48 ideas
| 12154 | Are 'word token' and 'word type' different sorts of countable objects, or two ways of counting? [Geach, by Perry] |
| Full Idea: If we list the words 'bull', 'bull' and 'cow', it is often said that there are three 'word tokens' but only two 'word types', but Geach says there are not two kinds of object to be counted, but two different ways of counting the same object. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Reference and Generality (3rd ed) [1980]) by John Perry - The Same F II | |
| A reaction: Insofar as the notion that a 'word type' is an 'object', my sympathies are entirely with Geach, to my surprise. Geach's point is that 'bull' and 'bull' are the same meaning, but different actual words. Identity is relative to a concept. |
| 10735 | Abstraction from objects won't reveal an operation's being performed 'so many times' [Geach] |
| Full Idea: For an understanding of arithmetic the grasp of an operation's being performed 'so many times' is quite indispensable; and abstraction of a feature from groups of nuts cannot give us this grasp. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.170) | |
| A reaction: I end up defending the empirical approach to arithmetic because remarks like this are so patently false. Geach seems to think we arrive ready-made in the world, just raring to get on with some counting. He lacks the evolutionary perspective. |
| 16050 | The goodness of a picture supervenes on the picture; duplicates must be equally good [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Characteristic of value-words is that they name 'supervenient' properties. If we are discussing whether a picture is a good picture, ..and there is another picture that is a replica of it, we cannot say 'they are alike, but one is good and the other not'. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (The Language of Morals [1952], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Horgan says this is the passage which introduced 'supervenience' into contemporary discussions. I think the best simple word for it is that the goodness of the picture 'tracks' its physical characteristics. It also depend on them. |
| 8780 | Attributes are functions, not objects; this distinguishes 'square of 2' from 'double of 2' [Geach] |
| Full Idea: Attributes should not be thought of as identifiable objects. It is better to follow Frege and compare them to mathematical functions. 'Square of' and 'double of' x are distinct functions, even though they are not distinguishable in thought when x is 2. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §11) | |
| A reaction: Attributes are features of the world, of which animals are well aware, and the mathematical model is dubious when dealing with physical properties. The route to arriving at 2 is not the same concept as 2. There are many roads to Rome. |
| 8969 | We should abandon absolute identity, confining it to within some category [Geach, by Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Geach argued that the notion of absolute identity should be abandoned. ..We can only grasp the meaning of a count noun when we associate it with a criterion of identity, expressed by a particular relative identity sortal. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Reference and Generality (3rd ed) [1980]) by John Hawthorne - Identity | |
| A reaction: In other words, identity needs categorisation. Hawthorne concludes that Geach is wrong. Geach clearly has much common usage on his side. 'What's that?' usually invites a categorisation. Sameness of objects seems to need a 'respect'. |
| 16075 | Denial of absolute identity has drastic implications for logic, semantics and set theory [Wasserman on Geach] |
| Full Idea: Geach's denial of absolute identity has drastic implications for logic, semantics and set theory. He must deny the axiom of extensionality in set theory, for example. | |
| From: comment on Peter Geach (Reference and Generality (3rd ed) [1980]) by Ryan Wasserman - Material Constitution 6 | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think we have two entirely different concepts here - the logicians' and mathematicians' notion of when two things are identical, and the ordinary language concept of two things being 'the same'. 'We like the same music'. |
| 12152 | Identity is relative. One must not say things are 'the same', but 'the same A as' [Geach] |
| Full Idea: Identity is relative. When one says 'x is identical with y' this is an incomplete expression. It is short for 'x is the same A as y', where 'A' represents some count noun understood from the context of utterance. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Reference and Generality (3rd ed) [1980], p.39), quoted by John Perry - The Same F I | |
| A reaction: Perry notes that Geach's view is in conscious opposition to Frege, who had a pure notion of identity. We say 'they are the same insofar as they are animals', but not 'they are the same animal'. Perfect identity involves all possible A's. |
| 16073 | Leibniz's Law is incomplete, since it includes a non-relativized identity predicate [Geach, by Wasserman] |
| Full Idea: Geach rejects the standard formulation of Leibniz's Law as incomplete, since it includes a non-relativized identity predicate. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Reference and Generality (3rd ed) [1980]) by Ryan Wasserman - Material Constitution 6 | |
| A reaction: Not many people accept Geach's premiss that identity is a relative matter. I agree with Wiggins on this, that identity is an absolute (and possibly indefinable). The problem with the Law is what you mean by a 'property'. |
