40 ideas
| 20981 | What justifies reliance on reason? Is it just a tool? Why is it better than blind belief? [Sen] |
| Full Idea: What is the ultimate justification for relying on reason? Is reason cherished as a good tool, and if so, how does it differ from blind and unquestioning belief? | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 01 'Critique') | |
| A reaction: And can it answer the romantic charge of stunting a rich life? NIetzsche started this one, by asking the value of truth. Proposal: treat others rationally, and treat yourself intuitively. |
| 20982 | In politics and ethics, scrutiny from different perspectives is essential for objectivity [Sen] |
| Full Idea: I take reasoned scrutiny from different perspectives to be an essential part of the demands of objectivity for ethical and political convictions. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 01 'Adam') | |
| A reaction: We should distinguish the nature of objectivity from ways of achieving it. Multiple perspectives don't guarantee objectivity. This is peer review in science, and publisher's readers of philosophy texts. What is objectivity? The same as truth? |
| 20339 | Classes rarely share properties with their members - unlike universals and types [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Classes can share properties with their members (e.g. the class of big things is big), but this is very rare. ....In the case of both universals and types, there will be shared properties. Red things can be exhilarating, and so can redness. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 92) | |
| A reaction: 'Exhilarating' is an extrinsic property, so not the best illustration. This is interesting, but would need checking with a wide range of examples. (Too busy for that right now) |
| 20338 | We often treat a type as if it were a sort of token [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Much of the time we think and talk of a type as though it were itself a kind of token. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 35) | |
| A reaction: A helpful way of connecting what I call 'objectification' to the more conventional modern philosophical vocabulary. Thus I might claim that beauty is superior to truth, as if they were two tokens. |
| 20990 | Rationality is conformity to reasons that can be sustained even after scrutiny [Sen] |
| Full Idea: My main argument can be fairly easily understood in terms of seeing rationality as conformity with reasons that one can sustain, even after scrutiny, and not just at first sight. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 08 'Rational' n) | |
| A reaction: We would need to say more about the 'scrutiny' before we had a really good account of rationality here. In Idea 20982 he emphasises the need for scrutiny by other people, and not mere self-criticism. The key may to be invite outside criticism. |
| 20342 | Interpretation is performance for some arts, and critical for all arts [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Performative interpretation occurs only with certain arts, but critical intepretation pertains to all. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 38) | |
| A reaction: Fairly obvious, but this is the first point to make about the concept of 'interpretation'. Does the word in fact have two meanings? Or do I perform a painting when I look carefully at it? |
| 20343 | A love of nature must precede a love of art [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: We could not have a feeling for the beauties of art unless we had been correspondingly moved in front of nature. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 43) | |
| A reaction: Wollheim offers this in defence of Kant's view, without necessarily agreeing. Similarly one could hardly care for fictional characters, but not for real people. So the aesthetic attitude may arise from life, rather than from art. Is art hence unimportant? |
| 20348 | A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe, rather than defining art, it would be more fruitful, and more realistic, to seek a general method of identifying works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 60) | |
| A reaction: The whole enterprise is ruined by Marcel Duchamp! I'm more interested in identifying or defining good art. |
| 20347 | If beauty needs organisation, then totally simple things can't be beautiful [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is said that beauty cannot consist in organisation because, if it did, we would not be able to predicate beauty of totally simple objects. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 59) | |
| A reaction: [He says this idea originates in Plotinus] I'm struggling to think of an example of something which is 'totally' simple and beautiful. Maybe a patch of colour like the breast of a bullfinch? |
| 20345 | Some say art must have verbalisable expression, and others say the opposite! [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The view that a work of art expresses nothing if it can't be put into other words ...is reduced by the view that a work of art has no value if what it expresses or says can be put into (other) words. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 49) | |
| A reaction: I prefer the second view. Poetry is what is lost in translation. Good art actually seems to evoke emotions which one virtually never feels in ordinary life. But how could that be possible? What are those emotions doing there? |
| 20331 | It is claimed that the expressive properties of artworks are non-physical [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The argument that works of art have properties that physical objects could not have characteristically concentrates on the expressive properties of works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 10) | |
| A reaction: Since the idea of an object having non-physical properties strikes me as ridiculous, this gets off to a bad start. If artworks are abstract objects, then all of their properties are non-physical. |
| 20336 | Style can't be seen directly within a work, but appreciation needs a grasp of style [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: 'Style' would seem to be a concept that cannot be applied to a work solely on the basis of what is represented and yet it is also essential to a proper understanding or appreciation of a work. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. One long held musical note creates an expectation which depends on the presumed style of the piece of music. A single bar from a piece may well not exhibit its characteristic style. |
| 20337 | The traditional view is that knowledge of its genre to essential to appreciating literature [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: From Aristotle onwards it has been a tenet of the traditional rhetoric that the proper understanding of a literary work involves the location of it in the correct genre, that is, as drama, epic or lyric. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Walton argues this persuasively. I've seen the climax of a Jacobean tragedy ruined by laughter from the audience. Genre dictates appropriate responses, so it is a communal concept. |
