Month: May 2014

• May 23, 2014

  Epistemic error: Distrust follows from the unknowability of other minds

  I am slowly working my way toward a reconsideration of concepts like ‘inner’ and ‘outer,’ ‘inward’ and ‘outward,’ ‘internal’ and ‘external.’ In most cases, I will take these to be metaphorical descriptions of certain mental activities that, because they couldn’t anyway, can’t reveal themselves to the eye. I would like, as  it were, to do away with them or,…
• May 22, 2014

  Light laughter and genuine curiosity

  There are two connected attitudes toward living a well-led life that cannot be adopted by anyone who believes that the mind is inherently sickly and prone to illness. (The sickly mind is consistent with the metaphysical view of the world as being bad and ugly.) These attitudes are light laughter and genuine curiosity, and both spring from a…
• May 21, 2014

  The emotions accompanying our mental activities

  It is time to put to rest the Platonic assumption that emotions are one kind of activity (or faculty) and reasoning another kind of activity (or faculty). They are not two forces vying against each other, and it is not that one is the ‘slave’ or the ‘master’ of the other: Hume holding that reason…
• May 20, 2014

  Healing the sickly vs. trying to understand another’s character

  Recall that this is the invalid and deleterious argument that I have sought to examine: 5.) Because the human mind, like the human body, tends to be sickly and ill, it seeks healing or cures. In the past couple of posts, I have been trying to say some things that I believe to be accurate…
• May 19, 2014

  Trying to understand mental activities

  Last time, I wrote about the common category mistakes we make. We are in error when we think of minding as it if were like the body or some bodily organ. It is not. Since minding is not only not the body but also not like the body, it follows that minding cannot be healthy or…