Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Reasons for Actions and Desires', 'Varieties of Meaning' and 'The Ages of the World'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / C. Content / 11. Teleological Semantics

23801	Biosemantics says content is useful mapping from a producer to a consumer system [Millikan, by Schulte]
	Full Idea: Millikan's 'biosemantic' view is that representations stand midway between producer and consumer systems. The represented states of affairs (the content) maps onto the second system, and thus enable its proper function.
	From: report of Ruth Garrett Millikan (Varieties of Meaning [2002]) by Peter Schulte - Mental Content 4.4
	A reaction: These meets my standard objection to all functional theories (e.g. of mind), that observing relations and functions tells you nothing about what it actually is. Millikan seems to explain the role of content, but says nothing about its actual nature.

20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / b. Intellectualism

22393	I don't understand the idea of a reason for acting, but it is probably the agent's interests or desires [Foot]
	Full Idea: I am sure I do not understand the idea of a reason for acting, and I wonder whether anyone else does either. I incline to the view that all such reasons depend either on the agent's interests (meaning here what is in his interest) or else on his desires.
	From: Philippa Foot (Reasons for Actions and Desires [1972], p.156 Post)
	A reaction: It seems common to assume that a reason for an action must be something rational, but it makes sense to say that the reason for someone's action was an irrational whim. Is the reason for an action just the cause of the action?

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / e. Character

20957	We don't choose our characters, yet we still claim credit for the actions our characters perform [Schelling]
	Full Idea: Nobody has chosen their character; and yet this does not stop anybody attributing the action which follows from his character to themself as a free action.
	From: Friedrich Schelling (The Ages of the World [1810], I.93)
	A reaction: This pinpoints a very nice ambivalence about our attitudes to our own characters. We all have some pride and shame about who we are, without having chosed who we are. At least when we are young. But we make the bed we lie in.