[lit-ideas] Re: Implicatures of "Feel"

  • From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:41:28 -0700


On Aug 31, 2010, at 1:26 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky wrote:

Yes, the following utterances seem possible:

"I feel I love you." (Also: "I believe I love you." and "I think I love you." in
deference to the Partridge Family.)


Other possible feelings include: envy, jealousy, being at peace with the world, anger, lust, sorrow, elation, indignation, resentment, vindicated (not sure about that one), fear, loathing, (but not awe or anxiety since these have no specific object - Heidegger on "moods" as dispositions of In-der- Welt-Sein) - sadness, love, infatuation. Does Aristotle's "munificence" count as a feeling?
Is his "magnanimity" a feeling or a disposition? Both?

"I feel it's hot." No problem.

"I feel I agree (disagree) with you." Well, "what are we to say about that"? If the object of the (dis)agreement is a proposition, then one's feelings about
its truth or rightness are epistemically otiose.

Compare with: "We should stop doing moral philosophy until we get a handle on
the psychology of virtues and vices." Isn't that a category mistake?

In the art college where I work students, and even some of my colleagues, reach for language that gives equal weight to, or even primacy to, something they call "emotional intelligence." Thus when they approach a problem, their oral reasoning is a mish mash appeal to evidence, with a conclusion that begins "I feel." I have great difficulty mounting challenges to such a rhetorical strategy. What's to be said, "Well, I feel differently"?

And yet they reach decisions and the world goes on, category mistake or no.

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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