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Here is a similar point to Hume's, that the mind's function is not to seek abstract ideals, but to optimize for pleasure. This sounds, to me, the same as sayin
by yters 7y ago
Here is a similar point to Hume's, that the mind's function is not to seek abstract ideals, but to optimize for pleasure. This sounds, to me, the same as saying humans are ultimately guided by passions, not by reason.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/
"The function of the human mind — that part of the soul that is located in our chest — is not to seek higher things, but to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. That is its entire objective; the risk (a substantial one) is that it may miscalculate, since it is subject to false beliefs and errors in cognitive processes."
- n4r9 7y agoThank you. It's fascinating that people used to consider the chest as a seat of higher thought. I guess even now we strongly associate it with emotions. Based on that article I would say Hume's overall body of work is by a wide margin more contemporary than Epicurus' if not more subtle and sophisticated. The passions-slave-reason quotation is really only a tiny part of his writing. For example, Hume provides an intricate and judicious account of epistemology in which causality is reduced to a kind of anthropic pattern-recognition. This reconciles his account of psychology with the enlightenment understanding of the scientific method, which did not exist at the time of Epicurus.
- yters 7y agoSure, but the original discussion was about the passion-slave-reason concept, which is neither new nor historically the majority view.