Re: the silliness of such things as mental effects

From: Allan C Cybulskie (allan.c.cybulskie_at_yahoo.ca)
Date: 08/14/04 

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 17:54:34 -0400

"patty" <pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> wrote in message
news:yhORc.276395$XM6.221963@attbi_s53...
> John Casey wrote:
> However from my internal perspective there is still no amount of mental
> activity that will move my body in the world in the slightest amount.
> Ever! I cannot think myself to action!

David Hume promotes this very effect when claiming that you can't have a
reason-based morality, since reason itself cannot motivate you to action.
He ends up arguing that it's passion -- or emotion -- that you can actually
use to promote actions in the world and a morality.

The problem, however, is that even with emotion it seems very much like
conscious thought and reasoning and beliefs can affect our behaviour and
emotions. We seem to be able to reason or perhaps condition our behaviour
in advance and then when we "act", we simply act in accordance with those
things. This is one reason why I find a lot of the approaches dangerous,
since they focus on producing the right behaviour without going through the
mediation of the right thoughts about the right behaviour.

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