Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Sense of Reality' and 'Psychology from an empirical standpoint'

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4 ideas

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 1. History of Ideas
7460 The great moments are the death of Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Romanticism [Berlin, by Watson]
     Full Idea: Berlin says there were three great turning points: after the death of Aristotle (when Greek schools focused on the inner life of individuals, instead of as social beings), Machiavelli's division of political and individual virtues, and Romanticism.
     From: report of Isaiah Berlin (The Sense of Reality [1996], p.168-9) by Peter Watson - Ideas Intro
     A reaction: I have the impression that Machiavelli introduced a new hard-boiled ethics, which dominated the sixteenth century, but in the seventeenth and eighteenth century they fought back, and Machiavellianism turned out to be just a phase.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 2. Knowledge as Convention
1556 By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias]
     Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature.
     From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / a. Nature of intentionality
3364 All mental phenomena contain an object [Brentano]
     Full Idea: Every mental phenomenon contains something as object within itself.
     From: Franz Brentano (Psychology from an empirical standpoint [1874], p. 88), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.21
     A reaction: This gives rise to the slogan that 'intentionality is the mark of the mental', which notoriously seems to miss out the phenomenal aspect of mental life. We note now, though, that even emotions have objects.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / b. Qualia and intentionality
3225 Mental unity suggests that qualia and intentionality must connect [Brentano, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Brentano's thesis is that all mental phenomena are intentional i.e. representational. Support for this view is that assimilating phenomenal experience to attitudes we explain the essential unity of the mind.
     From: report of Franz Brentano (Psychology from an empirical standpoint [1874]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 11.5
     A reaction: Unifying intentionality and qualia in a single theory looks like a good move, but which one has priority? Evolutionary theory says priority goes to whatever produces behaviour. My intuition is that qualia are more basic - in tiny insects, say.