33 ideas
| 22338 | An unexamined life can be virtuous [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: An unexamined life can be virtuous. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: Nice. A firm rejection of the intellectualist view of virtue, to which most Greeks subscribed. Jesus would have liked this one. |
| 22337 | Philosophy must keep returning to the beginning [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy has in a sense to keep trying to return to the beginning. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: This is a sign that philosophy is not like other subjects, and indicates that although the puzzles are not solved, they won't go away. Also that, unlike most other subjects, the pre-suppositions are not part of the subject. |
| 23563 | Philosophy moves continually between elaborate theories and the obvious facts [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: There is a two-way movement in philosophy, a movement towards the building of elaborate theories, and a move back again towards the consideration of simple and obvious facts. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Without the theories there is no philosophy, but without continual reference back to the obvious facts the theories are worthless. |
| 19284 | Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: To say that we dignify a truth as necessary we are expressing our own mental attitudes - our own inability to make anything of a possible way of thinking which denies it. It is this blank unimaginability which we voice when we use the modal vocabulary. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Spreading the Word [1984], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Yes, but why are we unable to imagine it? I accept that the truth or falsity of Goldbach's Conjecture may well be necessary, but I have no imagination one way or the other about it. Philosophers like Blackburn are very alien to me! |
| 14629 | If we are told the source of necessity, this seems to be a regress if the source is not already necessary [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: If we ask why A must be the case, and A is then proved from B, that explains it if B must be so. If the eventual source cites some truth F, then if F just is so, there is strong pressure to feel that the original necessity has not been explained. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Morals and Modals [1987], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Ross Cameron wrote a reply to this which I like. I'm fishing for the idea that essence is the source of necessity (as Kit Fine says), but that essence itself is not necessary (as only I say, apparently!). |
| 14529 | If something underlies a necessity, is that underlying thing necessary or contingent? [Blackburn, by Hale/Hoffmann,A] |
| Full Idea: Blackburn asks of what theorists propose as underlying the necessity of a proposition, the question whether they themselves are conceived as obtaining of necessity or merely contingently. | |
| From: report of Simon Blackburn (Morals and Modals [1987], p.120-1) by Bob Hale/ Aviv Hoffmann - Introduction to 'Modality' 1 | |
| A reaction: I've seen a reply to this somewhere: I think the thought was that a necessity wouldn't be any less necessary if it had a contingent source, any more than the father of a world champion boxer has to be a world champion boxer. |
| 6451 | Visual sense data are an inner picture show which represents the world [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: In the case of vision, sense data are a kind of inner picture show which itself only indirectly represents aspects of the external world. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [1994], p.347) | |
| A reaction: I'm unsure whether this is correct. Russell says the 'roughness' of the table is the sense datum. If it is even a possibility that there are unsensed sense-data, then they cannot be an aspect of the mind, as Blackburn is suggesting they are. |
| 2866 | A true belief might be based on a generally reliable process that failed on this occasion [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: Reliabilism is open to the counterexample that a belief may be the result of some generally reliable process (a pressure gauge) which was in fact malfunctioning on this occasion, when we would be reluctant to attribute knowledge to the subject. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [1994], p.327) | |
| A reaction: Russell's stopped clock that tells the right time twice a day. A good objection. Coming from a reliable source is very good criterion for good justification, but it needs critical assessment. |
| 22591 | We know perfection when we see what is imperfect [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: We know of perfection as we look upon what is imperfect. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals [1992], 13) | |
| A reaction: This is in the context of a discussion of the ontological argument for God's existence, but I seize on it as a nice expression of the idealisation capacity of our minds. The alternative is that perfection is innate idea, since we aren't seeing it. |
| 23996 | Akrasia is intelligible in hindsight, when we revisit our previous emotions [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: To make my emotion intelligible [in a weakness of will case] is to look back and recognise that my emotions and dispositions were not quite as I had taken them to be. It is quite useless in such a case to invoke a blanket diagnosis of 'irrationality'. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Ruling Passions [1998], p.191) | |
| A reaction: So Blackburn rejects the idea of akrasia, because there was never really a conflict. He says rational people always aim to maximise their utility (p.135), and if their own act surprises them, it is just a failure to understand their own rationality. |
| 22709 | We should first decide what are the great works of art, with aesthetic theory following from that [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Our aesthetic must stand to be judged by great works of art which we know to be such independently. …So let us start by saying that Shakespeare is the greatest of all artists, and let our aesthetic be the philosophical justification of this judgement. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.205) | |
| A reaction: She offers this view in specific contradiction of Tolstoy, which says we should first have a theory, and then judge accordingly. I take Murdoch to be entirely right, but it means that our aesthetic theory will shift over time. |
| 22341 | Literature is the most important aspect of culture, because it teaches understanding of living [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], i) | |
| A reaction: It is significant that literature belongs more clearly to a nation or community than does most music or painting. You learn about Russians from their literature, but not much from their music. |
