3159
|
Beliefs and desires aren't real; they are prediction techniques [Dennett]
|
|
Full Idea:
Intentional systems don't really have beliefs and desires, but one can explain and predict their behaviour by ascribing beliefs and desires to them. This strategy is pragmatic, not right or wrong.
|
|
From:
Daniel C. Dennett (Brainstorms:Essays on Mind and Psychology [1978], p.7?)
|
|
A reaction:
If the ascription of beliefs and desires explains behaviour, then that is good grounds for thinking they might be real features of the brain, and even if that is not so, they are real enough as abstractions from brain events, like the 'economic climate'.
|
20344
|
Music is not an expressive art, because it expresses no familiar emotions [Hanslick, by Wollheim]
|
|
Full Idea:
Hanslick concluded from the fact that music doesn't express definite feelings like piety, love, joy, or sadness, that it isn't an art of expression.
|
|
From:
report of Eduard Hanslick (The Beautiful in Music [1854]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 48
|
|
A reaction:
Whether music is 'expressive' (which it may not be) should not be confused with whether it is emotional, which it clearly is, even in its coolest examples. Hanslick viewed music as a code, not a language.
|