40 ideas
| 23948 | Wisdom needs both thought and passion, with each reflecting on the other [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom is a matter of living both thoughtfully and passionately, bringing understanding to bear on every passion and forcing every passion into the light of reflection. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: His main point is that passion is a key part of wisdom, and the idea that wisdom is cold and detached is quite false. Good point. At the very least, wise people must relate sympathetically to others. |
| 23942 | Philosophy is creating an intellectual conceptual structure for life [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is conceptual sculpture, the shaping and developing of the intellectual structures within which we live our lives. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. I tend to see philosophy as conceptual analysis (though creating new concepts doesn't quite fit that), but the vision of creating a huge conceptual sculpture sounds good. I would call it a system. (See my book, 'Natural Ideas'!). |
| 23945 | Reason is actually passions, guided by perspicacious reflection [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: What is called 'reason' is the passions enlightened, 'illuminated' by reflection and supported by a perspicacious deliberation that the emotions in their urgency normally excluded. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.4) | |
| A reaction: To suggest that reason more or less is emotions strikes me as missing the point of 'perspicacious', which takes in facts outside our emotional world. We excitedly climb a cliff, then stop when we see the rocks are crumbling. |
| 18806 | Frege thought traditional categories had psychological and linguistic impurities [Frege, by Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Frege rejected the traditional categories as importing psychological and linguistic impurities into logic. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Resisting such impurities is the main motivation for making logic entirely symbolic, but it doesn't follow that the traditional categories have to be dropped. |
| 8490 | First-level functions have objects as arguments; second-level functions take functions as arguments [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Just as functions are fundamentally different from objects, so also functions whose arguments are and must be functions are fundamentally different from functions whose arguments are objects. The latter are first-level, the former second-level, functions. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.38) | |
| A reaction: In 1884 he called it 'second-order'. This is the standard distinction between first- and second-order logic. The first quantifies over objects, the second over intensional entities such as properties and propositions. |
| 8492 | Relations are functions with two arguments [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Functions of one argument are concepts; functions of two arguments are relations. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.39) | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we would say 'two or more'. Another interesting move in the aim of analytic philosophy to reduce the puzzling features of the world to mathematical logic. There is, of course, rather more to some relations than being two-argument functions. |
| 8487 | Arithmetic is a development of logic, so arithmetical symbolism must expand into logical symbolism [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I am of the opinion that arithmetic is a further development of logic, which leads to the requirement that the symbolic language of arithmetic must be expanded into a logical symbolism. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.30) | |
| A reaction: This may the the one key idea at the heart of modern analytic philosophy (even though logicism may be a total mistake!). Logic and arithmetical foundations become the master of ontology, instead of the servant. The jury is out on the whole enterprise. |
| 18899 | Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers] |
| Full Idea: Frege regarded the existence of horses as a property of the concept 'horse'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by Fred Sommers - Intellectual Autobiography 'Realism' |
| 4028 | Frege allows either too few properties (as extensions) or too many (as predicates) [Mellor/Oliver on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory of properties (which he calls 'concepts') yields too few properties, by identifying coextensive properties, and also too many, by letting every predicate express a property. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by DH Mellor / A Oliver - Introduction to 'Properties' §2 | |
| A reaction: Seems right; one extension may have two properties (have heart/kidneys), two predicates might express the same property. 'Cutting nature at the joints' covers properties as well as objects. |
| 8489 | The concept 'object' is too simple for analysis; unlike a function, it is an expression with no empty place [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I regard a regular definition of 'object' as impossible, since it is too simple to admit of logical analysis. Briefly: an object is anything that is not a function, so that an expression for it does not contain any empty place. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.32) | |
| A reaction: Here is the core of the programme for deriving our ontology from our logic and language, followed through by Russell and Quine. Once we extend objects beyond the physical, it becomes incredibly hard to individuate them. |
| 19261 | Understanding is seeing coherent relationships in the relevant information [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: What is distinctive about understanding (after truth is satisfied) is the internal seeing or appreciating of explanatory and other coherence-inducing relationships in a body of information that is crucial for understanding. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding [2003], 198), quoted by Anand Vaidya - Understanding and Essence 'Distinction' | |
| A reaction: For me this ticks exactly the right boxes. Coherent explanations are what we want. The hardest part is the ensure their truth. Kvanvig claims this is internal, so we can understand even if, Gettier-style, our external connections are lucky. |
| 23957 | We often trust our intuitions as rational, despite their lack of reflection [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: We trust certain rational 'intuitions' in ourselves which dispense with reflection but seem to follow an indisputable logic. (note: it is thought ineffable because reflection is the paradigm of rationality. It is no less rational than reflection). | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Solomon uses the example to support that emotion is part of rationality. Since this view of intuition is more or less mine (that intuition can be knowledge, when the justification is obscure), it seems to support his claim. |
| 23943 | Distinguishing reason from passion is based on an archaic 'faculty' theory [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between reason and passion is based on an archaic 'faculty' psychology of the human soul. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.2) | |
| A reaction: I like faculties, for philosophical purposes, as explanatory tools to account for our metaphysical and conceptual framework, but this point is well made. The danger is that we impose sharp divisions, where reality is more complex. |
