Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 A member of the board of the Bundesbank  in Germany said recently that the European Central Bank should crack down on a political practice engaged in by many of the member states, that of keeping private banks that are effectively insolvent artificially alive on whatever is their available means of life support.  The issue has become known in Europe as that of "zombie banks."  I say "Europe" but sense at once that I am guilty of presentism. The term "zombie bank" got its start in the United States in the late 1980s. Remember the days of the "Savings and Loan" scandal? Ah, they seem innocent now. Or ... not.  But recently the zombie's are a specter haunting Europe. (Gee, somebody once said that about communism, did he not?)  If a bank has a negative asset value, then depositors will have reason to fear frozen accounts and even notwithstanding national insurance systems the banks may well empty out. If they are still kept alive d...

Human emotions are the phenomenological side of instinctive physiological responses. This was William James' view, expressed in a chapter of PRINCIPLES, and with a proper extension of credit to James' co-discoverer, Carl Lange. James' words: "Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.... without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it righ...