47 ideas
| 21021 | Keep premises as weak as possible, to avoid controversial difficulties [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: One should always choose the weakest premises from which one's conclusion follows, rather than saddling the theory with thicker or more controversial premises. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
| A reaction: I like this because it connects the rather vague Ockham's Razor to the logical concept of Thinning. The key point is that a thinner set of premises that prove something will be more persuasive, because critics may reject premises instead of conclusion. |
| 12223 | It is a fallacy to explain the obscure with the even more obscure [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'ad obscurum per obscurius' is to explain the obscure by appeal to what is more obscure. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §3) | |
| A reaction: Not strictly a fallacy, so much as an example of inadequate explanation, along with circularity and infinite regresses. |
| 12230 | Singular terms refer if they make certain atomic statements true [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Anyone should agree that a justification for regarding a singular term as having objectual reference is provided just as soon as one has justification for regarding as true certain atomic statements in which it functions as a singular term. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: The meat of this idea is hidden in the word 'certain'. See Idea 10314 for Hale's explanation. Without that, the proposal strikes me as absurd. |
| 10631 | If 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, then 'heterological' is heterological if it isn't heterological [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: If we stipulate that 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, we speedily arrive at the contradiction that 'heterological' is itself heterological just in case it is not. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) |
| 10624 | The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals that logic also cannot be completely characterized [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals, not arithmetical truths which are not truths of logic, but that logical truth likewise defies complete deductive characterization. ...Gödel's result has no specific bearing on the logicist project. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §2 n5) | |
| A reaction: This is the key defence against the claim that Gödel's First Theorem demolished logicism. |
| 8784 | Neo-logicism founds arithmetic on Hume's Principle along with second-order logic [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The result of joining Hume's Principle to second-order logic is a consistent system which is a foundation for arithmetic, in the sense that all the fundamental laws of arithmetic are derivable within it as theorems. This seems a vindication of logicism. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: The controversial part seems to be second-order logic, which Quine (for example) vigorously challenged. The contention against most attempts to improve Frege's logicism is that they thereby cease to be properly logical. |
| 8787 | The Julius Caesar problem asks for a criterion for the concept of a 'number' [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The Julius Caesar problem is the problem of supplying a criterion of application for 'number', and thereby setting it up as the concept of a genuine sort of object. (Why is Julius Caesar not a number?) | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: One response would be to deny that numbers are objects. Another would be to derive numbers from their application in counting objects, rather than the other way round. I suspect that the problem only real bothers platonists. Serves them right. |
| 10629 | If structures are relative, this undermines truth-value and objectivity [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The relativization of ontology to theory in structuralism can't avoid carrying with it a relativization of truth-value, which would compromise the objectivity which structuralists wish to claim for mathematics. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: This is the attraction of structures which grow out of the physical world, where truth-value is presumably not in dispute. |
| 10628 | The structural view of numbers doesn't fit their usage outside arithmetical contexts [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear how the view that natural numbers are purely intra-structural 'objects' can be squared with the widespread use of numerals outside purely arithmetical contexts. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand this objection. If they refer to quantity, they are implicitly cardinal. If they name things in a sequence they are implicitly ordinal. All users of numbers have a grasp of the basic structure. |
| 8788 | Logicism is only noteworthy if logic has a privileged position in our ontology and epistemology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is only if logic is metaphysically and epistemologically privileged that a reduction of mathematical theories to logical ones can be philosophically any more noteworthy than a reduction of any mathematical theory to any other. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 8) | |
| A reaction: It would be hard to demonstrate this privileged position, though intuitively there is nothing more basic in human rationality. That may be a fact about us, but it doesn't make logic basic to nature, which is where proper reduction should be heading. |
| 10622 | The neo-Fregean is more optimistic than Frege about contextual definitions of numbers [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The neo-Fregean takes a more optimistic view than Frege of the prospects for the kind of contextual explanation of the fundamental concepts of arithmetic and analysis (cardinals and reals), which he rejected in 'Grundlagen' 60-68. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §1) |
| 8783 | Logicism might also be revived with a quantificational approach, or an abstraction-free approach [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Two modern approaches to logicism are the quantificational approach of David Bostock, and the abstraction-free approach of Neil Tennant. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1 n2) | |
| A reaction: Hale and Wright mention these as alternatives to their own view. I merely catalogue them for further examination. My immediate reaction is that Bostock sounds hopeless and Tennant sounds interesting. |
