I've been noticing lately that people often expressing their thoughts by associating their thoughts with feelings in order to prevent other people from challenging their thoughts; they are lacking any confidence in their own answers, so they try to communicate their answers in the weakest way they can. What sad times are these when a growing number of people replace 'think' with 'feel;' I wonder why people no longer want to face having their thoughts questioned. Especially as philosophers, we should seek to put our ideas out to the public not hide our thoughts behind the shroud of private and personal emotions and intuitions. I think that we could use feel if we were actually using felt reasons. Though I don't think that we are using felt reasons as often as we say that we 'feel that (statement)."
Some great philosophy teachers once co-authored a writing checklist (rule 20) where they expressed that people should "never use 'feel' where 'think' will do." I think we ought to follow this wonderful piece of advice. We should not try to do this; there is do and do not, there is no try.
No comments:
Post a Comment