9 ideas
3144 | Everything is what it is, and not another thing [Butler] |
Full Idea: Everything is what it is, and not another thing. | |
From: Joseph Butler (works [1732]), quoted by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 2.4 |
21315 | A tree remains the same in the popular sense, but not in the strict philosophical sense [Butler] |
Full Idea: When a man swears to the same tree having stood for fifty years in the same place, he means ...not that the tree has been all that time the same in the strict philosophical sense of the word. ...In a loose and popular sense they are said to be the same. | |
From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
A reaction: A helpful distinction which we should hang on. Of course, by the standards of modern physics, nothing is strictly the same from one Planck time to the next. All is flux. So we either drop the word 'same' (for objects) or relax a bit. |
20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
21317 | Despite consciousness fluctuating, we are aware that it belongs to one person [Butler] |
Full Idea: Though the successive consciousnesses which we have of our own existence are not the same, yet they are consciousnesses of one and the same thing or object; of the same person, self, or living agent. | |
From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
A reaction: Butler's arguments seems to be that he appears to be the same person, so he is the same person. He is explicitly disagreeing with Locke. |
21313 | If consciousness of events makes our identity, then if we have forgotten them we didn't exist then [Butler] |
Full Idea: Though consciousness of what is past does ascertain our personal identity to ourselves, yet to say that it makes personal identity, or is necessary to our being the same persons is to say a person has not existed a single moment but what he can remember. | |
From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
A reaction: An over-cautious scepticism has crept in about the reliability of bodily identity. Now we can have photographs and CCTV to prove that we experienced events we have forgotten. Butler is right. |
21314 | Consciousness presupposes personal identity, so it cannot constitute it [Butler] |
Full Idea: One would think it really self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity, any more than knowledge can presuppose truth, which it presupposes. | |
From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
A reaction: It rather begs the question to dogmatically assert that mere consciousness presupposes a self, especially after Hume's criticisms. That consciousness implies a subject to experience needs arguing for. Is it the best explanation? |
21318 | If the self changes, we have no responsibilities, and no interest in past or future [Butler] |
Full Idea: If personality is a transient thing ...then it follows that it is a fallacy to charge ourselves with any thing we did, or to imagine our present selves interested in any thing which befell us yesterday, or what will befall us tomorrow. | |
From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
A reaction: We seem to care about the past and future of our children, without actually being our children. Can't my future self be my descendant, a close one, instead of me? |
8066 | Butler exalts conscience, but it may be horribly misleading [Anscombe on Butler] |
Full Idea: Butler exalts conscience, but appears ignorant that a man's conscience may tell him to do the vilest things. | |
From: comment on Joseph Butler (Fifteen Sermons [1726]) by G.E.M. Anscombe - Modern Moral Philosophy p.176 | |
A reaction: That would appear to be the end of conscience. To make conscience work, it must have a huge authority to back it, and also a fairly infallible means of knowing what it truly says, and that an impostor hasn't replaced it (e.g. via a bad upbringing). |
15640 | Courage is not a virtue, but the form of every virtue at its testing point [Lewis,CS] |
Full Idea: Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. | |
From: C.S. Lewis (works [1950]) | |
A reaction: This appeared on Twitter, without mention of its source. Adding it breaks my normal rules, but I hope you agree that it is too good to miss. Is not even resolutely facing up to suffering or death a case of genuine courage? Determination, prioritisation? |