47 ideas
| 6575 | Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Not only is traditional philosophy incapable of discovering the foundations it seeks, but the philosophical enterprise may itself dislodge the contingent, de facto supports that our daily life depends upon. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: In the end Fogelin is not so pessimistic, but he is worried by the concern of philosophers with paradox and contradiction. I don't remotely consider this a reason to reject philosophy, but it might be a reason to keep it sealed off from daily life. |
| 6585 | Rationality is threatened by fear of inconsistency, illusions of absolutes or relativism, and doubt [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The three main threats to our rational lives are fear of inconsistency, illusions (of absolutism and relativism) and doubt. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice analysis of the forces that can destroy the philosopher's aspiration to the rational life. Personally I still suffer from a few illusions about the possibility of absolutes, but I may grow out of it. The other three don't bother me. |
| 6568 | A game can be played, despite having inconsistent rules [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The presence of an inconsistency in the rules that govern a game need not destroy the game. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: He only defends this thesis if the inconsistency is away from the main centre of the action. You can't have an inconsistent definition of scoring a goal or a touchdown. |
| 6557 | Humans may never be able to attain a world view which is both rich and consistent [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: It might be wholly unreasonable to suppose that human beings will ever be able to attain a view of the world that is both suitably rich and completely consistent. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fogelin's lectures develop this view very persuasively. I think all philosophers must believe that the gods could attain a 'rich and consistent' view. Our problem is that we are a badly organised team, whose members keep dying. |
| 6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Traditionally many philosophers (Aristotle among them) have considered the law of noncontradiction to be the deepest, most fundamental principle of rationality. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For Aristotle, see Idea 1601 (and 'Metaphysics' 1005b28). The only denier of the basic character of the law that I know of is Nietzsche (Idea 4531). Fogelin, despite many qualifications, endorses the law, and so do I. |
| 6565 | The law of noncontradiction makes the distinction between asserting something and denying it [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: People who reject the law of noncontradiction obliterate any significant difference between asserting something and denying it; …this will not move anyone who genuinely opts either for silence or for madness. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems a sufficiently firm and clear assertion of the basic nature of this law. The only rival view seems to be that of Nietzsche (Idea 4531), but then you wonder how Nietzsche is in a position to assert the relativity of the law. |
| 6574 | Legal reasoning is analogical, not deductive [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: There is almost universal agreement that legal reasoning is fundamentally analogical, not deductive, in character. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the question of whether analogy can be considered as 'reasoning' in itself. How do you compare the examples? Could you compare two examples if you lacked language, or rules, or a scale of values? |
| 16661 | There are two sorts of category - referring to things, and to circumstances of things [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Is it not now clear what the difference is between items in the categories? Some serve to refer to a thing, whereas others serve to refer to the circumstances of a thing. | |
| From: Boethius (Concerning the Trinity [c.518], Ch. 4), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.5 |
| 15035 | If universals are not separate, we can isolate them by abstraction [Boethius, by Panaccio] |
| Full Idea: Boethius argued that universals can be successfully isolated by abstraction, even if they do not exist as separate entities in the world. | |
| From: report of Boethius (Second Commentary on 'Isagoge' [c.517]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Sources' | |
| A reaction: Personally I rather like this unfashionable view. I can't think of any other plausible explanation, unless it is a less conscious psychological process of labelling. Boethius's idea led to medieval 'immanent realism'. |
| 14665 | We can call the quality of Plato 'Platonity', and say it is a quality which only he possesses [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Let the incommunicable property of Plato be called 'Platonity'. For we can call this quality 'Platonity' by a fabricated word, in the way in which we call the quality of man 'humanity'. Therefore this Platonity is one man's alone - Plato's. | |
| From: Boethius (Librium de interpretatione editio secunda [c.516], PL64 462d), quoted by Alvin Plantinga - Actualism and Possible Worlds 5 | |
| A reaction: Plantinga uses this idea to reinstate the old notion of a haecceity, to bestow unshakable identity on things. My interest in the quotation is that the most shocking confusions about properties arose long before the invention of set theory. |
| 6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Convention, to exist at all, must have a basis in something that is not conventional; conventions, to work, need something nonconventional to build upon and shape. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Fogelin attributes his point to Hume. I agree entirely. No convention could ever possibly catch on in a society unless there were some point to it. If you can't see a point to a convention (like wearing ties) then start looking, because it's there. |
| 23308 | Reasoning relates to understanding as time does to eternity [Boethius, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Boethius says that reasoning [ratiocinatio] is related to intellectual understanding [intellectus] as time to eternity, involving as it does movement from one stage to another. | |
| From: report of Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], 4, prose 6) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Shifting' | |