| 23952 | I say bodily chemistry and its sensations have nothing to do with emotions [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: I shall be making the claim (sujectively) that the chemistry of the body and the sensations caused by that chemistry have nothing to do with the emotions. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Surely an unexpected stabbing pain causes fear? Isn't pain supposed to trigger appropriate emotions? That is not to say that emotions are a feature of body chemistry. |
| 23954 | Emotions are judgements about ourselves, and our place in the world [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: An emotion is a basic judgement about our Selves and our place in the world, the projection of the values and ideals, structures and mythologies | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Solomon's main theory. What about the Frege-Geach problem - that I feel emotions (and judgements) about fictions and remote events, in which my personal concerns and involvement are zero? Presumably these emotions are parasitic on his primary type? |
| 23960 | Emotions are defined by their objects [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Direction, scope and focus set the stage, but the specific object is what defines the emotion. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the main distinction between an emotion and a mood. He emphasises that the objects are subjective, rather than factual. |
| 23961 | The heart of an emotion is its judgement of values and morality [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The heart of every emotion is its value judgements, its appraisals of gain and loss, its indictment of offences and its praise of virtue, its often Manichean judgement of 'good' and 'evil'. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: He adds blame and excuse. Some of our strongest emotions can just be identifications, rather than judgements, as when we learn of someone else's triumph or disaster. On the whole I agree, though. This is important for Aristotelian virtue theory. |
| 23965 | Emotions can be analysed under fifteen headings [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Emotions can be analysed by direction, scope/focus, object, criteria, status, evaluations, responsibility, intersubjectivity, distance, mythology, desire, power, strategy. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 8) | |
| A reaction: These are the headings Solomon actually applies in his breakdown of most of the main emotions. See his book for explanations of each of them. If people say philosophy makes no progress, I'd at least point to helpful thinking of this kind. |
| 23959 | Some emotions are externally directed, others internally [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: 'Outer-directed' emotions (such as fear) are about particular situations, objects, or other people. …The 'inner-directed' emotions (such as vanity or regret) take one's Self as their focal point. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Solomon's own distinction. Some of the emotions he cites, such as vanity, seem to me more like long term virtues or vices, rather than emotions. He did say, though, that you can have emotions without feeling, such as long-term hate. |
| 23936 | It is only our passions which give our lives meaning [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: It is our passions, and our passions alone, which provide our lives with meaning. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This presumably entails that the lives of plants have no meaning. It also seems to be rather egotistical, since it is not clear why anyone else's life should have meaning for me, if I don't directly experience their passions. Interesting, though. |
| 23963 | Which emotions we feel depends on our sense of our own powers [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: An emotion depends on an estimation of our own power. If a lover is jealous they welcome confrontation, but if they are just envious they assume impotence from the start. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.12) | |
| A reaction: This seems particularly true of politics, where the possibility (or not) of influencing events makes a huge difference. We can picture a huge variety of emotions when a fight breaks out in public. |
| 23946 | The passions are subjective, concerning what is important to me, rather than facts [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The passions are uniquely subjective, although they sometimes pretend to have a certain objective status. They are not concerned with the world, but with my world. They are not concerned with 'the facts', but with what is important. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.5) | |
| A reaction: Values pick out what is 'important'. This idea sums up Solomon's rather solipsistic view of emotions. I accept that emotions are responses, rather than objective judgements, but there is objectivity in their social dimension. Why care about politics? |
| 23940 | Emotions are strategies for maximising our sense of dignity and self-esteem [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Every emotion is a strategy, a purposive attempt to structure our world in such a way as to maximise our sense of personal dignity and self-esteem. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is the main thesis of Solomon's book. There doesn't seem to be much to admire in what he takes to be our chief motivation. I would put a much more social spin on it - that our underlying urge is not self-promotion, but to fit into a community. |
| 23949 | Passions exist as emotions, moods and desires, which all generate meaning [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: There are three fundamental species passions - emotions, moods, and desires. …What all passions have in common is their ability to bestow meaning to the circumstances of our lives. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Moods are said to be 'generalised emotions', where emotions are about something, and desires add objectives. Solomon criticises rigid divisions between mental faculties and states, but it is hard to disagree with this distinction. |
| 23956 | The Myth of the Passions says they are irrational, uncontrolled and damaging [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The Myth of the Passions says emotions are irrational forces beyond our control, disruptive and stupid, unthinking and counterproductive, against our 'better interests', and often ridiculous. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: The Myth is very unlikely to be correct, for evolutionary reasons. How could there be a selection for a mental feature which distorts truths and leads to dangerous misjudgements? Most emotions motivate us to act successfully. So why do some run wild? |
| 23953 | Feeling is a superficial aspect of emotion, and may be indeterminate, or even absent [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence. ...For example, what is the difference in feeling between embarrassment and shame? …We may also experience an emotion like subdued anger or envy with no feeling. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is very persuasive, and supports the idea that what matters in an emotion is its content, rather than its phenomenology. He adds later that we are often mistaken about our own emotions. |