| 20333 | If artworks are not physical objects, they are either ideal entities, or collections of phenomena [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: In denying that works of art are physical objects, one theory (the 'ideal') withdraws them altogether from experience, and a second theory ('phenomenal') pins them too it inescapably and at all points. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 21) | |
| A reaction: I incline towards them being transient ideals, created by human minds. As with so much, we idealise and objectify them as 'works', and abstract their image from the instance(s) we encounter. |
| 20334 | The ideal theory says art is an intuition, shaped by a particular process, and presented in public [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The ideal theory of Croce and Collingwood says art is first an inner intuition or expression of the artist, resulting from a particular process of organisation and unification, which can be externalised in public form. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 22) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] As stated this doesn't sound very controversial or 'ideal'. I take it the theory is intended to be more platonist than this expression of it suggests. I think the idea that it is an 'expression' of the artist is wrong. |
| 20335 | The ideal theory of art neglects both the audience and the medium employed [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Because the ideal theory makes a work of art inner or mental, the link between the artist and the audience has been severed .....and it also totally ignores the significance of the medium. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 23) | |
| A reaction: Emily Dickinson had virtually no audience for her poetry. The medium used to perform Bach's 'Art of Fugue' seems unimportant. For paintings of painterly painters paint matters. For some visual art many different media will suffice. |
| 20340 | A musical performance has virtually the same features as the piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: With the usual reservations, there is nothing that can be predicated of a performance of a piece of music that could not also be predicated of that piece of music itself. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: He offers this as evidence that it fits the performance being a token, and music (and all other art) being a type. There are quite a few 'reservations'. Music too difficult to perform. Great music always badly performed. |
| 20341 | An interpretation adds further properties to the generic piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Interpretation may be regarded as the production of a token that has properties in excess of those of the type. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: I suppose so. If you play accurately everything that is written in the score, then anything else has to be an addition. If you play less than the score, you aren't quite playing that piece of music. |
| 20332 | A drawing only represents Napoleon if the artist intended it to [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary, if a drawing is to represent Napoleon, that the draughtsman should intend it to be Napoleon. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 13) | |
| A reaction: Does a perfect and intended representation of a person also count as a representation of the person's identical twin? The families of both might well order copies. |
| 23688 | Noncognitivism tries to avoid both naturalism and mysterious morality [Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: Noncognitivism is an attempt to avoid the alleged problems of naturalism without the mysteries of Moore's non-naturalism. | |
| From: John Hacker-Wright (Philippa Foot's Moral Thought [2013], 1) | |
| A reaction: R.M. Hare is the best example of this approach. Moore's Open Question argument was said to prove the Naturalistic Fallacy, which imagined that morality could be a feature of nature. It led Moore to platonism. I prefer Philippa Foot. |
| 21005 | A human right is not plausible if public scrutiny might reject it [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The force of a claim for a human right would indeed be seriously undermined if it were possible to show that it is unlikely to survive open public scrutiny. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 17 'Scrutiny') | |
| A reaction: This is a public aspect of Scanlon's 'contractualist' approach to ethics. You can hardly disagree with the idea, though anti-racist legislation in a strongly racist society might be a good test case. |
| 20983 | The original position insures that the agreements reached are fair [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The original position is the appropriate initial status quo which insures that the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair. This fact yields the name 'justice as fairness'. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: I suppose it insures fairness on day one of the new society, but that might have all been wiped out in the next fortnight, when you find you are the least advantaged as a result of racism. |
| 20987 | The veil of ignorance encourages neutral interests, but not a wider view of values [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The veil of ignorance is very effective for making people see beyond their vested interests and goals. And yet it does little to ensure an open scrutiny of local and possibly parochial values. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 06 'Original') | |
| A reaction: Communitarians also make a similar criticism of Rawls - that people in the initial position simplify themselves into pure rational agents looking for 'basic goods'. |
| 20984 | A social contract limits the pursuit of justice to members of a single society [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The use of the social contract in the Rawlsian form inescapably limits the involvement of participants in the pursuit of justice to the members of a given polity, or 'people'. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 02 'Relevance') | |
| A reaction: This relates to the criticism of contractarian ethics - that the weak have nothing to bargain with. One can either add international contracts, or appeal to natural human rights. Or we could just be nice to one another? Nah! |
| 20986 | A person's voice may count because of their interests, or because of their good sense [Sen] |
| Full Idea: A person's voice may count either because her interests are involved, or because he reasoning and judgement can enlighten a discussion. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 04 'Diversity') | |
| A reaction: Good. Inarticulate people may have strong interests, and articulate and helpful people may be wholly disinterested. But people may have unworthy interests, and may be articulate but not sensible. |
| 21001 | Famines tend to be caused by authoritarian rule [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The history of famines has had a peculiarly close connection with authoritarian rules. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 16 'Famine') | |
| A reaction: He cites the British Empire, the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia. There is unlikely to be a local famine if there is free movement of food supplies.342 |
