Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'fragments/reports' and 'The Truth in Relativism'

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6 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind

3488	Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle]
	Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious.
	From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V
	A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can.

16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection

5689	Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker]
	Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes.
	From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396
	A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it.

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / a. Nature of emotions

23950	Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon]
	Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics.
	From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4
	A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / f. Ethical non-cognitivism

22450	If moral systems can't judge other moral systems, then moral relativism is true [Williams,B, by Foot]
	Full Idea: If some societies with divergent moral systems merely confront each other, having no use for the assertion that their own systems are true and the others false except to mark the system to which they adhere, then relativism is a true theory of morality.
	From: report of Bernard Williams (The Truth in Relativism [1974]) by Philippa Foot - Moral Relativism p.3
	A reaction: 'Having no use for' an assertion is not the same as the assertion being impossible. Some liberal cultures refuse to criticise others because their highest value is tolerance, even when the target culture wholly contradicts the critics' other values.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature

22344	Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch]
	Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings.
	From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II
	A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process.

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 1. God

6011	There is a remote first god (the Good), and a second god who organises the material world [Numenius, by O'Meara]
	Full Idea: Numenius argues that material reality depends on intelligible being, which depends on a first god - the Good - which is difficult to grasp, but which inspires a second god to imitate it, turning to matter and organizing it as the world.
	From: report of Numenius (fragments/reports [c.160]) by Dominic J. O'Meara - Numenius
	A reaction: The interaction problem comes either between the two gods, or between the second god and the world. The argument may have failed to catch on for long when people scented an infinite regress lurking in the middle of it.