59 ideas
| 22285 | Impredicative definitions are circular, but fine for picking out, rather than creating something [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The circularity in a definition where the property being defined is used in the definition is now known as 'impredicativity'. ...Some cases ('the tallest man in the room') are unproblematic, as they pick him out, and don't conjure him into existence. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 07 'Impred') | |
| A reaction: [part summary] |
| 22301 | The Identity Theory says a proposition is true if it coincides with what makes it true [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The Identity Theory of truth says a proposition is true just in case it coincides with what makes it true. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 23 'Abs') | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is how 'there are trees in the wood' can somehow 'coincide with' or 'be identical to' the situation outside my window. The theory is sort of right, but we will never define the relationship, which is no better than 'corresponds'. |
| 22324 | It has been unfortunate that externalism about truth is equated with correspondence [Potter] |
| Full Idea: There has been an unfortunate tendency in the secondary literature to equate externalism about truth with the correspondence theory. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 65 'Truth') | |
| A reaction: Quite helpful to distinguish internalist from externalist theories of truth. It is certainly the case that robust externalist views of truth have unfortunately been discredited merely because the correspondence account is inadequate. |
| 10702 | Set theory's three roles: taming the infinite, subject-matter of mathematics, and modes of reasoning [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Set theory has three roles: as a means of taming the infinite, as a supplier of the subject-matter of mathematics, and as a source of its modes of reasoning. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], Intro 1) | |
| A reaction: These all seem to be connected with mathematics, but there is also ontological interest in set theory. Potter emphasises that his second role does not entail a commitment to sets 'being' numbers. |
| 10713 | Usually the only reason given for accepting the empty set is convenience [Potter] |
| Full Idea: It is rare to find any direct reason given for believing that the empty set exists, except for variants of Dedekind's argument from convenience. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 04.3) |
| 13044 | Infinity: There is at least one limit level [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Axiom of Infinity: There is at least one limit level. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 04.9) | |
| A reaction: A 'limit ordinal' is one which has successors, but no predecessors. The axiom just says there is at least one infinity. |
| 10708 | Nowadays we derive our conception of collections from the dependence between them [Potter] |
| Full Idea: It is only quite recently that the idea has emerged of deriving our conception of collections from a relation of dependence between them. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'iterative' view of sets, which he traces back to Gödel's 'What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?' |
| 13546 | The 'limitation of size' principles say whether properties collectivise depends on the number of objects [Potter] |
| Full Idea: We group under the heading 'limitation of size' those principles which classify properties as collectivizing or not according to how many objects there are with the property. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 13.5) | |
| A reaction: The idea was floated by Cantor, toyed with by Russell (1906), and advocated by von Neumann. The thought is simply that paradoxes start to appear when sets become enormous. |
| 10707 | Mereology elides the distinction between the cards in a pack and the suits [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Mereology tends to elide the distinction between the cards in a pack and the suits. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: The example is a favourite of Frege's. Potter is giving a reason why mathematicians opted for set theory. I'm not clear, though, why a pack cannot have either 4 parts or 52 parts. Parts can 'fall under a concept' (such as 'legs'). I'm puzzled. |
| 10704 | We can formalize second-order formation rules, but not inference rules [Potter] |
| Full Idea: In second-order logic only the formation rules are completely formalizable, not the inference rules. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites Gödel's First Incompleteness theorem for this. |
| 22279 | Frege's sign |--- meant judgements, but the modern |- turnstile means inference, with intecedents [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Natural deduction systems generally depend on conditional proof, but for Frege everything is asserted unconditionally. The modern turnstile |- is allowed to have antecedents, and hence to represent inference rather than Frege's judgement sign |---. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 03 'Axioms') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Shockingly, Frege's approach seems more psychological than the modern approach. I would say that the whole point of logic is that it has to be conditional, because the truth of the antecedents is irrelevant. |
| 22291 | Deductivism can't explain how the world supports unconditional conclusions [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Deductivism is a good account of large parts of mathematics, but stumbles where mathematics is directly applicable to the world. It fails to explain how we detach the antecedent so as to arrive at unconditional conclusions. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 12 'Deduc') | |
| A reaction: I suppose the reply would be that we have designed deductive structures which fit our understanding of reality - so it is all deductive, but selected pragmatically. |
| 10703 | Supposing axioms (rather than accepting them) give truths, but they are conditional [Potter] |
| Full Idea: A 'supposition' axiomatic theory is as concerned with truth as a 'realist' one (with undefined terms), but the truths are conditional. Satisfying the axioms is satisfying the theorem. This is if-thenism, or implicationism, or eliminative structuralism. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Aha! I had failed to make the connection between if-thenism and eliminative structuralism (of which I am rather fond). I think I am an if-thenist (not about all truth, but about provable truth). |