| 23964 | There are no 'basic' emotions, only socially prevalent ones [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: There are no 'basic' emotions, only those emotions which are prevalent in a particular society. This reduction to a small set makes it impossible to appreciate the richness of our emotional lives. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 8) | |
| A reaction: He cites Descartes as a culprit, and John Watson's famous list of fear, dependency and rage. I think Solomon is probably right. He suggests that the lists are usually individualistic and negative. Individuals may have their private basics! |
| 23937 | It is reason which needs the anchorage of passions, rather than vice versa [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: It is not the passions who require the controls and rationalisations of reason. Rather, it is reason that requires the anchorage and earthy wisdom of the passions. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I like the second half of this. We don't just follow the winds of arguments; we decide into which of the many conflicting winds we should steer the rational arguments, and that needs passions. Only a fool doesn't rationally control their passions. |
| 23947 | Dividing ourselves into confrontational reason and passion destroys our harmonious whole [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: To divide the soul into reason and passion …divides us against ourselves, forcing us each to be defensively half a person, instead of a harmonious whole. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the best aspect of Solomon's book. I'm not sure, though, how this works in practice. Should I allow the winds of emotion to alter the course of my reasoning, or stunt my feelings by always insisting that reason plays a part? That's too dualist! |
| 23958 | The supposed irrationality of our emotions is often tactless or faulty expression of them [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: What is often called the 'irrationality' of our emotions is rather the faulty timing or inept choice of their expressions. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: The irrationality can be pretty obvious when having a tantrum over trivia, or resenting some tiny slight, or falling in love with a dead film star. That said, his point is well made. |
| 9947 | Concepts are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: Concepts, for Frege, are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: That sounds awfully like what many philosophers call 'universals'. Frege, as a platonist (at least about numbers), I would take to be in sympathy with that. At least we can say that concepts seem to be properties. |
| 10319 | An assertion about the concept 'horse' must indirectly speak of an object [Frege, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: Frege had a notorious difficulty over the concept 'horse', when he suggests that if we wish to assert something about a concept, we are obliged to proceed indirectly by speaking of an object that represents it. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], Ch.2.II) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the thin end of a wedge. The great champion of objects is forced to accept them here as a façon de parler, when elsewhere they have ontological status. |
| 8488 | A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A concept in logic is closely connected with what we call a function. Indeed, we may say at once: a concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value. ..I give the name 'function' to what is meant by the 'unsaturated' part. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.30) | |
| A reaction: So a function becomes a concept when the variable takes a value. Problems arise when the value is vague, or the truth-value is indeterminable. |
| 9948 | Unlike objects, concepts are inherently incomplete [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, concepts differ from objects in being inherently incomplete in nature. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is because they are 'unsaturated', needing a quantified variable to complete the sentence. This could be a pointer towards Quine's view of properties, as simply an intrinsic feature of predication about objects, with no separate identity. |
| 4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
| Full Idea: From sameness of meaning there does not follow sameness of thought expressed. A fact about the Morning Star may express something different from a fact about the Evening Star, as someone may regard one as true and the other false. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.14) | |
| A reaction: This all gets clearer if we distinguish internalist and externalist theories of content. Why take sides on this? Why not just ask 'what is in the speaker's head?', 'what does the sentence mean in the community?', and 'what is the corresponding situation?' |
| 23944 | Emotions are our life force, and the source of most of our values [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Emotions are the life force of the soul, the source of most of our values (not all: there is always hunger, thirst, and fatigue). | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.4) | |
| A reaction: I am beginning to worry that Solomon's account is too individual and subjective. My personal values may derive from my emotions, but I think human and social values are based much more on objective observations and facts. We are social, not solipsists. |
| 23962 | Lovers adopt the interests of their beloved, rather than just valuing them [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: It is often said that love takes the interests of the lover as being more important than one's own; but here again we would rather say that love takes the lovers interests as its own. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: This is because he sees emotions as almost entirely self-centred, and almost never altruistic. To me the evolutionary picture suggest a more social view. Many people want the lives of their ex- to go well, without knowing their new interests. |
| 23941 | 'Absurdity' is just the result of our wrong choices in life [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The 'absurdity of life' is nothing than our own unsatisfactory choices, typically of defensiveness and resentment, competition, and 'meaningless' routines. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: He seems to have Camus particularly in mind. He sees love and co-operation as the cure. I sort of agree, but somewhere in all of our minds there lurks an abyss, with the good life looking like a distraction from it. |
| 23955 | Ideologies are mythologies which guide our actions [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Mythologies become ideologies when we play a role in them, live in them, take action and take sides. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This may well be a sceptical American attitude to ideology, since 'mythology' implies a fiction. But I think for most of us there exists the possibility of a good ideology, which correctly points us towards a better life. Dangerous things, though! |
| 8491 | The Ontological Argument fallaciously treats existence as a first-level concept [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The ontological proof of God's existence suffers from the fallacy of treating existence as a first-level concept. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.38 n) | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 8490 for first- and second-order functions] This is usually summarised as the idea that existence is a quantifier rather than a predicate. |