[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2008 15:16:30 -0800 (PST)
--- On Sun, 12/7/08, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
(quoting Donal)
> Let's say that,at the same moment,I am in 'two minds' - part
of me wants to do violence to Jack because boy has he made me mad but part of me
doesn't because I know it would solve nothing and I might end up in prison.
I don't see any _logical contradiction_ in having these 'mixed
feelings' That is, mixed feelings - which we all surely experience - do not
violate the laws of logic. What would is if the part of me that wanted to do
violence was also at the same time the part of me that didn't, and vice
versa. Conflicting emotions and thoughts are not an example illustrating the
truth of the view that logic is contradicted by the existence of so-called
'contradictory' emotions and thoughts: propositions derived from such
emotions and thoughts may contradict [e.g. it contradicts 'You should hit
Jack' to propose 'You shouldn't hit Jack'], but the emotions and
thoughts themselves do not stand in a logical relation to each other - the
logical relation they have
> is only with themselves i.e. they cannot both be the emotion and thought
they are and simultaneously the negation of this.
*I agree that what we call mixed or contradictory emotions do not actually
stand in a logical relation to each other, hence cannot be said to be logically
contradictory. But surely thoughts can, insofar as they are (at least largely)
propositions. If I think that Jack is here and and I also think that Jack is
not here then I have some kind of a problem. Not sure about the diagnosis, but
surely my thoughts are not logically coherent. And if I intend to both hit and
not hit Jack, these are surely contradictory propositions. If I am entertaining
them both then I may be said to be conflicted or in a dilemma.
Donal is right, although perhaps the shorter way out is to remember that there
are no logical relations between _things_ but only between propositions
(judgments, assertions). These propositions may be about 'things in the
world' (or about mathematical entities) but these things—the objects of
propositions—neither entail, contradict, nor negate each other. The belief
that they do (in this case, states of affairs) was one of Marx's Hegelian
follies.
* I think that dialectial materialism is to blame here. Hegel was an idealist
so for him the things are always the things as we perceive them, not the things
as such. That's, I think, how they can be in a contradiction.
O.K.
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