| 11910 | Being 'the same' is meaningless, unless we specify 'the same X' [Geach] |
| Full Idea: "The same" is a fragmentary expression, and has no significance unless we say or mean "the same X", where X represents a general term. ...There is no such thing as being just 'the same'. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §16) | |
| A reaction: Geach seems oddly unaware of the perfect identity of Hespherus with Phosphorus. His critics don't spot that he was concerned with identity over time (of 'the same man', who ages). Perry's critique emphasises the type/token distinction. |
| 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? |
| 8775 | A big flea is a small animal, so 'big' and 'small' cannot be acquired by abstraction [Geach] |
| Full Idea: A big flea or rat is a small animal, and a small elephant is a big animal, so there can be no question of ignoring the kind of thing to which 'big' or 'small' is referred and forming those concepts by abstraction. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §9) | |
| A reaction: Geach is attacking a caricature of the theory. Abstraction is a neat mental trick which has developed in stages, from big rats relative to us, to big relative to other rats, to the concept of 'relative' (Idea 8776!), to the concept of 'relative bigness'. |
| 8776 | We cannot learn relations by abstraction, because their converse must be learned too [Geach] |
| Full Idea: Abstractionists are unaware of the difficulty with relations - that they neither exist nor can be observed apart from the converse relation, the two being indivisible, as in grasping 'to the left of' and 'to the right of'. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §9) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see how a rival account such as platonism could help. It seems obvious to me that 'right' and 'left' would be quite meaningless without some experience of things in space, including an orientation to them. |
| 10732 | If concepts are just recognitional, then general judgements would be impossible [Geach] |
| Full Idea: If concepts were nothing but recognitional capacities, then it is unintelligible that I can judge that cats eat mice when neither of them are present. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.164) | |
| A reaction: Having observed the importance of recognition for the abstractionist (Idea 10731), he then seems to assume that there is nothing more to their concepts. Geach fails to grasp levels of abstraction, and cross-reference, and generalisation. |
| 2567 | You can't define real mental states in terms of behaviour that never happens [Geach] |
| Full Idea: We can't take a statement that two men, whose overt behaviour was not actually different, were in different states of mind as being really a statement that the behaviour of one man would have been different in hypothetical circumstances that never arose. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §3) | |
| A reaction: This is the whole problem with trying to define the mind as dispositions. The same might be said of properties, since some properties are active, but others are mere potential or disposition. Hence 'process' looks to me the most promising word for mind. |
| 2568 | Beliefs aren't tied to particular behaviours [Geach] |
| Full Idea: Is there any behaviour characteristic of a given belief? | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §4) | |
| A reaction: Well, yes. Belief that a dog is about to bite you. Belief that this nice food is yours, and you are hungry. But he has a good point. He is pointing out that the mental state is a very different thing from the 'disposition' to behave in a certain way. |
| 8781 | The mind does not lift concepts from experience; it creates them, and then applies them [Geach] |
| Full Idea: Having a concept is not recognizing a feature of experience; the mind makes concepts. We then fit our concepts to experience. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §11) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that we create concepts ex nihilo, which is a rather worse theory than saying that we abstract them from multiple (and multi-level) experiences. That minds create concepts is a truism. How do we do it? |
| 10731 | For abstractionists, concepts are capacities to recognise recurrent features of the world [Geach] |
| Full Idea: For abstractionists, concepts are essentially capacities for recognizing recurrent features of the world. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.163) | |
| A reaction: Recognition certainly strikes me as central to thought (and revelatory of memory, since we continually recognise what we cannot actually recall). Geach dislikes this view, but I see it as crucial to an evolutionary view of thought. |
| 8769 | If someone has aphasia but can still play chess, they clearly have concepts [Geach] |
| Full Idea: If a man struck with aphasia can still play bridge or chess, I certainly wish to say he still has the concepts involved in the game, although he can no longer exercise them verbally. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §5) | |
| A reaction: Geach proceeds thereafter to concentrate on language, but this caveat is crucial. To suggest that concepts are entirely verbal has always struck me as ridiculous, and an insult to our inarticulate mammalian cousins. |
| 8770 | 'Abstractionism' is acquiring a concept by picking out one experience amongst a group [Geach] |
