21 ideas
| 19542 | It is nonsense that understanding does not involve knowledge; to understand, you must know [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that understanding does not involve knowledge is widespread (for example, in discussions of what philosophy aims at), but hardly withstands scrutiny. If you do not know how a jet engine works, you do not understand how it works. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.24) | |
| A reaction: This seems a bit disingenuous. As in 'Theaetetus', knowing the million parts of a jet engine is not to understand it. More strongly - how could knowledge of an infinity of separate propositional truths amount to understanding on their own? |
| 19543 | To grasp understanding, we should be more explicit about what needs to be known [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: An essential prerequisite for useful discussion of the relation between knowledge and understanding is systematic explicitness about what is to be known or understood. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This is better. I say what needs to be known for understanding is the essence of the item under discussion (my PhD thesis!). Obviously understanding needs some knowledge, but I take it that epistemology should be understanding-first. That is the main aim. |
| 19541 | Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: If we say our cognitive aim is to get knowledge, the opposing views are the naturalistic view that what matters is just true belief (or just 'getting by'), or that there are rival epistemic goods such as understanding and wisdom. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.17) | |
| A reaction: [compressed summary] I'm a fan of understanding. The accumulation of propositional knowledge would relish knowing the mass of every grain of sand on a beach. If you say the propositions should be 'important', other values are invoked. |
| 19540 | Don't confuse justified belief with justified believers [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: Much theorizing about justification conflates issues of justified belief with issues of justified/blameless believers. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.12) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Kent Bach 1985] Presumably the only thing that really justifies a belief is the truth, or the actual facts. You could then say 'p is a justified belief, though no one actually believes it'. E.g. the number of stars is odd. |
| 19539 | If knowledge is unanalysable, that makes justification more important [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: If knowledge is indeed unanalyzable, that could be seen as a liberation of justification to assume importance in its own right. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.11) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Kvanvig 2003:192 and Greco 2010:9-] See Scruton's Idea 3897. I suspect that we should just give up discussing 'knowledge', which is a woolly and uninformative term, and focus on where the real epistemological action is. |
| 19538 | Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion (where 'mammals' contains 'cats') [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion. 'Cat' entails 'mammal' because the cats are a subset of the mammals. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.10) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that this was only one type of entailment. 'Travelling to Iceland entails flying'. Travelling includes flying, the reverse of cats/mammals, to a very complex set-theoretic account is needed. Interesting. |
| 23529 | Conduct is not isolated from its effect on the moral code [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: We must not view conduct in isolation from its effect on the moral code. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Moderate') | |
| A reaction: The moral code may be excessively conservative, but there is no denying this point. Extreme individualistic libertarians must recognise that 'no man is an island'. |
| 23530 | The great danger of democracy is that the oppression of the minority becomes unobjectionable [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: For Mill and De Tocqueville the greatest of the dangers was not that in fact the majority might use their power to oppress a minority, but that, with the spread of democratic ideas, it might come to be thought unobjectionable that they should do so. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], III 'Populism') | |
| A reaction: This was vivid in the 2016 Brexit referendum, which was 52-48 in favour of leaving. There were lots voices saying 'you lost, get over it'. It should be a basic (if neglected) principle that the winners of elections now represent the whole population. |
| 23522 | In an organised society all actions have some effect on other people [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: In an organised society it is impossible to identify classes of actions which harm no one, or no one but the individual who does them. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Enforcement') | |
| A reaction: This is attributed to 'some critics' of Mill. I agree with this. The idea that actions performed behind close doors never come to influence social life is an illusion, held by people whose quest for freedom is selfish. |
| 23528 | The value of liberty allows freedom of action, even if that distresses other people [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: Recognition of individual liberty as a value involves, as a minimum, acceptance of the principle that the individual may do what he wants, even if others are distressed when the learn what it is that he does. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Private') | |
| A reaction: He notes that there could be other reasons to block the freedom, such as harm done. This idea seems to identify a key component of liberalism - that we must all tolerate actions which we dislike. |
| 21004 | Hart (against Bentham) says human rights are what motivate legal rights [Hart,HLA, by Sen] |
| Full Idea: Whereas Bentham saw rights as a 'child of law', Herbert Hart's view takes the form of seeing human rights as, in effect, 'parents of law'; they motivate specific legislations. | |