| 22295 | Modern logical truths are true under all interpretations of the non-logical words [Potter] |
| Full Idea: In the modern definition, a 'logical truth' is true under every interpretation of the non-logical words it contains. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 19 'Frege's') | |
| A reaction: What if the non-logical words are nonsense, or are used inconsistently ('good'), or ambiguously ('bank'), or vaguely ('bald'), or with unsure reference ('the greatest philosopher' becomes 'Bentham')? What qualifies as an 'interpretation'? |
| 10712 | If set theory didn't found mathematics, it is still needed to count infinite sets [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Even if set theory's role as a foundation for mathematics turned out to be wholly illusory, it would earn its keep through the calculus it provides for counting infinite sets. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 03.8) |
| 17882 | It is remarkable that all natural number arithmetic derives from just the Peano Axioms [Potter] |
| Full Idea: It is a remarkable fact that all the arithmetical properties of the natural numbers can be derived from such a small number of assumptions (as the Peano Axioms). | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 05.2) | |
| A reaction: If one were to defend essentialism about arithmetic, this would be grist to their mill. I'm just saying. |
| 22310 | The formalist defence against Gödel is to reject his metalinguistic concept of truth [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Gödel's theorem does not refute formalism outright, because the committed formalist need not recognise the metalinguistic notion of truth to which the theorem appeals. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 45 'Log') | |
| A reaction: The theorem was prior to Tarski's account of truth. Potter says Gödel avoided explicit mention of truth because of this problem. In general Gödel showed that there are truths outside the formal system (which is all provable). |
| 22298 | Why is fictional arithmetic applicable to the real world? [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Fictionalists struggle to explain why arithmetic is applicable to the real world in a way that other stories are not. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 21 'Math') | |
| A reaction: We know why some novels are realistic and others just the opposite. If a novel aimed to 'model' the real world it would be even closer to it. Fictionalists must explain why some fictions are useful. |
| 22287 | If 'concrete' is the negative of 'abstract', that means desires and hallucinations are concrete [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The word 'concrete' is often used as the negative of 'abstract', with the slightly odd consequence that desires and hallucinations are thereby classified as concrete. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 12 'Numb') | |
| A reaction: There is also the even more baffling usage of 'abstract' for the most highly generalised mathematics, leaving lower levels as 'concrete'. I favour the use of 'generalised' wherever possible, rather than 'abstract'. |
| 13043 | A relation is a set consisting entirely of ordered pairs [Potter] |
| Full Idea: A set is called a 'relation' if every element of it is an ordered pair. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 04.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern extensional view of relations. For 'to the left of', you just list all the things that are to the left, with the things they are to the left of. But just listing the ordered pairs won't necessarily reveal how they are related. |
| 22284 | 'Greater than', which is the ancestral of 'successor', strictly orders the natural numbers [Potter] |
| Full Idea: From the successor function we can deduce its ancestral, the 'greater than' relation, which is a strict total ordering of the natural numbers. (Frege did not mention this, but Dedekind worked it out, when expounding definition by recursion). | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 07 'Def') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 13042 | If dependence is well-founded, with no infinite backward chains, this implies substances [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The argument that the relation of dependence is well-founded ...is a version of the classical arguments for substance. ..Any conceptual scheme which genuinely represents a world cannot contain infinite backward chains of meaning. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: Thus the iterative conception of set may imply a notion of substance, and Barwise's radical attempt to ditch the Axiom of Foundation (Idea 13039) was a radical attempt to get rid of 'substances'. Potter cites Wittgenstein as a fan of substances here. |
| 13041 | Collections have fixed members, but fusions can be carved in innumerable ways [Potter] |
| Full Idea: A collection has a determinate number of members, whereas a fusion may be carved up into parts in various equally valid (although perhaps not equally interesting) ways. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to sum up both the attraction and the weakness of mereology. If you doubt the natural identity of so-called 'objects', then maybe classical mereology is the way to go. |
| 10709 | Priority is a modality, arising from collections and members [Potter] |
| Full Idea: We must conclude that priority is a modality distinct from that of time or necessity, a modality arising in some way out of the manner in which a collection is constituted from its members. | |
| From: Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: He is referring to the 'iterative' view of sets, and cites Aristotle 'Metaphysics' 1019a1-4 as background. |
| 22281 | A material conditional cannot capture counterfactual reasoning [Potter] |
| Full Idea: What the material conditional most significantly fails to capture is counterfactual reasoning. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 04 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: The point is that counterfactuals say 'if P were the case (which it isn't), then Q'. But that means P is false, and in the material conditional everything follows from a falsehood. A reinterpretation of the conditional might embrace counterfactuals. |
| 604 | Knowledge is mind and knowing 'cohabiting' [Lycophron, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Lycophron has it that knowledge is the 'cohabitation' (rather than participation or synthesis) of knowing and the soul. | |
| From: report of Lycophron (fragments/reports [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1045b | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a rather passive and inert relationship. Presumably knowing something implies the possibility of acting on it. |