| 12225 | Neo-Fregeanism might be better with truth-makers, rather than quantifier commitment [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: A third way has been offered to 'make sense' of neo-Fregeanism: we should reject Quine's well-known criterion of ontological commitment in favour of one based on 'truth-maker theory'. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4 n19) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Ross Cameron for this] They reject this proposal, on the grounds that truth-maker theory is not sufficient to fix the grounding truth-conditions of statements. |
| 12224 | Are neo-Fregeans 'maximalists' - that everything which can exist does exist? [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that neo-Fregeans are committed to 'maximalism' - that whatever can exist does. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Eklund] They observe that maximalism denies contingent non-existence (of the £20 note I haven't got). There seems to be the related problem of 'hyperinflation', that if abstract objects are generated logically, the process is unstoppable. |
| 12226 | The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Identity is sometimes read so that 'Pegasus is Pegasus' expresses a truth, the non-existence of any winged horse notwithstanding. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: This would give you ontological commitment to truth, without commitment to existence. It undercuts the use of identity statements as the basis of existence claims, which was Frege's strategy. |
| 12229 | Maybe we have abundant properties for semantics, and sparse properties for ontology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There is a compatibilist view which says that it is for the abundant properties to play the role of 'bedeutungen' in semantic theory, and the sparse ones to address certain metaphysical concerns. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher could live with the word 'property' having utterly different extensions in different areas of discourse. They similarly bifurcate words like 'object' and 'exist'. Call properties 'quasi-properties' and I might join in. |
| 18443 | A successful predicate guarantees the existence of a property - the way of being it expresses [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The good standing of a predicate is already trivially sufficient to ensure the existence of an associated property, a (perhaps complex) way of being which the predicate serves to express. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: 'Way of being' is interesting. Is 'being near Trafalgar Sq' a way of being? I take properties to be 'features', which seems to give a clearer way of demarcating them. They say they are talking about 'abundant' (rather than 'sparse') properties. |
| 10626 | Objects just are what singular terms refer to [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Objects, as distinct from entities of other types (properties, relations or, more generally, functions of different types and levels), just are what (actual or possible) singular terms refer to. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I find this view very bizarre and hard to cope with. It seems either to preposterously accept the implications of the way we speak into our ontology ('sakes'?), or preposterously bend the word 'object' away from its normal meaning. |
| 10630 | Abstracted objects are not mental creations, but depend on equivalence between given entities [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The new kind of abstract objects are not creations of the human mind. ...The existence of such objects depends upon whether or not the relevant equivalence relation holds among the entities of the presupposed kind. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems odd that we no longer have any choice about what abstract objects we use, and that we can't evade them if the objects exist, and can't have them if the objects don't exist - and presumably destruction of the objects kills the concept? |
| 8786 | One first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: An example of a first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines; a higher-order example (which refers to first-order predicates) defines 'equinumeral' in terms of one-to-one correlation (Hume's Principle). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the way modern logicians now treat abstraction, but abstraction principles include the elusive concept of 'equivalence' of entities, which may be no more than that the same adjective ('parallel') can be applied to them. |
| 12227 | Abstractionism needs existential commitment and uniform truth-conditions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstractionism needs a face-value, existentially committed reading of the terms occurring on the left-hand sides together with sameness of truth-conditions across the biconditional. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: They employ 'abstractionism' to mean their logical Fregean strategy for defining abstractions, not to mean the older psychological account. Thus the truth-conditions for being 'parallel' and for having the 'same direction' must be consistent. |
| 12228 | Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstraction principles purport to introduce fundamental means of reference to a range of objects, to which there is accordingly no presumption that we have any prior or independent means of reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §8) | |
| A reaction: There's the rub! They make it sound like a virtue, that we open up yet another heaven of abstract toys to play with. As fictions, they are indeed exciting new fun. As platonic discoveries they strike me as Cloud-Cuckoo Land. |
| 12231 | Reference needs truth as well as sense [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It takes, over and above the possession of sense, the truth of relevant contexts to ensure reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Reference purely through sense was discredited by Kripke. The present idea challenges Kripke's baptismal realist approach. How do you 'baptise' an abstract object? But isn't reference needed prior to the establishment of truth? |
| 10627 | Many conceptual truths ('yellow is extended') are not analytic, as derived from logic and definitions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There are many statements which are plausibly viewed as conceptual truths (such as 'what is yellow is extended') which do not qualify as analytic under Frege's definition (as provable using only logical laws and definitions). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is because the early assumptions of Frege were mathematical and logical, and he was trying to get away from Kant. That yellow is extended is a truth for non-linguistic beings. |
