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Bertrand Russell - The Analysis of MindLecture Three: Desire and Feeling
● Summary:
○ Mental occurrences may cause a series of actions that continue until
some state of affairs is achieved
■ this series of actions is called a behaviour cycle
■ the degree of definiteness of the state of affairs to be
achieved by the cycle may vary greatly
○ The property of the mental occurrences causing such a cycle is called
‘discomfort’, and the property of the mental occurrences that end the cycle is called
‘pleasure’
○ The actions of the cycle must not be mechanical; must be willed be the
agent (whether consciously or unconsciously)
○ The cycle ends in non-action, and the state of affairs that achieves this
quiescence is the ‘purpose’ of the cycle
○ The initial mental occurrence involving discomfort is called a ‘desire’ for
the state of affairs that achieves quiescence
■ a desire is ‘conscious’ when accompanied by a true
belief as to the state of affairs that will bring quiescence; otherwise it is
unconscious
● primitive desires are unconscious, and
many beliefs as to purposes of desires are mistaken
○ Mistaken beliefs as to desired states can generate secondary, real desires
● Context: commonly held view is that desires refer to mental images - e.g. ‘I hope it will
rain’ fixes the feeling of desire to a mental image of rain
○ this view is mistaken - it holds desires to be far more consciously willed
than they often are
■ often we suppress of self-deceive over ‘bad’ desires, but
often it is far better suppressed (societally etc) than conscious self-deception
could achieve
● this is tied up in our idea of humans as
rational, ethical etc beings, which is anthropocentric
○ it is better to view desires as exhibited by, or characteristic of, particular
actions - the actions of a behaviour cycle. this is what we do with animals; we don’t
suppose them to have minds that we can access
■ e.g. the behaviour of seeking out food is what exhibits
the desire ‘hunger’
○ the fact that we are stimulated into beginning a behaviour cycle suggests
support for the conventional picture of desire as willed by mental images
■ but this is ridiculous: it is not as if at every stage of an
instinctive process, such as feeding or reproduction, we have an image of our
final, satisfied state, or the ‘purpose’ of the action e.g. maintaining the species
■ in fact, what pushes the behaviour cycle on is the
residing feeling of discomfort, and hence the cycle moves on until it is satisfied
○ when we believe that we desire something, this often tends to cause a real
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