| 21002 | Effective democracy needs tolerant values [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The formation of tolerant values is quite central to the smooth functioning of a democratic system. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 16 'Minority') | |
| A reaction: There is presumably a brutal sort of democracy, if the majority in a polarised society agree to crush a minority. |
| 20999 | Democracy as 'government by discussion' now has wide support [Sen] |
| Full Idea: In contemporary political philosophy the view that democracy is best seen as 'government by discussion' has gained widespread support. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 15 'Content') | |
| A reaction: The obvious worry about this is inefficiency in decision-making. Also the dominance of noisy stupidity. But citizens need to feel involved, and committed to the decisions. |
| 20979 | Democracy needs more than some institutions; diverse sections of the people must be heard [Sen] |
| Full Idea: Democracy has to be judged not just by the institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], Pref 'Public') | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'democracy'. Should the workplace and the school and the family be democratic, or just the choice of leaders? What can oblige leaders to listen to the people? Listen to, and then ignore? |
| 20993 | Eradicating smallpox does not impoverish nature [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The eradication of smallpox is not viewed as an impoverishment of nature. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 11 'Sustainable') | |
| A reaction: You'd have to be a pretty 'deep' ecologist to defend the carrier of smallpox, or Dutch Elm disease. The idea is included for balance. |
| 20995 | Capabilities are part of freedom, involving real opportunities [Sen] |
| Full Idea: Capability is an aspect of freedom, concentrating in particular on substantive opportunities. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 13 'Well-being') | |
| A reaction: This is the 'capabilities approach' of Sen and Nussbaum. The key word is 'substantive' (as opposed to theoretical). We are all free to become astronauts, but.... |
| 20998 | Freedom can involve capabilities, independence and non-interference [Sen] |
| Full Idea: There is no embarrassment in accommodating several distinct features within the idea of freedom, focusing respectively on capability, lack of dependence and lack of interference. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 14 'Capability') | |
| A reaction: This relates to Berlin's distinction between negative and positive rights. |
| 20997 | The need for equality among people arises from impartiality and objectivity [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The demand for seeing people as equals (in some important perspective) relates to the normative demand for impartiality, and the related claims of objectivity. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 14 'Equality') | |
| A reaction: Either impartiality already contains (analytically) the concept of equality, or the principle of sufficient reason must be invoked. True impartiality removes any reason for preferring one person to another. But what if preference is 'to my taste'? |
| 20996 | All modern theories of justice demand equality of something [Sen] |
| Full Idea: Every normative theory of social justice that has received support and advocacy in recent times seems to demand equality of something. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 14 Intro) | |
| A reaction: He mentions liberties, income, rights and utilities. |
| 20988 | Freedom from torture or terrorist attacks is independent of citizenship [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The human right of a person not to be tortured or subjected to terrorist attacks is affirmed independently of the country of which this person is a citizen. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 06 'Exclusionary') | |
| A reaction: If rights can only be enshrined in a legal system, then I presume all systems of legal rights should ensure rights like these, irrespective of their nation. A universal charter of rights for tourists and alien residents? |
| 20980 | You don't need a complete theory of justice to see that slavery is wrong [Sen] |
| Full Idea: It was the diagnosis of an intolerable injustice in slavery that made abolition an overwhelming priority, and this did not require a search for a consensus on what a perfectly just society would look like. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], Intro 'Classical') | |
| A reaction: This illustrates Sen's key points, that we should focus on injustices, which are obvious, and that designing a totally just society has little relevance to justice in practice (which is what matters). Well said. |
| 20978 | Practical justice concerns not only ideals, but ways to achieve them [Sen] |
| Full Idea: A theory of justice that can serve as the basis of practical reason must include ways of judging how to reduce injustice and advance justice, rather than aiming only at the characterisation of perfectly just societies. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], Pref 'What') | |
| A reaction: Sounds simple, but this is Amartya Sen's revolutionary new idea - that justice is not just ideals and opportunities, but what sort of life people actually end up with. |
| 20985 | Our institutions should promote justice, rather than embodying it [Sen] |
| Full Idea: We have to seek institutions that promote justice, rather than treating the institutions as themselves manifestations of justice. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 03 'Institutions') | |
| A reaction: The best quote I can find for summarising Sen's view. He criticises Rawls and others for trying to design institutions that embody justice. Our legal system promotes justice. Do our schools and hospitals? The Department for the Promotion of Justice? |
| 20994 | We must focus on removing manifest injustice, not just try to design a perfect society [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The demands of justice must give priority to the removal of manifest injustice, rather than concentrating on the long-distance search for the perfectly just society. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 12 'Disability') | |
| A reaction: So the point is not to understand the world, but to change it? I'd want to put in a word for the theoretical and idealised project, which I see in terms of writing the perfect constitution. You can't just pick off injustices, perceived intuitively. |
| 21000 | If justice needs public reasoning, which needs democracy, then justice and democracy are linked [Sen] |
| Full Idea: If the demands of justice can be assessed only with the help of public reasoning, and that is constitutively related to the idea of democracy, then there is an intimate connection between justice and democracy. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 15 'Content') | |
| A reaction: I suspect that he argued early on that rationality required many perspectives in order to later mount this defence of democracy. |