| Full Idea: I call 'abstractionism' the doctrine that a concept is acquired by a process of singling out in attention some one feature given in direct experience - abstracting it - and ignoring the other features simultaneously given - abstracting from them. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §6) | |
| A reaction: Locke seems to be the best known ancestor of this view, and Geach launches a vigorous attack against it. However, contemporary philosophers still refer to the process, and I think Geach should be crushed and this theory revived. |
| 8771 | 'Or' and 'not' are not to be found in the sensible world, or even in the world of inner experience [Geach] |
| Full Idea: Nowhere in the sensible world could you find anything to be suitably labelled 'or' or 'not'. So the abstractionist appeals to an 'inner sense', or hesitation for 'or', and of frustration or inhibition for 'not'. Personally I see a threat in 'or else'! | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §7) | |
| A reaction: This is a key argument of Geach's against abstractionism. As a logician he prefers to discuss connectives rather than, say, colours. I think they might be meta-abstractions, which you create internally once you have picked up the knack. |
| 8772 | We can't acquire number-concepts by extracting the number from the things being counted [Geach] |
| Full Idea: The number-concepts just cannot be got by concentrating on the number and abstracting from the kind of things being counted. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §8) | |
| A reaction: This point is from Frege - that if you 'abstract away' everything apart from the number, you are simply left with nothing in experience. The objection might, I think, be met by viewing it as second-order abstraction, perhaps getting to a pattern first. |
| 8773 | Abstractionists can't explain counting, because it must precede experience of objects [Geach] |
| Full Idea: The way counting is learned is wholly contrary to abstractionist preconceptions, because the series of numerals has to be learned before it can be applied. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §8) | |
| A reaction: You might learn to parrot the names of numbers, but you could hardly know what they meant if you couldn't count anything. See Idea 3907. I would have thought that individuating objects must logically and pedagogically precede counting. |
| 8774 | The numbers don't exist in nature, so they cannot have been abstracted from there into our languages [Geach] |
| Full Idea: The pattern of the numeral series that is grasped by a child exists nowhere in nature outside human languages, so the human race cannot possibly have discerned this pattern by abstracting it from some natural context. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §8) | |
| A reaction: This is a spectacular non sequitur, which begs the question. Abstractionists precisely claim that the process of abstraction brings numerals into human language from the natural context. Structuralism is an attempt to explain the process. |
| 8778 | Blind people can use colour words like 'red' perfectly intelligently [Geach] |
| Full Idea: It is not true that men born blind can form no colour-concepts; a man born blind can use the word 'red' with a considerable measure of intelligence; he can show a practical grasp of the logic of the word. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §10) | |
| A reaction: Weak. It is obvious that they pick up the word 'red' from the usage of sighted people, and the usage of the word doesn't guarantee a grasp of the concept, as when non-mathematicians refer to 'calculus'. Compare Idea 7377 and Idea 7866. |
| 8777 | If 'black' and 'cat' can be used in the absence of such objects, how can such usage be abstracted? [Geach] |
| Full Idea: Since we can use the terms 'black' and 'cat' in situations not including any black object or any cat, how could this part of the use be got by abstraction? | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §10) | |
| A reaction: [He is attacking H.H. Price] It doesn't seem a huge psychological leap to apply the word 'cat' when we remember a cat, and once it is in the mind we can play games with our abstractions. Cats are smaller than dogs. |
| 8779 | We can form two different abstract concepts that apply to a single unified experience [Geach] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to form the concept of 'chromatic colour' by discriminative attention to a feature given in my visual experience. In seeing a red window-pane, I do not have two sensations, one of redness and one of chromatic colour. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Mental Acts: their content and their objects [1957], §10) | |
| A reaction: Again Geach begs the question, because abstractionists claim that you can focus on two different 'aspects' of the one experience, as that it is a 'window', or it is 'red', or it is not a wall, or it is not monochrome. |
| 10733 | The abstractionist cannot explain 'some' and 'not' [Geach] |
| Full Idea: The abstractionist cannot give a logically coherent account of the features that are supposed to be reached by discriminative attention, corresponding to the words 'some' and 'not'. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.167) | |
| A reaction: I understand 'some' in terms of mereology, because that connects to experience, and 'not' I take to derive more from psychological experience than from the physical world, building on thwarted expectation, which even animals experience. |