| A reaction: This gives true understanding a quasi-religious aura, as befits a subject which is truly consoling. |
| 6576 | My view is 'circumspect rationalism' - that only our intellect can comprehend the world [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: My own view might be called 'circumspect rationalism' - the view that our intellectual faculties provide our only means for comprehending the world in which we find oruselves. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: He needs to say more than that to offer a theory, but I like the label, and it fits the modern revival of rationalism, with which I sympathise, and which rests, I think, on Russell's point that self-evidence comes in degrees, not as all-or-nothing truth. |
| 6589 | Knowledge is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: In general a knowledge claim is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The problem here is what is 'relevant'. Fogelin's example is 'Are you sure the suspect doesn't have a twin brother?' If virtual reality is relevant, most knowledge is defeated. Certainly, imaginative people feel that they know less than others. |
| 6596 | For coherentists, circularity is acceptable if the circle is large, rich and coherent [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Coherentists argue that if the circle of justifications is big enough, rich enough, coherent enough, and so on, then there is nothing wrong circularity. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: There must always be something wrong with circularity, and no god would put up with it, but we might have to. Of course, two pieces of evidence might be unconnected, such as an equation and an observation. |
| 6597 | A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: One rule for the justification of knowledge might be: Do not raise the level of scrutiny in the absence of a particular reason that triggers it. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: That won't decide the appropriate level of scrutiny from which to start. One of my maxims is 'don't set the bar too high', but it seems tough that one should have to justify moving it. The early scientists tried raising it, and were amazed by the results. |
| 6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The three forms of scepticism are cartesian, Humean and Pyrrhonian. The first challenges belief by inventing sceptical scenarios; the second doubts the future; the third aims to suspend belief. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: A standard distinction is made between methodological and global scepticism. The former seems to be Cartesian, and the latter Pyrrhonian. The interest here is see Hume placed in a distinctive category, because of his views on induction. |
| 6590 | Scepticism deals in remote possibilities that are ineliminable and set the standard very high [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Sceptical scenarios deal in wildly remote defeating possibilities, so that the level of scrutiny becomes unrestrictedly high, and they also usually deal with defeators that are in principle ineliminable. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The question of how high we 'set the bar' seems to me central to epistemology. There is clearly an element of social negotiation involved, centring on what is appropriate. If, though, scepticism is 'ineliminable', we must face up to that. |
| 6583 | Radical perspectivism replaces Kant's necessary scheme with many different schemes [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: We reach radical perspectivism by replacing Kant's single, necessary categorial scheme with a plurality of competing categorial schemes. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: It certainly looks as if Kant sent us down a slippery slope into the dafter aspects of twentieth century relativism. The best antidote I know of is Davidson's (e.g. Idea 6398). But then it seems unimaginative to say that only one scheme is possible. |
| 5771 | Knowledge of present events doesn't make them necessary, so future events are no different [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Just as the knowledge of present things imposes no necessity on what is happening, so foreknowledge imposes no necessity on what is going to happen. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], V.IV) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, is the key idea if you are looking for a theological answer to the theological problem of free will. Don't think of God as seeing the future 'now'. God is outside time, and so only observes all of history just as we observe the present. |
| 5767 | Rational natures require free will, in order to have power of judgement [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: There is freedom of the will, for it would be impossible for any rational nature to exist without it. Whatever by nature has the use of reason has the power of judgement to decide each matter. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], V.II) | |
| A reaction: A view taken up by Aquinas (Idea 1849) and Kant (Idea 3740). The 'power of judgement' pinpoints the core of rationality, and it is not clear how a robot could fulfil such a power, if it lacked consciousness. Does a machine 'judge' barcodes? |
| 5769 | Does foreknowledge cause necessity, or necessity cause foreknowledge? [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Does foreknowledge of the future cause the necessity of events, or necessity cause the foreknowledge? | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], V.III) | |
| A reaction: An intriguing question, though not one that bothers me. I don't understand how foreknowledge causes necessity, unless God's vision of the future is a kind of 'freezing ray'. Even the gods must bow to necessity (Idea 3016). |
| 5768 | God's universal foreknowledge seems opposed to free will [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: God's universal foreknowledge and freedom of the will seem clean contrary and opposite. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], V.III) | |
| A reaction: The original source of the great theological and philosophical anguish over free will. The problem is anything which fixes future facts, be it oracular knowledge or scientific prediction. Personally I think free will was an invention by religions. |
