8 ideas
| 9117 | The smallest heap has four objects: three on the bottom, one on the top [Hart,WD, by Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Hart argues that the smallest heap consists of four objects: three on the bottom, one on the top. | |
| From: report of William D. Hart (Hat-Tricks and Heaps [1992]) by Roy Sorensen - Vagueness and Contradiction Intro | |
| A reaction: If the objects were rough bolders, you could get away with two on the bottom. He's wrong. No one would accept as a 'heap' four minute grains barely visible to the naked eye. No one would describe such a group of items in a supermarket as a heap. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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'. |
| 15675 | We don't condemn people for being bad at reasoning [Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: We do not morally disapprove of people who are incompetent reasoners. | |
| From: James Gordon Finlayson (Habermas [2005], Ch.6:83) | |
| A reaction: Well, we don't morally disapprove simply of their lack of reasoning ability, but we may morally disapprove of their actions, which have arisen entirely from the disability. |
| 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. |
| 15674 | One can universalise good advice, but that doesn't make it an obligation [Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: 'Early to bed and early to rise' is a universalizable maxim, but, though it might be good advice, there is obviously no such obligation. | |
| From: James Gordon Finlayson (Habermas [2005], Ch.6:83) | |
| A reaction: I take it that Kant's rule won't distinguish moral guidance from prudential guidance. Unfair, I think. I may be a lark, but when I universalise this maxim I see that it can't be willed as a universal rule, because we should tolerate the owls. |
| 15662 | The 'culture industry' is an advertisement for the way things are [Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: Critical theory said that culture unwittingly played the role of an advertisement for the way things are. Horkheimer and Adorno referred to this phenomenon as the 'culture industry'. | |
| From: James Gordon Finlayson (Habermas [2005], Ch.1:04) | |
| A reaction: An interesting perspective. However, absolutely everything is an advertisement for what it offers. I think this is especially true of moral (and immoral) actions. |