| 22327 | Knowledge from a drunken schoolteacher is from a reliable and unreliable process [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge might result from a reliable and an unreliable process. ...Is something knowledge if you were told it by a drunken schoolteacher? | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 66 'Rel') | |
| A reaction: Nice example. The listener must decide which process to rely on. But how do you decide that, if not by assessing the likely truth of what you are being told? It could be a bad teacher who is inspired by drink. |
| 22273 | Traditionally there are twelve categories of judgement, in groups of three [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The traditional categorisation of judgements (until at least 1800) was as universal, particular or singular; as affirmative, negative or infinite; as categorical, hypothetical or disjunctive; or as problematic, assertoric or apodictic. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 02 'Trans') | |
| A reaction: Arranging these things in neat groups of three seems to originate with the stoics. Making distinctions like this is very much the job of a philosopher, but arranging them in neat equinumerous groups is intellectual tyranny. |
| 22290 | The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can't refer to a concept, because it is saturated [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Frege's mirroring principle (that the structure of thoughts mirrors that of language) has the uncomfortable consequence that since the phrase 'the concept "horse"' is saturated, it cannot refer to something unsaturated, which includes concepts. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 16 'Conc') |
| 22283 | Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Compositionality is best seen as saying the semantic value of a string is explained by the strings lower down its parsing tree. It is unimportant whether a string is always parsed in terms of its own substrings. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 05 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: That is, the analysis must explain the meaning, but the analysis can contain more than the actual ingredients of the sentence (which would be too strict). |
| 22282 | 'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Some authors urge the strong notion of 'direct compositionality', which requires that the content of a sentence be explained in terms of the contents of the component parts of that very sentence. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 05 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: The alternative is that meaning is fully explained by an analysis, but that may contain more than the actual components of the sentence. |
| 22296 | Compositionality is more welcome in logic than in linguistics (which is more contextual) [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The principle of compositionality is more popular among philosophers of logic than of language, because the subtle context-sensitivity or ordinary language makes providing a compositional semantics for it a daunting challenge. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 21 'Lang') | |
| A reaction: Logicians love breaking complex entities down into simple atomic parts. Linguistics tries to pin down something much more elusive. |
| 22849 | Rawls's theory cannot justify liberalism, since it presupposes free and equal participants [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Rawls's theory presupposes that the contractors are conceived, and conceive themselves, to be free and equal persons. Consequently, the theory cannot be presented as a justificatory theory of liberalism. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: Nice. If you imagine diverse groups with many strong beliefs coming together to form a society, Rawls is asking them all to become liberals before they all decide how to live together. |
| 22848 | People with strong prior beliefs would have nothing to do with a veil of ignorance [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Why would a group of people with strong beliefs (e.g. religious beliefs) agree to debate the problem of what norms should govern their association from behind a veil of ignorance? …They would not accept the veil of ignorance as fair. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Rawls's experiment assumes liberal people with very few beliefs. No racial supremacist is going to enter a society in which they may be of a different race. Charvet says the entrants would all need to be pluralists about the good. |
| 22838 | Societies need shared values, so conservatism is right if rational discussion of values is impossible [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Were it true that rational discussion of values is impossible, then a conservative attitude would seem to be the only viable position. Some set of common values is necessary to maintain the unity of a political society. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: Better to say that the less values can be both discussed and changed the stronger is the case for a degree of conservatism. Conservatives tend to favour values asserted by authority, rather than by popular (undiscussed) consensus. |
| 22846 | The universalism of utilitarianism implies a world state [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism is a universalist ethic, so the political realisation of this ethic would seem to be a world state seeking to maximise happiness for the world's population. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 12) | |
| A reaction: It certainly doesn't seem to favour the citizens of the state where it is implemented, since miserable people just across the border would have priority, and all miserable migrants must be welcomed. There is no loyalty to citizens. |
| 22835 | Liberals value freedom and equality, but the society itself must decide on its values [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: While freedom and equality are liberal values …they are fundamental regulative ideas of an independent society that is self-regulating …and decides what its own social and political arrangements should be. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 06) | |
| A reaction: So the central political activity is persuasion, not enforcement. Illiberal societies all contain liberal individuals. |