| 21007 | Storytelling is never neutral; some features of the world must be emphasised [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: Storytelling is never neutral; the narrator always directs attention to some features of the world rather than others. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: The audience would be a bit stupid if it insisted on neutrality. |
| 22688 | The Aristotelian idea that choices can be perceived needs literary texts to expound it [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: To show forth the Aristotelian claim that 'the decision rests with perception', we need - either side by side with a philosophical outline or inside it - literary texts which display the complexity, indeterminacy, and sheer difficulty of moral choice. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (The Golden Bowl, and Lit as Moral Philosophy [1983], II) | |
| A reaction: Berys Gaut observes that this depends on a particularist view of moral choice (usually seen as Aristotelian), with little interest in principles. |
| 21836 | Philosophers after Aristotle endorsed the medical analogy for eudaimonia [Nussbaum, by Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Nussbaum says the post-Aristotelian philosophers did much more than simply advancing and refining Aristotle's ethics. They advanced eudaimonics by explicitly endorsing the medical analogy. | |
| From: report of Martha Nussbaum (The Therapy of Desire [1994]) by Owen Flanagan - The Really Hard Problem 4 'Eudaimoncs' | |
| A reaction: Since Aristotle is all about the successful functioning of the psuche, this idea is obviously implicit in his original texts. It needs a positive concept of mental health, and not a mere absence of mental illness. See the Mindapples campaign. |
| 21025 | Particularism gives no guidance for the future [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: Situation ethics offers no guidance for the future. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
| A reaction: Not sure if Situation Ethics is the same as Particularism. Jonathan Danby famously champions the latter. |
| 21026 | Compassion is unreliable, because it favours people close to us [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: Daniel Batson's important research has shown us that compassion is not reliable on its own, because it can easily give priority to people close to the self. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
| A reaction: In Britain animal charities receive vastly more money than children's charities, presumably for this very reason. Kittens - you've got to hate them. |
| 21019 | Social contracts assume equal powers among the participants [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: All contract theories, including Rawls's, assume a rough equality of physical and mental power among the participants. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 4) |
| 21011 | We shouldn't focus on actual preferences, which may be distorted by injustices [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: When society puts things out of reach for people, they typically learn not to want those things. ..By defining the social goal in terms of satisfaction of actual preferences, utilitarian approaches often reinforce the status quo, which may be very unjust. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: Maximising happiness is potentially very paternalistic, whereas preference satisfaction is not, which aligns utilitarianism better with liberalism. It is notorious that slaves can be contented with their slavery, and battered wives can remain loyal. |
| 21008 | Liberalism does not need a comprehensive account of value [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: The role of political liberalism in my theory requires me to prescind from offering any comprehensive account of value. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 2) | |
| A reaction: Obviously liberalism has values, but they are the minimum ones of freedom and respect. Liberals have to tolerate some fairly ugly and miserable societies. Can liberals intervene in family life? |
| 21125 | Liberals must respect family freedom - but families are the great oppressors of women [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: A liberal society should give people considerable latitude to form families as they choose. …On the other hand the family …is one of the most notorious homes of sex hierarchy, denial of sexual opportunity, and sex-based violence and humiliation. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Rawls and Feminism [2003], 03), quoted by Andrew Shorten - Contemporary Political Theory | |
| A reaction: The question of how the state might intervene in the family rarely seems to turn up in standard political theory. This idea shows why that is a mistake. |
| 21012 | Women are often treated like children, and not respected for their choices [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: Women are often treated as passive dependents, creatures to be cared for (or not), rather than as independent human beings deserving respect for their choices. In other words they are often infantilized. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: Her prime example is from India, but you see the same thing in more subtle forms in the UK, especially among older people, and especially in art galleries. |
| 21015 | Negative liberty is incoherent; all liberties, to do and to be, require the prevention of interference [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: The very idea of 'negative liberty' ...is an incoherent idea: all liberties are positive, meaning liberties to do or to be something, which all require the inhibition of interference by others. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: This rejects Isaiah Berlin's well-known claim that negative liberties are good, but positive liberties are far too dangerous. |
| 21017 | Political freedom is an incoherent project, because some freedoms limit other freedoms [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: It is unclear whether the idea of promoting freedom is even a coherent political project. Some freedoms limit others. The freedom of rich people to make large donations to political campaigns can limit the equal worth of the right to vote. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 4) | |
| A reaction: It is not just American right-wingers who over-emphasise 'freedom'. French philosophy seems to be riddled with the same thing. |