| 6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: We as human beings are also irrational animals, unique among animals in our capacity to place faith in bizarre fictions of our own construction. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is glaringly true, and a very nice corrective to the talk of Greeks and others about man as the 'rational animal'. From a distance we might be described by Martians as the 'mad animal'. Is the irrational current too strong to swim against? |
| 5762 | The wicked want goodness, so they would not be wicked if they obtained it [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: If the wicked obtained what they want - that is goodness - they could not be wicked. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], IV.II) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice paradox which arises from Boethius being, like Socrates, an intellectualist. The question is whether the wicked want the good de re or de dicto. If they wanted to good de re (as its true self) they would obviously not be wicked. |
| 6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Critics must become causally entangled with their subject matter. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This remark is built on Hume's views. You may have a strong view about a singer, but it may be hard to maintain when someone plays you six rival versions of the same piece. I agree entirely with the remark. It means there are aesthetic experts. |
| 6607 | The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Like the word 'good', the word 'beautiful', when deprived of contextual support, is nearly contentless. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If I say with, for example, Oscar Wilde that beauty is the highest ideal in life, this doesn't strike me as contentless, but I still sympathise with Fogelin's notion that beauty is rooted in particulars. |
| 6604 | Saying 'It's all a matter to taste' ignores the properties of the object discussed [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: "It is all a matter of taste" may be an all-purpose stopper of discussions of aesthetic values, but it also completely severs the connection with the actual properties of the object under consideration. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This remark grows out of his discussion of Hume. I like this remark, which ties in with Particularism in morality, and with the central role of experiments in science. The world forces beliefs on us. |
| 5770 | Rewards and punishments are not deserved if they don't arise from free movement of the mind [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: If there is no free will, then in vain is reward offered to the good and punishment to the bad, because they have not been deserved by any free and willed movement of the mind. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], V.III) | |
| A reaction: I just don't see why decisions have to come out of nowhere in order to have any merit. People are different from natural forces, because the former can be persuaded by reasons. A moral agent is a mechanism which decides according to reasons. |
| 6586 | Cynics are committed to morality, but disappointed or disgusted by human failings [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Cynics are usually unswerving in their commitment to a moral ideal, but disappointed or disgusted by humanity's failure to meet it. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I felt quite suicidal the other day when I saw someone park diagonally across two parking spaces. They can't seem to grasp the elementary Kantian slogan 'What if everybody did that?' It's all hopeless. I wonder if I am becoming a bit of a Cynic? |
| 5764 | When people fall into wickedness they lose their human nature [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: When people fall into wickedness they lose their human nature. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], IV.III) | |
| A reaction: This is a view I find quite sympathetic, but which is a million miles from the modern view. Today's paper showed a picture of a famous criminal holding a machine gun and a baby. We seem to delight in the idea that human nature is partly wicked. |
| 5756 | Happiness is a good which once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Happiness is a good which once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], III.I) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the ancient 'eudaimonism' of Socrates and Aristotle, which might not be entirely compatible with orthodox Christianity. It is not true, though, that happy people lack ambition. To be happy, an unfilfilled aim may be needed. |
| 5763 | The bad seek the good through desire, but the good through virtue, which is more natural [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: The supreme good is the goal of good men and bad men alike, and the good seek it by means of a natural activity - the exercise of virtue - while the bad strive to acquire it by means of their desires, which is not a natural way of obtaining the good. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], IV.II) | |
| A reaction: Interesting here is the slightly surprising claim that the pursuit of virtue is 'natural', implying that the mere pursuit of desire is not. Doesn't nature have to be restrained to achieve the good? Boethius is in the tradition of Aristotle and stoicism. |
| 5759 | Varied aims cannot be good because they differ, but only become good when they unify [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: The various things that men pursue are not perfect and good, because they differ from one another; ..when they differ they are not good, but when they begin to be one they become good, so it is through the acquisition of unity that these things are good. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], III.XI) | |
| A reaction: This is a criticism of Aristotle's pluralism about the good(s) for man. Boethius' thought is appealing, and ties in with the Socratic notion that the virtues might be unified in some way. I think it is right that true virtues merge together, ideally. |
| 5754 | You can't control someone's free mind, only their body and possessions [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: The only way one man can exercise power over another is over his body and what is inferior to it, his possessions. You cannot impose anything on a free mind. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], II.VI) | |
| A reaction: Written, of course, in prison. Boethius had not met hypnotism, or mind-controlling drugs, or invasive brain surgery. He hadn't read '1984'. He hadn't seen 'The Ipcress File'. (In fact, he should have got out more…) |