| From: report of H.L.A. Hart (The Concept of Law [1961]) by Amartya Sen - The Idea of Justice 17 'Ethics' | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hart 1955 'Are there any natural rights?'] I agree with Hart. It is clearer if the parents of law are not referred to as 'rights'. You can demand a right, but it is only a right when it is awarded to you. |
| 23523 | The principle of legality requires crimes to be precisely defined in advance of any action [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: The principle of legality requires criminal offences to be as precisely defined as possible, so that it can be known with reasonable certainty beforehand what acts are criminal and what are not. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Conspiracy') | |
| A reaction: Hart is discussing a breach of this, where moral judgements are used to condemn something which was not obviously illegal. Families and schools don't have such precise rules, but it seems needed in a vast and pluralistic society. |
| 23524 | Some private moral issues are no concern of the law [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: An official report [of 1957] on homosexuality declared that 'there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law's business'. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Conspiracy') | |
| A reaction: We might wonder whether these issues are actually moral, if the law is not interested in them. Are they just a matter of taste? The law doesn't enforce a preference for Mozart over Salieri. |
| 23521 | Do morals influence law? Is morality an aspect of law? Can law be morally criticised? [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: Four questions: 1) Has the development of law been influenced by morals? 2) Must reference to morality enter into an adequate definition of law or legal system? 3) Is law open to moral criticism? 4) Does immorality justify legal punishment? | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Enforcement') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Three nice questions, which are his agenda for the book. It is obvious that immoral laws can be created, and that laws can be criticised for being too concerned with morality, so there is no clear general answer to these dilemmas. |
| 23525 | Is the enforcement of morality morally justifiable? [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: The question about morality and the law is also a question of morality - of whether the enforcement of morality is morally justified. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Positive') | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice meta-moral question. What moral standards are used to justify the enforcement of moral standards? Presumably there should be no contradiction between the levels, to brutally enforce softness, or softly recommend brutality? |
| 23526 | Modern law still suppresses practices seen as immoral, and yet harmless [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: English and American law still [in1963] contain rules which suppress practices condemned as immoral by positive morality though they involve nothing that would be ordinarily thought of as harm to other persons. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Use') | |
| A reaction: He says most of the examples of this concern sexual practices. In the UK we have moved away from such laws, but many states of the USA still maintain them (or are reintroducing them, in 2023). |
| 20932 | Positive law needs secondary 'rules of recognition' for their correct application [Hart,HLA, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Hart says we have secondary legal 'rules of recognition', by which primary positive law is recognised and applied in a regulated manner. | |
| From: report of H.L.A. Hart (The Concept of Law [1961]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 6 'Rules' | |
| A reaction: The example of the authority of a particular court is given. |
| 20931 | Hart replaced positivism with the democratic requirement of the people's acceptance [Hart,HLA, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Hart replaced Austin's concept of positive law as sovereign command with a more democratic ideal. In modern law-based societies the authority of law depends on the people's acceptance of a law's enduring validity. | |
| From: report of H.L.A. Hart (The Concept of Law [1961]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 6 'Hart' | |
| A reaction: Presumably the ancestor of this view is the social contract of Hobbes and Locke. |
| 23527 | Moral wickedness of an offence is always relevant to the degree of punishment [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: Leslie Stephen argued that when the question is how severely an offender should be punished, an estimate of the degree of moral wickedness involved in the crime is always relevant. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Moral') | |
| A reaction: [Stephen 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' 1873] The degree of responsibility (after excuses etc.) is obviously also highly relevant. If vicious murder is punished more harshly, that seems to be an assessment of the character of the murderer. |
| 8326 | Science has shown that causal relations are just transfers of energy or momentum [Fair, by Sosa/Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Basic causal relations can, as a consequence of our scientific knowledge, be identified with certain physicalistic [sic] relations between objects that can be characterized in terms of transference of either energy or momentum between objects. | |
| From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by E Sosa / M Tooley - Introduction to 'Causation' §1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a transfer of momentum is a transfer of energy. If only anyone had the foggiest idea what energy actually is, we'd be doing well. What is energy made of? 'No identity without substance', I say. I like Fair's idea. |
| 10379 | Fair shifted his view to talk of counterfactuals about energy flow [Fair, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Fair, who originated the energy flow view of causation, moved to a view that understands connection in terms of counterfactuals about energy flow. | |
| From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 2.1.2 | |
| A reaction: David Fair was a pupil of David Lewis, the king of the counterfactual view. To me that sounds like a disappointing move, but it is hard to think that a mere flow of energy through space would amount to causation. Cause must work back from an effect. |