching that child when fear is merited. ...'Dangerous' is an evaluative property, meriting a certain sort of response. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 2 'Education') | |
| A reaction: I like this, because it shows the unity between our inner life and our experience of the external world. Concepts and emotions are usually responses, rather than private initiatives. |
| 23983 | We call emotions 'passions' because they are not as controlled as we would like [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: In feeling towards things the imagination tends to 'run away with you', which is partly why the emotions are 'passions'; your thoughts and feelings are not always as much under your control as you would want them to be. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 3 'Towards') | |
| A reaction: This may have the chronology wrong. 'Passion' doesn't mean uncontrolled. I take it that 'passion' was an older word for 'emotion', and became attached to the older view of emotions as dangerous and corrupting. |
| 23999 | Emotional control is hard, but we are responsible for our emotions over long time periods [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: To some extent our emotions cannot be controlled. But to say that we are not responsible for our emotions is to ignore the possibility of educating them over time, so that, ideally, our responses come to be consonant with deliberated rational choices. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Education') | |
| A reaction: So people go on anger management courses, or talk through crises with councellors. This idea describes most people correctly, but some are in the grips of passions which seem impossible to control. |
| 23994 | Emotions are not easily changed, as new knowledge makes little difference, and akrasia is possible [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Our emotional capabilities are not fully open to be developed. …First, they are to some extent cognitively impenetrable. Secondly, they can ground certain sorts of weakness of will, or akrasia. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Education') | |
| A reaction: Education makes us more receptive to evidence. We could probably rate emotions on a scale indicating how easy they are to change. Jealousy seems tenacious. Most fears respond quickly to clear evidence. |
| 23998 | Emotional control is less concerned with emotional incidents, and more with emotional tendencies [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: It is a mistake to speak as if emotional control is always a matter of controlling a token emotional response or action; …rather, it is like reshaping the channel along which future emotions can run. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Education') | |
| A reaction: Presumably wise parents direct habitual feelings, where less wise parents respond to outbursts. The very best parents therefore presumably achieve complete brainwashing, and eliminate all initiative. Er, perhaps I've misunderstood? |
| 23995 | Akrasia can be either overruling our deliberation, or failing to deliberate [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: I call it 'last ditch' akrasia when we deliberately decide to do something, and then don't do it, and 'impetuous' akrasia when we rush into doing something which, if we had deliberated, we would not have done. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Education') | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that his impetuous version counts as akrasia, which seems to be vice of people who deliberate. [But he cites Aristotle 1150b19-]. |
| 24000 | Justifying reasons say you were right; excusing reasons say your act was explicable [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: A justifying reason will show that what you did, all things considered, was the right thing to do; an excusing reason will not justify, but will give some excuse to explain why you did what you did. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 6 Intro) | |
| A reaction: There are also internal reasons before the event, and explicit reasons afterwards. A mistaken justification might still be an excuse. |
| 24003 | Character traits are both possession of and lack of dispositions [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Most traits are dispositions of a relatively stable sort, but traits need not be dispositions. A trait can be a lack of disposition. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 6 'Traits') | |
| A reaction: Presumably only the lack relatively normal dispositions will count as traits. |
| 24002 | We over-estimate the role of character traits when explaining behaviour [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: We significantly overestimate the role of character traits in explaining and predicting people's action: the so-called Fundamental Attribution error. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 6 'Traits') | |
| A reaction: I think this point is incredibly important in daily life. 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them!' is a good thought. But we must distinguish the deeply revealing moment from the transient superficial one. |
| 24004 | Psychologists suggest we are muddled about traits, and maybe they should be abandoned [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Empirical psychologists have suggested that our practice of trait ascription is systematically prone to error. Some philosophers have concluded that the whole business of trait ascription, and of virtue ethics, should be abandoned. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 6 'Traits') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Ross and Nisbet, and Gilbert Harman as a sceptic] I suspect the problem is that character traits are not precise enough for scientific assessment. How else are we going to describe a person? What else can we say at funerals? |
| 23993 | Our capabilities did not all evolve during the hunter gathering period [Goldie] |
| Full Idea: It is an unwarranted assumption that the only relevant evolutionary period in which our capabilities for emotions evolved is the period in which our ancestors were hunting and gathering. | |
| From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Education') | |
| A reaction: Goldie says that the evolution of emotions could well extend to much earlier times. Presumably this also applies to other traits, notably those not obviously needed for hunting. Gathering needs long term planning. |