Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sphinx.UChicago.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar
From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Responsibility and blame
Message-ID: <909@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 03:43:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.909
Posted: Mon Jul 29 03:43:03 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 01:30:50 EDT
References: <750@ihuxa.UUCP> <1637@hao.UUCP> <882@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>, <287@tove.UUCP>
Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept
Lines: 39

Bruce Israel asks why I introduce an idea like blame into the discussion
of the "I choose my emotions" question(s), and then blasts me severely
for it.  Hmppph.
	Actually, I would rather maintain the responsibility/blame 
distinction just as Bruce would.  I didn't think I was introducing it,
I taking it as already implicit in Gypsy's original posting and some of
the followups.
	The connection between "I can choose my emotions" and blaming
has already been explicated by Pooh, better than I could do offhand
right now.  In brief, it seems to provide a rationale for withholding
comfort and sympathy from someone who has ``chosen'' to have emotions
you don't want to deal with.
	To clear up another point, I didn't bring up the age of this
philosophy in order to denigrate it.  (And, as mentioned in my posting
of earlier today, which is probably right ahead of this one, when I
assert that the basic claim is wrong as a question of fact I am by
no means necessarily foolish to live as though it were true -- so I
am still not putting it down.)  Rather, I was just urging that we give
credit where it's due; Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius get more of the
laurels for this idea than a contemporary author or scraper-together-
of-seminars.
	Finally, I should apologise for my previous posting, wherein I
distinguished a question of fact from a question of belief and
action, and said that everybody was discussing the latter (often under the
guise of the former).  Immediately after that I read a long series of
articles here that *did* address the question of fact head-on.  Sorry
to be so hasty in my complaint.

Oh yes, one more mundane footnote.  Bruce inquires about General Semantics.
I don't know whether anyone reads Count K's original work anymore, but
in any case you can find extensive explanations in works by S I Hayakawa
(yes, the later Senator).  I just read in Quine's autobiography that the
headquarters of General Semantics used to be right here in my neighborhood,
at 1234 E 56 St (Chicago) -- an easy address to remember.  I walked by it
yesterday; it's now a private residence.
-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar