17 ideas
| 21833 | 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. |
| 21834 | 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. |
| 19451 | When absorbed in deep reflection, is your reason in control, or is it you? [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: When, submerged in deep reflection, you forget both yourself and your surroundings, is it you who controls reason, or is it rather reason that controls and absorbs you? | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: A delightful question, even if it looks like a false dichotomy. I'm not sure what to make of 'me', if my reason can be subtracted from it. Aquinas was one the same wavelength here. |
| 21837 | 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. |
| 21830 | 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. |
| 19450 | Reason, love and will are the highest perfections and essence of man - the purpose of his life [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man; they are his highest powers, his absolute essence in so far as he is man, the purpose of his existence. Man exists in order to think, love and will. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: Feuerbach was a notable atheist, but adopts a religious style of language which modern atheists would find rather alien. Personally I love talk of ideals and perfections. Ideals have been discredited in modern times, but need a revival. |
| 21835 | 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. |
| 22724 | Good strategies avoid conflict, respond to hostility, forgive, and are clear [Axelrod] |
| Full Idea: Successful game strategies avoid unnecessary conflict, are provoked by an uncalled for defection, forgive after a provocation, and behave clearly so the other player can adapt. | |
| From: Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Co-Operation [1984], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Exactly what you would expect from a nice but successful school teacher. The strategies for success in these games is the same as the rules for educating a person into cooperative behaviour. TIT FOR TAT does all these. |
| 22725 | When players don't meet again, defection is the best strategy [Axelrod] |
| Full Idea: When players will never meet again, the strategy of defection is the only stable strategy. | |
| From: Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Co-Operation [1984], 5) | |
| A reaction: This gives good grounds for any community's mistrust of transient strangers, such as tourists. And yet any sensible tourist will want communities to trust tourists, and will therefore behave in a reliable way. |
| 21831 | 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. |
| 19448 | Consciousness is said to distinguish man from animals - consciousness of his own species [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: What constitutes the essential difference between man and animal? The most simple, general, and most widely held answer to this question is consciousness. Consciousness is given only in the case of a being to whom his species ...is an object of thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: Rather speculative. Since other species cohabit and breed only with their fellow species members, one might have thought they were aware of them. |
| 19454 | A God needs justice, kindness and wisdom, but those concepts don't depend on the concept of God [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The concept of God depends on the concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom - a God who is not kind, not just, and not wise is no God. But these concepts do not depend on the concept of God. That a quality is possessed by God does not make it divine. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Feuerbach's argument for atheism, but if you ask for the source of our human concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom, no one, I would have thought, could cite God for the role. |
| 19452 | The nature of God is an expression of human nature [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God is the manifestation of man's inner nature, his expressed self. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: Even if you are a deeply committed theist, you have to concede some of this point. The perfections attributed to God are usually of human qualities. Leibniz, though, says that God has an infinity of perfection, mostly unknown to us. |
| 19453 | If love, goodness and personality are human, the God who is their source is anthropomorphic [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: If love, goodness, and personality are human determinations, the being which constitutes their source and ...their presupposition is also an anthropomorphism; so is the existence of God. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly a struggle for the imagination to grasp a being which is characterised by idealised versions of human virtues, and yet has an intrinsic nature which is utterly different from humanity. |
| 21832 | 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. |
| 19449 | Religion is the consciousness of the infinite [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Religion is the consciousness of the infinite. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) |
| 19455 | Today's atheism will tomorrow become a religion [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: What is regarded as atheism today will be religion tomorrow. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: Modern critics of atheism frequently accuse it of being a new religion. I doubt whether Feuerbach is right, but it is a nice provocative idea. |