The question of the nature of emotions has been a hotly debated topic since the Greeks, and its r... more The question of the nature of emotions has been a hotly debated topic since the Greeks, and its role, or lack of a role as some might put it, in our moral lives has been recognized throughout the history of ideas. From Aristotle to Hume, from William James to Alison Jaggar, and everyone in between, the desire to understand our emotions and how they affect our lives, and how they should affect our lives, remains a necessary part in our quest for not only ethics, but the nature of knowledge, social life, and consciousness. I will discuss these four areas in this paper, beginning with a look back at modern and contemporary theories of emotion, pulling especially from Alison Jaggar, then moving into my main argument about the nature of emotions as a synthesis of value-built passive attitudes and active judgments in the form of emotional experience, discussing the nature of objects of emotions, especially regarding other people, using Sara Ahmed’s concept of the “Other” to explicate my own position. Afterwards, I’ll be describing the important moral problem in human relationality of idealization, or the process by which an agent creates and lives by their idea of someone or something instead of what that person or thing is, and offer an approach to it using this definition of emotions as synthetic experience, so as to both better avoid and fight against the problem of idealization, especially through the potential of Ami Harbin’s concept of “disorientations” and Ahmed’s discussion of fear.
Keywords: Emotions, Fear, Idealization, Positivism, Cognivitism, Social Constructionism, Attitudes, Judgments, Observations, Death
There has been a large increase in scientism these past few decades, with even prominent popular ... more There has been a large increase in scientism these past few decades, with even prominent popular figures such as Bill Nye and Stephen Hawking saying philosophy is “useless” or “dead”, and that science, analysis of data, is what must take precedence over more “relativistic” intuitive thinking. While their declarations of philosophy are clearly not true, scientismists’ ideas of intuition and knowledge show a clear challenge, even in the history of ideas and philosophy, between traditions of knowledge and experience. My purpose in this paper is to argue for a strain of epistemology that throws out the standard analytic definitions of knowledge and replaces it with knowledge as intuition, or rather, as an experience of the World, notably the theories of Henri Bergson and Jacques Maritain. I will first cover the issue of the nature of truth and how a different use of the term is necessary to understand knowledge as experience. Second, I will discuss how time for the intuitionists, as well as Heidegger, lends itself to the theory. From there, I will cover the nature of intuition and the different theories surrounding both it and the practice of concept-construction. Finally, I will compare the intuitionist’s model to the standard JTB model that has been around for much of philosophical history in one form or another, and how the JTB model does not actually account for knowledge or even truth, and argue instead that the intuitionist’s model comes to grasp at reality and open up our existence as Being-Possible.
The question of the nature of emotions has been a hotly debated topic since the Greeks, and its r... more The question of the nature of emotions has been a hotly debated topic since the Greeks, and its role, or lack of a role as some might put it, in our moral lives has been recognized throughout the history of ideas. From Aristotle to Hume, from William James to Alison Jaggar, and everyone in between, the desire to understand our emotions and how they affect our lives, and how they should affect our lives, remains a necessary part in our quest for not only ethics, but the nature of knowledge, social life, and consciousness. I will discuss these four areas in this paper, beginning with a look back at modern and contemporary theories of emotion, pulling especially from Alison Jaggar, then moving into my main argument about the nature of emotions as a synthesis of value-built passive attitudes and active judgments in the form of emotional experience, discussing the nature of objects of emotions, especially regarding other people, using Sara Ahmed’s concept of the “Other” to explicate my own position. Afterwards, I’ll be describing the important moral problem in human relationality of idealization, or the process by which an agent creates and lives by their idea of someone or something instead of what that person or thing is, and offer an approach to it using this definition of emotions as synthetic experience, so as to both better avoid and fight against the problem of idealization, especially through the potential of Ami Harbin’s concept of “disorientations” and Ahmed’s discussion of fear.
Keywords: Emotions, Fear, Idealization, Positivism, Cognivitism, Social Constructionism, Attitudes, Judgments, Observations, Death
There has been a large increase in scientism these past few decades, with even prominent popular ... more There has been a large increase in scientism these past few decades, with even prominent popular figures such as Bill Nye and Stephen Hawking saying philosophy is “useless” or “dead”, and that science, analysis of data, is what must take precedence over more “relativistic” intuitive thinking. While their declarations of philosophy are clearly not true, scientismists’ ideas of intuition and knowledge show a clear challenge, even in the history of ideas and philosophy, between traditions of knowledge and experience. My purpose in this paper is to argue for a strain of epistemology that throws out the standard analytic definitions of knowledge and replaces it with knowledge as intuition, or rather, as an experience of the World, notably the theories of Henri Bergson and Jacques Maritain. I will first cover the issue of the nature of truth and how a different use of the term is necessary to understand knowledge as experience. Second, I will discuss how time for the intuitionists, as well as Heidegger, lends itself to the theory. From there, I will cover the nature of intuition and the different theories surrounding both it and the practice of concept-construction. Finally, I will compare the intuitionist’s model to the standard JTB model that has been around for much of philosophical history in one form or another, and how the JTB model does not actually account for knowledge or even truth, and argue instead that the intuitionist’s model comes to grasp at reality and open up our existence as Being-Possible.
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Papers by Amadea Longo
Keywords: Emotions, Fear, Idealization, Positivism, Cognivitism, Social Constructionism, Attitudes, Judgments, Observations, Death
Drafts by Amadea Longo
Keywords: Emotions, Fear, Idealization, Positivism, Cognivitism, Social Constructionism, Attitudes, Judgments, Observations, Death