| 21016 | Political and civil rights are not separate from economic and social rights [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: My approach rejects the distinction, common in the human rights movement, between 'first-generation rights' (political and civil) and 'second-generation rights' (economic and social). The second group are preconditions of the first group. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: [last sentence compressed] This sounds like the sort of point Marx argued for. Nowadays it is feminists who make this point most strongly. |
| 21009 | Capabilities: Life, Health, Safety, Mental life, Love, Planning, Joining in, Nature, Play, Control [Nussbaum, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Ten Capabilities: Life (decent), Health (reproduction, shelter), Safety, Mental life (with education), Love (relationships), Planning (with free beliefs), Joining in (and non-discrimination), Nature (relations to), Play, Control (politics and property). | |
| From: report of Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 2) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: She gives her crucial list in rather wordy form. To have impact it needs to be reduced to brief simple slogans. |
| 21010 | Justice requires that the ten main capabilities of people are reasonably enabled [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: The basic claim of my account of social justice is this: respect for human dignity requires that citizens be placed above an ample (specified) threshold of capability in all ten of the areas. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 2) | |
| A reaction: [The capabilities are given, briefly, in Idea 21009] The one word that bothers me here is 'dignity'. It is very vague, and can, I think, be reduced to much clearer and more obvious concepts. A person lacks dignity when they vomit, in ordinary usage. |
| 21013 | Capabilities are grounded in bare humanity and agency; qualifying as rational is not needed [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: The capabilities approach grounds rights claims in bare human birth and minimal agency, not in rationality or any other specific property, something that permits it to recognise the equal human rights of people with cognitive disabilities. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: She says elsewhere that she also sees animals as included in the capabilities approach. This is a rejection of the Kantian grounds for rights (by a well-known Aristotelian). |
| 21014 | Rights are not just barriers against state interference; governments must affirm capabilities of citizens [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: A prominent idea, common in the U.S., sees rights as barriers against interfering state action. ...The Capabilities Approach, by contrast, insists that all entitlements involve an affirmative task for government, to actively support capabilities. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: This makes her approach very left wing, by U.S. standards, because it needs higher taxation and a degree of government paternalism. Her approach strikes me as an excellent agenda for a fairly interventionist European liberal party. |
| 21020 | Any establishment belief system is incompatible with full respect for all citizens [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: The idea of equal respect is difficult or impossible to render compatible with a religious establishment, even one that is benign and noncoercive. Any established church (or government secularism) denigrates nonbelievers, by stating they are an out-group. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 4) | |
| A reaction: This sort of applies to membership of anything. She is sort of right, but there is no reason in principle why full respect should not be accorded to any out-group. |
| 21023 | We should respect animals in the way that we respect the animal nature in humans [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: If we show respect to our own animal natures, it is simply inconsistent, and a kind of vicious self-promoting of a sort to which Kantians are especially opposed, to refuse the same respect to our fellow creatures. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
| A reaction: Nussbaum says Kant is hopeless on animals, but Christine Korsgaard offers this Kantian approach that demands genuine respect for animals, even though they are not considered rational. Nussbaum says animals are agents. Did Kant respect our animality? |
| 21024 | It may be no harm to kill an animal which cannot plan for its future [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: The painless killing of an animal of a species that does not make plans extending into the future may not be a harm: this depends on how we think about the harm of death. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
| A reaction: Very old human beings may have no plans for the future. I, on the other hand, have got lots and lots of plans. Definitely. No one can specify the harm of death. How can it be distinguished from the harm of not being born? |
| 21022 | The Capabilities Approach sees animals as agents, not just as having feelings [Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: The Capabilities Approach sees animals as agents, not as receptacles of pleasure or pain. | |
| From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
| A reaction: This is in opposition to the utilitarian view. The key consequence is that animals can be victims of injustice, as well as of cruelty. Nice. |
| 20646 | Helmholtz used 'energy' to mathematically link heat, light, electricity and magnetism [Helmholtz, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: Helmholtz provided the requisite mathematical formulation linking heat, light, electricity and magnetism, by treating these phenomena as different manifestations of 'energy'. | |
| From: report of Hermann von Helmholtz (On the Conservation of Force [1847]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 01 'Human' | |
| A reaction: I'm increasingly struck by the neglect by philosophers of nature of these amazing developments in 19th century physics, because they prefer the excitement of the latest nuclear physics. There is more philosophical interest in the earlier stages. |
| 20973 | All forces conserve the sum of kinetic and potential energy [Helmholtz, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Helmholtz crucially asserted that all forces conserve the sum of kinetic and potential energy; superficially non-conservative forces like friction are simply macroscopic manifestations of more fundamental forces conserving energy at the micro-level. | |
| From: report of Hermann von Helmholtz (On the Conservation of Force [1847]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness App 4.3 | |
| A reaction: Friction had been a problem case, because it appeared not to conserve energy when it slowed movement down. |