| 22831 | Modern libertarian societies still provide education and some housing [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: No society today is libertarian in the extreme sense. Even the freest economically, such as Singapore have their governments provide education services and public housing. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: There is a good argument that many other services should be provided by a libertarian state, on the grounds that it is more efficient, and the services must otherwise paid for by much higher salaries. |
| 22839 | Liberalism needs people to either have equal autonomy, or everyone to have enough autonomy [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: To get a liberal society one would have to claim that either everyone possesses autonomy to an equal degree or that everyone possesses a threshold level of the capacity that entitles them to enjoy the full liberal rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: This leaves out the more right-wing attitude that people can increase their capacity for autonomy if they are forced to stand on their own feet. A liberal society must decide how to treat persons incapable of proper autonomy. |
| 22847 | Kant places a higher value on the universal rational will than on the people asserting it [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: For Kant what is of absolute worth is the universal rational will which become an individual's actual will. Insofar as the individual fails to will the universal, they have no absolute worth, so whether or not they exist is unimportant. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: A lovely demolition of the claims of Kant to be the patriarch of liberalism! Liberalism must place supreme value on each individual, not on some abstracted realm of pure reason and moral good. Liberals are motivated by love, not reason. |
| 22821 | Liberalism asserts maximum freedom, but that must be equal for all participants [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism attaches fundamental value to leaving individuals as free as possible … - but there is another fundamental value implicit in this idea - the equal status of the participants in the practice. By this I mean that they all have the same rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Libertarian liberalism (e.g. Nozick) only asserts the fundament principle of freedom, but such a society swiftly deprives most of its members of those very freedoms. Egalitarian Liberalism should be our default political ideology. |
| 22834 | Egalitarian liberals prefer equality (either of input or outcome) to liberty [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Rather than libertarianism, egalitarian liberals promote equality, either of outcomes (of happiness or of well-being), or of inputs (such as opportunities, capacities or resources), which they favour ahead of freedom. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 06) | |
| A reaction: This is my team, I think. I think I'm a liberal who thinks liberty is a bit overrated. Equal outcome according to capacity (promoted by Nussbaum) seems attractive. |
| 22822 | Liberals promote community and well-being - because all good societies need them [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Community and well-being are not specifically liberal values. They are values any independent political society must pursue whether it is a liberal society or not. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems, at a stroke, to undermine the familiar debate between liberals and communitarians. I've switched to the former from the latter, because communitarians is potentially too paternalistic and conservative. Persuade individuals to be communal! |
| 22841 | Identity multiculturalism emerges from communitarianism, preferring community to humanity [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Identity-based multiculturalism developed from communitarianism. …People come to consciousness of themselves as members of some community before they identify themselves as members of the human race. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: This is 'identity politics', which Carvet sees as a problem from liberalism. Is it more important to be a woman or a Muslim or a Scot than to be a human being? It seems to create institutional antagonisms. |
| 22842 | For communitarians it seems that you must accept the culture you are born into [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Communitarians have difficulty avoiding the relativist trap. It seems they must claim that if one is born into a liberal society one cannot but be a liberal, and if one is born into a communist society one cannot but be a communist. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who accepts the Hegelian view of history and culture seems doomed to such relativism, and Hegel is a communitarian precursor. This is a good reason for me to reject communitarianism, after a long flirtation. We can criticise our own culture. |
| 22830 | Give by ability and receive by need, rather than a free labour market [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Only the most extreme collective socialism denies the freedom to sell one's labour power and buy that of others, under the communist slogan 'from each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs'. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Marx 'Critique of the Gotha Programme'] I would guess that this practice is not abnormal in old traditional villages, though a community would be tempted to reward highly a very successful member. |
| 22829 | Allowing defamatory speech is against society's interests, by blurring which people are trustworthy [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The argument for restricting defamatory speech is that unrestricted speech makes it impossible, or too difficult, to distinguish between those who deserve a trustworthy reputation and those who don't - a distinction in society's best interests. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 03) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of appeal to the common good, in opposition to the normal freedoms of liberalism. An example of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Should assertion of the common good of a group be a prime value of liberalism? |
| 22836 | 'Freedom from' is an empty idea, if the freedom is not from impediments to my desires [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Berlin's distinction of 'freedom from' and 'freedom to' is worthless …because to say that I want to be free from something for absolutely no reason makes no sense. Unfreedom is being blocked from what I want to do, which ceases if I no longer want it. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The government could guarantee us against attacks by albatrosses, but we would hardly have a national holiday to celebrate the freedom. Still, there is freedom from incoming troubles, and freedom to output things. |
