Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'A Puzzle about Belief', '68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus'' and 'Morality and the emotions'

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7 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / c. Role of emotions

24008	Reference to a person's emotions is often essential to understanding their actions [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: The reference to a man's emotions has a significance for our understanding of his moral sincerity, not as a substitute for or addition to how he acts, but as, on occasion, underlying our understanding of how he acts.
	From: Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.223)
	A reaction: Williams aims to rescue emotion from the emotivists, and replace it at the centre of traditional modes of moral judgement. I suppose we could assess one rogue robot as behaving 'badly' in a community of robots.

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / f. Emotion and reason

5963	Some say emotion is a sort of reason, and others say virtue concerns emotion [Plutarch]
	Full Idea: Some philosophers make the emotions varieties of reason, on the ground that all desire and grief and anger are judgments, while others declare that the virtues have to do with emotions, as when fear is the province of courage.
	From: Plutarch (68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus' [c.85], 1025d)
	A reaction: The second idea comes from Aristotle, but the second is interesting, and corresponds to the views coming from modern neuroscience, where even the most basic thought seems to involve emotion. What could be the motivation for 'pure' reason?

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / g. Controlling emotions

24009	Moral education must involve learning about various types of feeling towards things [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: If moral education does not revolve around what to fear, to be angry about, to despise, and where to draw the line between kindness and a stupid sentimentality - I do not know what it is. (Though there are principles, of truth-telling and justice).
	From: Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.225)
	A reaction: He cites Aristotle as the obvious source of this correct idea. The examples of principle both require us to place a high value on truth and justice, and not just follow rules in the style of arithmetic.

18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 5. Mental Files

16383	Puzzled Pierre has two mental files about the same object [Recanati on Kripke]
	Full Idea: In Kripke's puzzle about belief, the subject has two distinct mental files about one and the same object.
	From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (A Puzzle about Belief [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 17.1
	A reaction: [Pierre distinguishes 'London' from 'Londres'] The Kripkean puzzle is presented as very deep, but I have always felt there was a simple explanation, and I suspect that this is it (though I will leave the reader to think it through, as I'm very busy…).

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / h. Expressivism

24007	Emotivism saw morality as expressing emotions, and influencing others' emotions [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: Emotivism held that there were two purposes of moral judgements: to express the emotions of the speaker, and to influence the emotions of his hearers.
	From: Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.209)
	A reaction: I take Ayer to be typical of the first project, and Hare of the second. The theory is much more plausible when the second aim is added. Would we ever utter a moral opinion if we didn't hope to influence someone?

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

24010	An admirable human being should have certain kinds of emotional responses [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: One's conception of an admirable human being implies that he should be disposed to certain kinds of emotional response, and not to others.
	From: Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.225)
	A reaction: So are the good emotions an indicator of being a good person, or is that what their goodness consists of? The goodness must be cashed out in actions, and presumably good emotions both promise good actions, and motivate them.

23. Ethics / D. Deontological Ethics / 6. Motivation for Duty

24012	Kant's love of consistency is too rigid, and it even overrides normal fairness [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: There is a certain moral woodenness or even insolence in Kant's blank regard for consistency. It smacks of Keynes's Principle of Unfairness - that if you can't do a good turn to everybody, you shouldn't do it to anybody.
	From: Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.226)
	A reaction: He says it also turns each of us into a Supreme Legislator, which deifies man. It is clearly not the case that morality consists entirely of rules and principles, but Williams recognises their role, in truth-telling for example.