Reviews for A structural theory of the emotions

The average rating for A structural theory of the emotions based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-02-28 00:00:00 John Resto Popper outlines his thoughts on the existence of indeterminism, though human free will isn't touched on until the afterward. Primarily covers the arguments for indeterminism against both philosophical determinism and 'scientific' determinism. Notes Intuition: just because it may persuade and convince us of the truth of what we have intuited, may badly mislead us: it is an invaluable helper, but also a dangerous helper, for it tends to make us uncritical. We must always meet it with respect, with gratitude, and with an effort to be severely critical of it. 'Scientific' determinism: an attempt to replace the vague idea of foreknowledge by the more precise idea of predictability. It asserts that events shown in the film of our lives are, forwards or backwards, never haphazard but always subject to rules. Any 'scientific' theory must imply this much or not be scientific. It appeals to the success of science, eg Newton's theories. But if scientific determinism is accurate then our logic is really more like brainwashing of the initial states of the universe and our indoctrination to its laws. It implies that we cannot rationally approach the truth because we are not free to be persuaded by arguments from reason, because it was determined for us ahead of time. Reducing rationality to an illusion negates the meaning of science and the scientific method's success at revealing our errors. Like Einstein, many will have to move from 'scientific' determinists when they realize there are no valid arguments in favor, and move to metaphysical or religious determinist. Probabilities: for the determinist, the law-like behavior of probabilities, like the 50/50 chance of a coin toss, are ultimately irreducible and unexplainable. They must say both that every coin toss is predetermined from initial conditions of the universe for either heads or tails, and that the universe corrects the tosses and those initial conditions to converge the tosses at 50/50. The convergence must be explained by more unknown initial conditions that are further unexplainable. This prima facie characteristic of determinism adds no explanation. All singular events in this universe are unique, and if considered under the aspect of their uniqueness might then be described as ultimately undetermined or 'free'. Some actions can of course be caused or even determined already of time, but not everything to 100% accurately *from within the system* (the theory or'scientific' determinism). Human knowledge progresses from correcting mistakes, and will create more in the future, those which cannot be foreseen until the future problems arise. Emergent properties represent unforeseeable evolutionary steps in biology, physics, and cosmology. As a philosophy reductionism is a failure, but these failures led to outstanding success as a method for science to get closer to truth. Popper said we need to act like determinists to explore the problems of what piece of philosophy we can reduce to science next, even if 100% reductionism is impossible and even a bad philosophy. Because science's greatest accomplishments are failed reductions. Reductionism will always fail to be 100%. Darwin and Newton weren't right, Einstein wasn't 100% right. But where their theories failed we open up entire new fields. Reductionism will always fail, and that's why we have an open universe to explore. So despite Popper being an indeterministic we must act methodically deterministic if we hope to reduce our theories and discover causal laws. But a belief in determinism (aka philosophical reductionism or scientism) and the ability to reduce everything everywhere, leads to ignoring and sweeping real problems under the rug. Popper says the role of dogma is to set the border of what's allowed and where you have to stop asking, 'why?'. Being a reductionist does the same. People had to shut their eyes to the problem of design in nature until Darwin's great success. Natural selection wasn't allowed to be discussed as part of the physical universe. After Darwin's theory the reductionists then adopted it since evolution was reduced to a branch of biology. Godel's incompleteness says all physical science is incomplete. We can never hope for complete reductionism since we live in an open and indetermined universe, but the critical method of science produces partially successful reductions often and that is enough. Open problems are beneficial and to be called in their own. They are as interesting and important as their solutions. We need more of them and can't sweep them under the rug.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-07 00:00:00 Anthony Dibattista I picked up this book because of my interest in skepticism, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. I was familiar with the author (previously having written about him in my undergraduate thesis, "the Afterlife of Memory"). That being said, I was impressed not only by the meticulous thinking for which Popper is famous, but also by the applicability of some of the issues raised to my chosen field of Business Analysis. As a Business Analyst, I occasionally encounter two types of resistance to the profession. First, there are those who reject the discipline from fear of a loss of freedom; this is quite fashionable amongst those who misunderstand "Agile" to be a rejection of all documentation and process. The second form comes as doubt, essentially stating that we can't know that the work products I produce are True, or even stating that they must be necessarily incomplete, and, therefore, useless. In the Open Universe, Popper argues that no theory (even the physical sciences) can reduce the world to a causally determined system, thus freedom (especially where it counts: creative behavior) can never be eliminated from human experience. He also discusses the role of abstractions (in Popper's term: World 3), such as process descriptions and other documentation, which are bound to be incomplete and possibly even wrong. Here he reminds us that in ~3,000 years of human inquiry, including many valiant attempts to reduce the world to a simple system of rules (e.g. Unified Theory), we have almost universally failed. Nevertheless, the act of trying has had a powerful effect on our ability to manipulate the material world. Our knowledge may be incomplete -- in fact the very act of attempting to perfect our knowledge seems always to lead us to discover new problems that unravel what once was thought of as an almost completed understanding. As a BA, I don't consider myself a scientist searching for the Truth, but rather a facilitator, assisting communities in articulating a shared understanding, so they can examine their assumptions, and attempt to improve the impact they collectively have on the world (Popper's World 1). I enjoyed reading this book. Sometimes the detailed examples from the history of physics were tough to follow, but the main argument was fascinating, and surprisingly pertinent to me as a Business Analyst.