46 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. |
| 192 | Only one thing can be contrary to something [Plato] |
| Full Idea: To everything that admits of a contrary there is one contrary and no more. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 332c) | |
| A reaction: The sort of thing for which a modern philosopher would demand a proof (and then reject when the proof couldn't be found), where a Greek is happy to assert it as self-evident. I can't think of a counterexample. |
| 190 | If asked whether justice itself is just or unjust, you would have to say that it is just [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If someone asked me 'Is justice itself just or unjust?' I should answer that it was just, wouldn't you? I agree. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 330c) |
| 20184 | The only real evil is loss of knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The only real kind of faring ill is the loss of knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 345b) | |
| A reaction: This must crucially involve the intellectualist view (of Socrates) that virtuos behaviour results from knowledge, and moral wickedness is the result of ignorance. It is hard to see how forgetting a phone number is evil. |
| 20185 | The most important things in life are wisdom and knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be shameful indeed to say that wisdom and knowledge are anything but the most powerful forces in human activity. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 352d) | |
| A reaction: He lumps wisdom and knowledge together, and I think we can take 'knowledge' to mean something like understanding, because obviously mere atomistic propositional knowledge can be utterly trivial. |
| 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. |
| 17488 | Empiricist theories are sets of laws, which give explanations and reductions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: In the empiricist tradition theories were understood to be deductive closures of sets of laws, explanations were understood as arguments from covering laws, and reduction was understood as a deductive relationship between laws of different theories. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: A lovely crisp summary of the whole tradition of philosophy of science from Comte through to Hempel. Mechanism and essentialism are the new players in the game. |
| 17493 | Modern mechanism need parts with spatial, temporal and function facts, and diagrams [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Modern champions of mechanisms say models should identify both the parts and their spatial, temporal and functional organisation, ...and the practical importance of diagrams in addition to or in place of linguistic representations of mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Discover') | |
| A reaction: Apparently chemists obtain much more refined models by using mathematics than they did by diagrams or 3D models (let alone verbal descriptions). For that reason, I'm thinking that 'model' might be a better term than 'mechanism'. |
| 17487 | Mechanistic philosophy of science is an alternative to the empiricist law-based tradition [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: To a significant degree, a mechanistic philosophy of science can be seen as an alternative to an earlier logical empiricist tradition in philosophy of science that gave pride of place to laws of nature. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Lovely! Someone who actually spells out what's going on here. Most philosophers are far too coy about explaining what their real game is. Mechanism is fine in chemistry and biology. How about in 'mathematical' physics, or sociology? |
| 17489 | Mechanisms are either systems of parts or sequences of activities [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: There are two sorts of mechanisms: systems consist of collections of parts that interact to produce some behaviour, and processes are sequences of activities which produce some outcome. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The second one is important because it is more generic, and under that account all kinds the features of the world that need to be explained can be subsumed. E.g. hyperinflation in an economy is a 'mechanism'. |
| 17490 | 17th century mechanists explained everything by the kinetic physical fundamentals [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: 17th century mechanists said that interactions governed by chemical, electrical or gravitational forces would have to be explicable in terms of the operation of some atomistic (or corpuscular) kinetic mechanism. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Glennan says science has rejected this, so modern mechanists do not reduce mechanisms to anything in particular. |
| 17491 | Unlike the lawlike approach, mechanistic explanation can allow for exceptions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: One of the advantages of the move from nomological to mechanistic modes of explanation is that the latter allows for explanations involving exception-ridden generalizations. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'regular') | |
| A reaction: The lawlike approach has endless problems with 'ceteris paribus' ('all things being equal') laws, where specifying all the other 'things' seems a bit tricky. |
| 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. |
| 191 | Everything resembles everything else up to a point [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Everything resembles everything else up to a point. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 331d) |
| 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. |
| 203 | Courage is knowing what should or shouldn't be feared [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge of what is and is not to be feared is courage. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 360d) |
| 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. |
| 202 | No one willingly and knowingly embraces evil [Plato] |
| Full Idea: No one willingly goes to meet evil, or what he thinks is evil. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 358d) | |
| A reaction: Presumably people who actively choose satanism can override this deep-seated attitude. But their adherence to evil usually seems to be rather restrained. A danger of tautology with ideas like this. |
| 193 | Some things are good even though they are not beneficial to men [Plato] |
| Full Idea: 'Do you mean by good those things that are beneficial to men?' 'Not only those. I call some things which are not beneficial good as well'. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 333e) | |
| A reaction: Examples needed, but this would be bad news for utilitarians. Good health is not seen as beneficial if it is taken for granted. Not being deaf. |
| 197 | Some pleasures are not good, and some pains are not evil [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There are some pleasures which are not good, and some pains which are not evil. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 351d) | |
| A reaction: Sadism and child birth. Though Bentham (I think) says that there is nothing good about the pain, since the event would obviously be better without it. |
| 200 | People tend only to disapprove of pleasure if it leads to pain, or prevents future pleasure [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The only reason the common man disapproves of pleasures is if they lead to pain and deprive us of future pleasures. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 354a) | |
| A reaction: Plato has a strong sense that some pleasures are just innately depraved and wicked. If those pleasure don't hurt anyone, it is very hard to pinpoint what is wrong with them. |
| 188 | Socrates did not believe that virtue could be taught [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: I do not believe that virtue can be taught. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 320b) |
| 204 | Socrates is contradicting himself in claiming virtue can't be taught, but that it is knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates is contradicting himself by saying virtue is not teachable, and yet trying to demonstrate that every virtue is knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 361b) |
| 189 | If we punish wrong-doers, it shows that we believe virtue can be taught [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Athenians inflict punishment on wrong-doers, which shows that they too think it possible to impart and teach goodness. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 324c) |
| 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! |
| 17494 | Since causal events are related by mechanisms, causation can be analysed in that way [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Causation can be analyzed in terms of mechanisms because (except for fundamental causal interactions) causally related events will be connected by intervening mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'causation') | |
| A reaction: This won't give us the metaphysics of causation (which concerns the fundamentals), but this strikes me as a very coherent and interesting proposal. He mentions electron interaction as non-mechanistic causation. |