| 22837 | Positive freedom can lead to coercion, if you are forced to do what you chose to do [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Berlin saw positive freedom as a justification for illiberal coercion. If I am positively free only in doing X, then if I am forced to do X, I will still be free. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: I suppose Berlin is thinking of Russian farmers, who wanted to farm, but then found they were forced to do what they were going to do anyway. It's better than being forced to do what you didn't want to do. Forcing clearly isn't freedom. |
| 22844 | First level autonomy is application of personal values; second level is criticising them [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: First level autonomy is being able to apply one's scheme of values to one's actions and life; second level autonomy is being able to subject those values to critical evaluation. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 10) | |
| A reaction: Charvet sees this as a key issue for liberalism. How do you treat citizens who cannot advance beyond the first level? He mentions the elitism of Plato's Republic that results. |
| 22840 | Mere equality, as in two trees being the same height, has no value at all [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: That the relation of equality might be considered a value in itself is an absurdity. Would the equality of blinding the only sighted person in a blind society be good? Is it inherently good that two trees are the same height? This is nonsense. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: He cites Temkin 1993 as defending the blinding example! Obviously equality is only possible in certain respects (though electrons might be equal in all respects). So the point is to identify the important respects. The rest is rhetoric. |
| 22843 | Inequalities are worse if they seem to be your fault, rather than social facts [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Inequality is worse in a meritocracy than in a stratified society, because everyone enjoys a formal equality of status and your position in the social order is due to your merit or lack of merit, so you have only yourself to blame for being at the bottom. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 10) | |
| A reaction: This is the simple point that it is worse to lack some good if you might have possessed it, rather than it being entirely out of reach. It also makes the false assumption that people are largely responsible for their merit or lack of it (ignoring luck). |
| 22845 | Money allows unlimited inequalities, and we obviously all agree to money [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The introduction of money allows people to accumulate wealth without limit. Since money only works through everyone's agreement …everyone can be taken to have agreed to the consequences of money in the unequal distribution of wealth. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 11) | |
| A reaction: [Locke] Presumably large inequalities of possessions and territory were possible before money, but there was at least an upper limit. The current owner of Amazon may end up with more wealth than the whole of the rest of humanity combined. |
| 22823 | The rule of law is mainly to restrict governments [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The rule of law is directed at the restriction of the power of governments as much, if not more, then the power of private individuals. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: The more powerful you are the more restricting is the rule of law. Every government is tempted to change the law to expand its powers. The UK government has just legislated to restrict public demonstrations. Law is the people's weapon against autocrats. |
| 22825 | The 1689 Bill of Rights denied the monarch new courts, or the right to sit as judge [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The 1689 Bill of Rights said the monarch could not create new courts of law, or act as a judge at law. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: The background was the abolition of the court of Star Chamber in 1641, which had been secret, severe, and controlled by the monarch. Is it possible to create a new type of court, or are we stuck with the current ones? |
| 22826 | From 1701 only parliament could remove judges, whose decisions could not be discussed [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: In 1701 UK judges were given secure tenure, being removable only by parliament which at the same time undertook to follow a convention not to discuss particular judicial decisions. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: In recent years the UK Daily Mail published the pictures of three judges, and labelled them 'traitors' because of their verdict about leaving the European Union. |
| 22827 | Justice superior to the rule of law is claimed on behalf of the workers, or the will of the nation [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Communist leaders justify themselves as the embodiment of the people's will as workers, and fascist leaders as expressing the will of the nation. Both believe their policies contain a superior justice on this basis. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] A neat summary of why the rule of law might be rejected (other than by simple tyrrany justified only by force). In modern democracies recent right-wing governments have pushed back the law and attacked justice on this basis. |
| 22828 | The rule of law mainly benefits those with property and liberties [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: A rule of law regime will primarily benefit those possessing property and liberty rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: Important. It's no good fighting for the law if the law doesn't protect what you have got, or if you have got nothing to protect. Important steps must precede assertion of the rule of law. |
| 22832 | Welfare is needed if citizens are to accept the obligations of a liberal state [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The welfare state provides the background conditions under which it is reasonable to expect one's fellow citizens to commit to liberal principles of interaction, even if those conditions can only be achieved through a degree of compulsion. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: You cannot expect people to accept the role of 'free' citizen if that is likely to result in swift misery. A liberal state will only command loyalty if it has a safety net. Fully committed liberalism implies modest socialism. |