| 6572 | Deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation and retribution can come into conflict in punishments [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The purposes of punishment include deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation, and retribution, but they don't always sit well together. Deterrence is best served by making prisons miserable places, but this may run counter to rehabilitation. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to most educated people that retribution should be pushed far down the list if we are to be civilised (see Idea 1659), and yet personal revenge for a small act of aggression seems basic, normal and acceptable. We dream of rehabilitation. |
| 6573 | Retributivists say a crime can be 'paid for'; deterrentists still worry about potential victims [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: A strict retributivist is likely to say that once a crime is paid for, that's that; a deterrence theorist is likely to say that the protection of potential victims overrides the released convict's right to a free and fresh start. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting since the retributivist here has the more liberal attitude. Reformists will also have a dilemma when years in prison have failed to reform the convict. Virtue theorists like balance, and sensitively consider our relations with the criminals. |
| 16692 | Divine eternity is the all-at-once and complete possession of unending life [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Divine eternity is the all-at-once [tota simul] and complete possession of unending life. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], V.6), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a famous definition, and 'tota simul' became the phrase used for 'entia successiva', such as a day, or the Olympic Games. |
| 5752 | Where does evil come from if there is a god; where does good come from if there isn't? [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: A philosopher (possibly Epicurus) asked where evil comes from if there is a god, and where good comes from if there isn't. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], I.IV) | |
| A reaction: A nice question. The best known answer to the first question is 'Satan'. Some would say that in the second case good is impossible, but I would have thought that the only possible answer is 'mankind'. |
| 5757 | God is the supreme good, so no source of goodness could take precedence over God [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: That which by its own nature is something distinct from supreme good, cannot be supreme good. ..It is impossible for anything to be by nature better than that from which it is derived, so that which is the origin of all things is supreme good. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], III.X) | |
| A reaction: This is the contortion early Christians got into once they decided God had to be 'supreme' in the moral world (and every other world). Boethius allows a possible external source of all morality, but then has to say that this source is morally inferior. |
| 5758 | God is the good [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: God is the good. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], III.XI) | |
| A reaction: This summary follows on from the rather dubious discussion in Idea 5757. If God IS the good, it is not clear how God could be usefully described as 'good'. We would know that he was good a priori, without any enquiry into his nature being needed. |
| 5760 | The power through which creation remains in existence and motion I call 'God' [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: For this power, whatever it is, through which creation remains in existence and in motion, I use the word which all people use, namely God. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], III.XII) | |
| A reaction: An interesting caution in the phrase 'whatever it is'. Boethius would have been very open-minded in discussion with modern science about the stability of nature. Personally I reject Boethius' theory, but don't have a better one. Cf Idea 1431. |
| 5753 | The regular events of this life could never be due to chance [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: I could never believe that events of such regularity as we find in this life are due to the haphazards of chance. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], I.VI) | |
| A reaction: It depends what you mean by 'chance'. Boethius infers a conscious mind, and presumes this to be God, but that is two large and unsupported steps. Modern atheists must acknowledge Boethius' problem. Why is there order? |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |
| 5765 | The reward of the good is to become gods [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Goodness is happiness, ..but we agree that those who attain happiness are divine. The reward of the good, then, is to become gods. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], IV.III) | |
| A reaction: Kant offered a similar argument (see Idea 1455). Most of us are unlikely to agree with the second premise of Boethius' argument. The idea that we might somehow become gods gripped the imagination for the next thousand years. |
| 5761 | God can do anything, but he cannot do evil, so evil must be nothing [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: 'There is nothing that an omnipotent power could not do?' 'No.' 'Then can God do evil?' 'No.' 'So evil is nothing, since that is what He cannot do who can do anthing.' | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], III.XII) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of the contortions necessary once you insist that God must be 'omnipotent', in some absolute sense of the term. Saying that evil is 'nothing' strikes me as nothing more than a feeble attempt to insult it. |
| 5766 | If you could see the plan of Providence, you would not think there was evil anywhere [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: If you could see the plan of Providence, you would not think there was evil anywhere. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], IV.VI) | |
| A reaction: This brings out the verificationist in me. See Idea 1467, by Antony Flew. Presumably Boethius would retain his faith as Europe moved horribly from 1939 to 1945, and even if the whole of humanity sank into squalid viciousness. |