| 10734 | Only a judgement can distinguish 'striking' from 'being struck' [Geach] |
| Full Idea: To understand the verb 'to strike' we must see that 'striking' and 'being struck' are different, but necessarily go together in event and thought; only in the context of a judgment can they be distinguished, when we think of both together. | |
| From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.168) | |
| A reaction: Geach seems to have a strange notion that judgements are pure events which can precede all experience, and are the only ways we can come to understand experience. He needs to start from animals (or 'brutes', as he still calls them!). |
| 2705 | How can intuitionists distinguish universal convictions from local cultural ones? [Hare] |
| Full Idea: There are convictions which are common to most societies; but there are others which are not, and no way is given by intuitionists of telling which are the authoritative data. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.454) | |
| A reaction: It seems unfair on intuitionists to say they haven't given a way to evaluate such things, given that they have offered intuition. The issue is what exactly they mean by 'intuition'. |
| 2712 | You can't use intuitions to decide which intuitions you should cultivate [Hare] |
| Full Idea: If it comes to deciding what intuitions and dispositions to cultivate, we cannot rely on the intuitions themselves, as intuitionists do. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.461) | |
| A reaction: Makes intuitionists sound a bit dim. Surely Hume identifies dispositions (such as benevolence) which should be cultivated, because they self-evidently improve social life? |
| 2706 | Emotivists mistakenly think all disagreements are about facts, and so there are no moral reasons [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Emotivists concluded too hastily that because naturalism and intuitionism are false, you cannot reason about moral questions, because they assumed that the only questions you can reason about are factual ones. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: Personally I have a naturalistic view of ethics (based on successful functioning, as indicated by Aristotle), so not my prob. Why can't we reason about expressive emotions? We reason about art. |
| 2709 | Prescriptivism sees 'ought' statements as imperatives which are universalisable [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Universal prescriptivists hold that 'ought'-judgements are prescriptive like plain imperatives, but differ from them in being universalisable. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.457) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit tautological. Which comes first, the normativity or the universalisability? |
| 2704 | If morality is just a natural or intuitive description, that leads to relativism [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Non-descriptivists (e.g. prescriptivists) reject descriptivism in its naturalist or intuitionist form, because they are both destined to collapse into relativism. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.453) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear from this why prescriptism would not also turn out to be relativist, if it includes evaluations along with facts. |
| 2855 | In primary evaluative words like 'ought' prescription is constant but description can vary [Hare, by Hooker,B] |
| Full Idea: Hare says words are secondarily evaluative (e.g. 'soft-hearted') if prescriptive meaning varies but description is constant; primarily evaluative words ('good', 'right', 'ought') are the opposite, with the descriptive content varying. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (The Language of Morals [1952]) by Brad W. Hooker - Prescriptivism p.640 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that the prescriptive meaning of the evaluative word could at least vary in strength. You really, really ought to do that. |
| 22331 | Moral statements are imperatives rather than the avowals of emotion - but universalisable [Hare, by Glock] |
| Full Idea: According to Hare's universal prescriptivism, moral statements are closer to imperatives than to avowals of emotion; their purpose is to guide action. But unlike imeperatives they are universalisable. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963]) by Hans-Johann Glock - What is Analytic Philosophy? 2.9 | |
| A reaction: Why isn't 'everyone ought to support West Ham' a moral judgement? |
| 22484 | Universalised prescriptivism could be seen as implying utilitarianism [Hare, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Hare has suggested that a fairly tight form of utilitarianism can be obtained from universalised prescriptivism. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963]) by Philippa Foot - Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? p.191 | |
| A reaction: All the benefits of Bentham, Kant and Hume, in one neat package! Since I take all three of them to be wrong about ethics, that counts against this idea. |
| 4125 | Hare says I acquire an agglomeration of preferences by role-reversal, leading to utilitarianism [Hare, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: In Hare's theory I apply a "role-reversal test", and then acquire an actual agglomeration of preferences that apply to the hypothetical situation. The result is utilitarianism. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: It hits that traditional stumbling block, of why I should care about the preferences of others. Pure reason and empathy are the options (Kant or Hume). I may, however, lack both. |
