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Day 20: Hume on Reason and Passion (Part 2)
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Reason and Passion (Overview)
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Original Existences
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How Passions can be Unreasonable
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Strength of Mind
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Compare and Contrast Hume and Plato
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Read Computing Machinery… (sections 1 to 5)
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Reason and Passion (Overview)
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Quick outline of the first part of his argument:
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(1) Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; passion is
required.
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(2) Reason [alone] can never oppose passion in the direction of the will;
passion is required.
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(3) Therefore, reason is a slave to the passions.
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Original Existences
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Ideas of reason are not original existences; they are copies of original
existences
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Passion is an original existence
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Hume thinks the above helps to render it unsurprising that reason alone cannot
oppose passion
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How Passions can be Unreasonable
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What do we mean when we say that particular passions are “unreasonable?”
Could “unreasonable” passions damage Hume’s account?
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According to Hume, passions are “unreasonable” either
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when passion is founded on the supposition of objects which do not exist, or
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when we choose means which are insufficient for our ends
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Strength of Mind
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According to Hume, what is it to have strength of mind?
In terms of reason and passion, how does Hume understand strength of
mind?
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What might Plato think of Hume’s story on the relationship between reason and
passion?
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Compare and Contrast Hume and Plato
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How does Hume define “passion?”
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According to Hume, what is it to have strength of mind?
In terms of reason and passion, how does Hume understand strength of
mind?
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According to Plato, what are the Appetites, Spirit, and Reason?
How are they related to one another in the just individual?
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Compare and Contrast Hume and Plato
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Since Plato recognizes that there are desires in every part of the soul, could
he, in principle, agree with the following?
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(1) Thought alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; desire is
required.
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(2) Thought alone can never oppose desire in the direction of the will; another
desire is required.
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desires required would be the desires for truth, knowledge, wisdom, … (in
Reason), and the desires for honour, victory, … (in Spirit); the thoughts and
desires of Reason work with the desires of Spirit to control the desires of the
Appetites.
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Compare and Contrast Hume and Plato
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What Plato would clearly deny is
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(3) Thought is a slave to desires
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Who has the more plausible position, Plato or Hume?
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reason adjudicate between competing desires?
If a passion for truth, wisdom, knowledge or justice is required to
adjudicate between other competing passions, does that vindicate Hume?
Or does the ability of thought and desire to adjudicate between other
competing desires vindicate Plato?
Is either vindicated? If so, why? If
not, why not? (Sound like an exam
question?)