Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Really Hard Problem', 'God and Human Attributes' and 'Women of Trachis'

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9 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind
Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology')
     A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 2. Reduction of Mind
Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: There is still some hope for something like identity theory for sensations. But almost no one believes that strict identity theory will work for more complex mental states. Strict identity is stronger than type neurophysicalism.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology')
     A reaction: It is so hard to express the problem. What needs to be explained? How can one bunch of neurons represent many different things? It's not like computing. That just transfers the data to brains, where the puzzling stuff happens.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / b. Fact and value
Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of 'good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism')
     A reaction: I take normativity not be the mere labelling of certain things as 'good', but as a way of responding to that fact, with some sort of motivation.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / f. Altruism
For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: Two explanations came forward in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Altruism is either 1) person-based reciprocal altruism, or 2) gene-based kin altruism.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Darwin')
     A reaction: Flanagan obviously thinks there is also 'genuine psychological atruism'. Presumably we don't explain mathematics or music or the desire to travel as either contracts or genetics, so we have other explanations available.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / b. Eudaimonia
We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative')
     A reaction: Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / e. Honour
Sophoclean heroes die terrible deaths when they oppose the new Athenian values [Sophocles, by Grayling]
     Full Idea: Sophocles has Ajax (in 'Ajax') and Hercules (in 'Trachiniae') die terrible deaths because of the opposition they represent to the values which are the new values of Periclean Athens.
     From: report of Sophocles (Women of Trachis [c.430 BCE]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.2
     A reaction: Presumably they are tragic heroes, who hence invite our sympathy, like Othello and Hamlet, who also die following an older moral code. It is only tragic if the code they follow has something 'higher' about it.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 9. Communism
Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding')
     A reaction: I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated.
28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / c. Moral Argument
God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B]
     Full Idea: Rachels argues 1) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship, 2) No being could be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent, so 3) There cannot be a being who is God.
     From: report of James Rachels (God and Human Attributes [1971], 7 p.334) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 9 'd morality'
     A reaction: Presumably Lionel Messi can be a fitting object of worship without being God. Since the problem is with being worshipful, rather than with being God, should I infer that Messi doesn't exist?
29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism
Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: Buddhism rejected the idea of a creator God, and the unchanging self [atman]. They accept the appearance-reality distinction, reward for virtue [karma], suffering defining our predicament, and that liberation [nirvana] is possible through wisdom.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Buddhism')
     A reaction: [Compressed] Flanagan is an analytic philosopher and a practising Buddhist. Looking at a happiness map today which shows Europeans largely happy, and Africans largely miserable, I can see why they thought suffering was basic.