| 4126 | If we have to want the preferences of the many, we have to abandon our own deeply-held views [Williams,B on Hare] |
| Full Idea: Hare's version of utilitarianism requires an agent to abandon any deeply held principle or conviction if a large enough aggregate of contrary preferences, of whatever kind, favours a contrary action. | |
| From: comment on Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This nicely attacks any impersonal moral theory, whether it is based on reason or preferences. But where did my personal ideals come from? |
| 4127 | If morality is to be built on identification with the preferences of others, I must agree with their errors [Williams,B on Hare] |
| Full Idea: If there is to be total identification with others, then if another's preferences are mistaken, the preferences I imagine myself into are equally mistaken, and if 'identification' is the point, they should remain mistaken. | |
| From: comment on Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Yes. The core of morality must be judgement. Robots can implement universal utilitarian rules, but they could end up promoting persecutions of minorities. |
| 22483 | A judgement is presciptive if we expect it to be acted on [Hare] |
| Full Idea: We say something prescriptive if and only if, for some act A, some situation S and some person R, if P were to assent (orally) to what we say, and not, in S, do A, he logically must be assenting insincerely. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981], p.21), quoted by Philippa Foot - Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? p.190 | |
| A reaction: Foot offers this as Hare's most explicit definition. The use of algebra strikes me as ludicrous. In logic letters have the virtue of not shifting their meaning during an argument, but that is not required here. |
| 2703 | Descriptivism say ethical meaning is just truth-conditions; prescriptivism adds an evaluation [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Ethical descriptivism is the view that ethical sentence-meaning is wholly determined by truth-conditions. …Prescriptivists think there is a further element of meaning, which expresses prescriptions or evaluations or attitudes which we assent to. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.452) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand either of these. If all meaning consists of truth-conditions, that will apply to ethics. If meaning includes evaluations, that will apply to non-ethics. |
| 2707 | If there can be contradictory prescriptions, then reasoning must be involved [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists claim that there are rules of reasoning which govern non-descriptive as well as descriptive speech acts. The standard example is possible logical inconsistency between contradictory prescriptions. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: The example doesn't seem very good. Inconsistency can appear in any area of thought, but that isn't enough to infer full 'rules of reasoning'. I could desire two incompatible crazy things. |
| 2708 | An 'ought' statement implies universal application [Hare] |
| Full Idea: In any 'ought' statement there is implicit a principle which says that the statement applies to all precisely similar situations. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.456) | |
| A reaction: No two situations can ever be 'precisely' similar. Indeed, 'precisely similar' may be an oxymoron (at least for situations). Kantians presumably like this idea. |
| 2711 | Prescriptivism implies a commitment, but descriptivism doesn't [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists hold that moral judgements commit the speaker to motivations and actions, but non-moral facts by themselves do not do this. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.459) | |
| A reaction: Surely hunger motivates to action? I suppose the key word is 'commit'. But lazy people are allowed to make moral judgements. |
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro | |
| A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it. |
| 4360 | By far the easiest way of seeming upright is to be upright [Hare] |
| Full Idea: By far the easiest way of seeming upright is to be upright. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: Yes. This is the route which takes us from enlightened self-interest to a vision of true morality. Virtue is found to be its own reward, thought that is not how we became virtuous to begin with. |
| 2710 | Moral judgements must invoke some sort of principle [Hare] |
| Full Idea: To make moral judgements is implicitly to invoke some principle, however specific. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.458) |
| 6449 | The categorical imperative leads to utilitarianism [Hare, by Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Hare has proposed that utilitarianism is the ultimate standard to which we are led by the categorical imperative. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963], p.123-4) by Thomas Nagel - Equality and Partiality | |
| A reaction: It seems to me better to say that Kant starts (unwittingly) from something like utilitarianism, that is, an assumption that human happiness and welfare have some sort of intrinsic value that cannot be demonstrated. Otherwise evil can be universalised. |