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Is reason the slave of the passions?

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#11

Post by woodruffw »

yters wrote: post #10
heraclius wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few serious philosophers would disagree with Hume. However, I suspect that many non-philisophers are happy to appeal to reason as a source of normative beliefs, thus “facts don’t care about your feelings” (well quite—they are incapable of caring), complaints about the irrationality of populists, &c.

Very few modern philosophers, perhaps. Starting at least with Plato, it was entirely the opposite, that the individual whose passions are completely controlled by reason is ultimately happy. The individual controlled completely by his passions is the most unhappy. This is because Plato believed supreme happiness was found in perceiving the good itself using reason. Nominalists, such as Hume, don't believe there is su…

> Nominalists, such as Hume, don't believe there is such a thing as 'good itself', and believe all mental abstractions are merely labelings of physical things. Thus, mental abstractions cannot be the goal of our desire. Only physical things can be the goal of our desire, and we must necessarily be ruled by our passions.

I don't think this chain of reasoning is consistent with Hume's.

Hume is an empiricist, not a nominalist: he doesn't deny the existence of abstract categories, only their a priori intelligibility. He also makes direct reference to non-physical, desirable things (it's been a while, but I'm pretty sure approbation and praise are his chief examples). We're ruled by our passions not because our ends are always physical, but because (according to Hume) (1) reason alone cannot lead us to action and (2) we clearly are lead to action all the time. Therefore, something else must be driving us.

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#12

Post by HNLurker2 »

This reminds me of schopenhauer will as a representation. Very pessimistic saying that the will to live is primal and intelligence secondary to fulfill the first. I am surprised you talked about Kant and Hume but never mention Schopenhauer (lack of expertise by author?)

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#13

Post by adrianratnapala »

ibeckermayer wrote: post #9
whatshisface wrote: post #2

> But if we are sensible, the pursuit of human happiness, personal and collective, remains the goal of most of what we do. Such a basically utilitarian ideology requires around it a structure of reasoning, not passion, selfish or unselfish. David Hume's point was that reason alone could not justify the pursuit of human happiness or anything else, because it only lets you go from one statement to another, which means…

It's true that desires aren't justified by reason in and of themselves, but I don't think that's ultimately relevant (morally or otherwise). It's an empirical fact that we must act on our desires; when I examine my actions closely I notice that all of them can be traced back to some desire or combination of desires. From that empirically derived fact I posit that we can say the question "can reason alone justify the…

> It's an empirical fact that we must act on our desires;

Is it?

> when I examine my actions closely I notice that all of them can be traced back to some desire or combination of desires.

But when I introspect, the opposite happens. When I examine my desires closely, they disappear and I am left with "well I often engage in X, Y and Z goal-seeking behaviours."

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#14

Post by adrianratnapala »

woodruffw wrote: post #6
heraclius wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few serious philosophers would disagree with Hume. However, I suspect that many non-philisophers are happy to appeal to reason as a source of normative beliefs, thus “facts don’t care about your feelings” (well quite—they are incapable of caring), complaints about the irrationality of populists, &c.

> Very few serious philosophers would disagree with Hume. Relatively few serious philosophers disagree with the positive component of Hume's claim: that reason is (for many people, at least) the slave the passions. On the other hand, many philosophers disagree with the normative component: that reason ought to be the slave of the passions, or that it must be so. Hume himself has a thing or two to say about juxtaposin…

> that reason ought to be the slave of the passions,

I don't think you will find Hume actually arguing this. People read this into him because they glide so easily from is to ought.

> or that it must be so

This is a factual, not a normative claim.

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#15

Post by mbrock »

It sort of seems like philosophers tend to fetishize either reason or emotion or both, and maybe underestimate some more basic aspects related to attention and caring. I think Heidegger had some critiques like this. When I go about my normal life I am typically not driven by tendencies that are clearly rational or emotional but more kind of a mundane absorption with motivational roots in past decisions and events. I am also absorbed in various structures that shape the "grammar" of my behavior, exemplified by language and society. My capacity for "reason" goes up and down depending on my mental health, my attention span, my general clarity of presence; the same is true for "emotion." And philosophical reason is quite different from everyday planning and executive function. You could argue that dopaminergic activity in the prefrontal cortex is a "passion" while it is also the substrate of the ability to be reasonable. I don't have a clear point here but something seems sort of silly and old-fashioned about this debate.

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#16

Post by sooheon »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #13
ibeckermayer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that desires aren't justified by reason in and of themselves, but I don't think that's ultimately relevant (morally or otherwise). It's an empirical fact that we must act on our desires; when I examine my actions closely I notice that all of them can be traced back to some desire or combination of desires. From that empirically derived fact I posit that we can say the question "can reason alone justify the…

> It's an empirical fact that we must act on our desires; Is it? > when I examine my actions closely I notice that all of them can be traced back to some desire or combination of desires. But when I introspect, the opposite happens. When I examine my desires closely, they disappear and I am left with "well I often engage in X, Y and Z goal-seeking behaviours."

If you grant that motivation for actions have two components, causal and stochastic, and ignore the stochastic element as just error, I could see labeling all causal impetuses as "desires" at some level. Anything you do, you do because the conscious you--or some lower level process that is a part of you--"wanted" it that way, give or take some random noise.

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#17

Post by rdiddly »

mbrock wrote: post #15

It sort of seems like philosophers tend to fetishize either reason or emotion or both, and maybe underestimate some more basic aspects related to attention and caring. I think Heidegger had some critiques like this. When I go about my normal life I am typically not driven by tendencies that are clearly rational or emotional but more kind of a mundane absorption with motivational roots in past decisions and events. I…

It's old-fashioned because it's from Plato. It would probably help a lot to unlearn that.

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#18

Post by devoply »

When your main mode of political reasoning is reasoning about myths that you compartmentalize... It's obvious that in terms of politics there is no reason, it's simply what you or your society want to believe to justify what you want to do... and what you want to do is what you desire. And what you desire is a function of your passions.

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#19

Post by devoply »

mbrock wrote: post #15

It sort of seems like philosophers tend to fetishize either reason or emotion or both, and maybe underestimate some more basic aspects related to attention and caring. I think Heidegger had some critiques like this. When I go about my normal life I am typically not driven by tendencies that are clearly rational or emotional but more kind of a mundane absorption with motivational roots in past decisions and events. I…

Reasonable is simply acting in line with whatever mythology your society has adopted. It's reasonable to kill people for insulting a sacred man (an act of passion) while elsewhere it's considered a right to do so (another act of passion). We "reason" using the cultural norms, and those norms are anything but actually norms, they are mythologies that makes societies function. You can not reason outside the cultural norms, like for instance you can't reason within Nazi cultural norms in modern Germany. It's impossible. Reasoning is simply a method to socialize with people with whatever cockamamie idea they currently consider a norm.

Outside of that in certain other domains we have the ability to reason like for instance in engineering or programming, and there is no way to avoid reasoning about these things as they have very specific truth conditions... that are persistent and inescapable.

Re: Is reason the slave of the passions?

#20

Post by atulatul »

This point was also deliberated in "The Righteous Mind". May be worth a read.

Plus, I like the observation from Maugham's Of Human Bondage: The submission to passion is human bondage, but the exercise of reason is human liberty.

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...

https://www.amazon.com/Of-Human-Bondage/dp/B004N59WMK/

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