The spirit of the Fun Criterion
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.I wonder if ‘drive’ is really a good word for unconscious ideas. In this context, my Dictionary app says:
an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need: emotional and sexual drives.
and
determination and ambition to achieve something: her drive has sustained her through some shattering personal experiences.
But neither of those is unconscious. People are aware of their sexual and emotional drives and their ambitions.
In addition, there are other types of unconscious knowledge. As you say in your video, habitualization is a source of unconscious knowledge.
When I hear the word ‘drive’, I think of determination and ambition, which take lots of conscious effort. I don’t think of habitualized knowledge, which by definition takes no effort.
It's a fair point. I agree it's not a perfect word. I tried many labels and variations, but I ended up with Drives because in my view it contrasted well with Intuition:
Unlike Intuitions, Drives carry the sense of a deep compulsion whose underlying theory is largely unconscious. You’re aware of the feelings they produce as you say, but not of the reasoning behind them. For example, you might know you’re sexually attracted to someone or suddenly feel sad, yet have no idea why — then that’s a Drive.
If you do have some sense of why you’re feeling a certain way and can roughly express it in words, it’s an Intuition. If you can fully articulate it in words, it’s a Statement. Statements can also produce feelings. For example, if your core value is that non‑coercion, you might feel angry when someone disciplines their child in an immoral way — here, the Statement (often paired with Intuitions or Drives) is producing the feeling of anger.
I agree the main shortcoming of Drive is that it’s often taken to mean innate or hardwired knowledge. I haven’t found a better alternative, so I make it clear when explaining the concept that Drives can also arise from habitualized knowledge. Deutch (in this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e2LWxaqQUQ) seems to also support this way of defining new terminology
If you want to say something new the terminology you use is going to be unsuited for it because the terminology is going to be adapted to previous ways of thinking um what you can do is just invent your own terminology that's a terrible idea because no one will understand what you're saying and secondly it is subject to the same problem that it will only represent accurately fairly accurately your thoughts at a particular time when you're addressing a new criticism it will no longer be suitable so I think what people usually do and what is done in physics and what's done in philosophy what Popper did is to use the nearest existing term and be very careful to explain that one means something new by it.
If you have alternate suggestions, I'm of course eager to hear them!
Unlike Intuitions, Drives carry the sense of a deep compulsion […]
‘Compulsion’ has a negative meaning. I don’t think Deutsch means ‘unconscious’ in a negative way. For him, it’s a neutral label.
For example, you might know you’re sexually attracted to someone or suddenly feel sad, yet have no idea why — then that’s a Drive.
What you describe here sounds like an urge, not a drive.
Statements can also produce feelings.
I don’t think statements produce feelings. I think values produce feelings, regardless of whether those values are held consciously or unconsciously, explicitly or inexplicitly:
Emotions are produced by man's [value] premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.
By the way, I wonder if this is where Deutsch got the different categories. He’s read Rand.
If you have alternate suggestions, I'm of course eager to hear them!
My suggestion is to just stick with Deutsch’s terms. He is already using “the nearest existing term[s]” to what he means. That implies that there’s already a change (in usage, not in words).
Changing the words on top of his change is going to be difficult without moving further away from what he means, even if you explain your changes. It’s just going to confuse people and make the concepts harder to discuss, not easier.
You set out to make the concepts easier to discuss but I think you’ve inadvertently caused the opposite effect.