| 22715 | Great art proves the absurdity of art for art's sake [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The work of the great artists shows up 'art-for-art's-sake' as a flimsy frivolous doctrine. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.218) | |
| A reaction: She keeps referring to tragedy (as the greatest art), but it is hard to see how we learn love and morality from a great pot or a great abstract painting. Wilde makes the doctrine frivolous, but I think it contains a degree of truth. Music. |
| 22714 | Because art is love, it improves us morally [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: It is of course a fact that if art is love then art improves us morally, but this is, as it were, accidental. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.218) | |
| A reaction: Is an enhancement of one's love necessarily a moral improvement? Love is a fine feeling, but how does it motivate? Has no wickedness ever been perpetrated in the name of love? 'All's fair in love and war'. |
| 22347 | Appreciating beauty in art or nature opens up the good life, by restricting selfishness [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The appreciation of beauty in art or nature is not only the easiest available spiritual exercise; it is also a completely adequate entry into (and not just analogy of) the good life, since it checks selfishness in the interest of seeing the real. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: Not keen on 'spiritual' exercises, but I very much like 'seeing the real' as a promotion of the good life. The hard bit is to know what reality you are seeing in a work of art. [p.84] Her example is the sudden sight of a hovering kestrel. |
| 22712 | Art and morals are essentially the same, and are both identical with love [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Art and morals are (with certain provisos) one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.215) | |
| A reaction: The idea that art, morals and love are all just a single thing seems unhelpful. What about satire? What about duty without love? What about pure abstract painting? What about Stravinsky's highly formal view of his music? |
| 11911 | Some philosophers always want more from morality; for others, nature is enough [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: The history of moral theory is largely a history of battles between people who want more (truth, absolutes...) - Plato, Locke, Cudworth, Kant, Nagel - and people content with what we have (nature) - Aristotle, Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume, Stevenson. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Précis of 'Ruling Passions' [2002], p.133) | |
| A reaction: [Thanks to Neil Sinclair for this one] As a devotee of Aristotle, I like this. I'm always impressed, though, by people who go the extra mile in morality, because they are in the grips of purer and loftier ideals than I am. They also turn into monsters! |
| 2864 | The main objection to intuitionism in ethics is that intuition is a disguise for prejudice or emotion [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: Critics say that intuitionism in ethics explains nothing, but may merely function as a disguise for prejudice or passion. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [1994], p.198) | |
| A reaction: If someone claims to have an important moral intuition about something, you should carefully assess the person who has the intuition. I would trust some people a lot. |
| 2865 | Critics of prescriptivism observe that it is consistent to accept an ethical verdict but refuse to be bound by it [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: Critics of prescriptivism have noted the problem that whilst accepting a command seems tantamount to setting oneself to obey it, accepting an ethical verdict is, unfortunately, consistent with refusing to be bound by it. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [1994], p.300) | |
| A reaction: We nearly all of us accept that our behaviour should be better than it actually is, so we accept the oughts but fail to act. Actually 'refusing', though, sounds a bit contradictory. |
| 22339 | Love is a central concept in morals [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Love is a central concept in morals. ....[p.30] The central concept of morality is 'the individual' thought of as knowable by love, thought of in the light of the command 'Be ye therefore perfect'. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a critique of the chillier aspects of utilitarianism and Kantian duty. Love doesn't seem essential to Aristotle's concept of virtue either, and Murdoch's tradition seems to be Christian. I'm undecided about this idea. |
| 22348 | Ordinary human love is good evidence of transcendent goodness [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Is not ordinary human love ...striking evidence of a transcendental principle of good? | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: Sorry to be mean, but I would say not. Love is tied up with sexual desire, and with family and tribal loyalty, and can be observed in quite humble animals. (Love, I should quickly add, is a very good thing indeed. Really). |
| 22713 | Love is realising something other than oneself is real [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sublime and the Good [1959], p.215) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is a necessary condition for love, but not the thing itself. The realisation she describes may not be love. You would attain her realisation if you shared a prison cell with a terrifying psychopath. |
| 22343 | If I attend properly I will have no choices [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: If I attend properly I will have no choices, and this is the ultimate condition to be aimed at. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: I take it this is an expression of what we now call Particularism. It is not just that every moral situation is subtly morally different, but that the particulars of the situation will lead directly to moral choices (in a 'healthy' agent). |
| 22349 | Art trains us in the love of virtue [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The enjoyment of art is a training in the love of virtue. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: Very Aristotelian to talk of 'training'. Unfortunately it is children who have the greatest need for training, but most art is aimed at mature adults. Can you be too old to be trained by art, even if you enjoy it? |
| 22340 | It is hard to learn goodness from others, because their virtues are part of their personal history [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: It is the historical, individual, nature of the virtues as actually exemplified which makes it difficult to learn goodness from another person. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating remark, which strikes me as true. When confronted with a virtuous person you might want to acquire their virtue, just as you might want them to teach you algebra, but their virtues are too bound up with their individuality. |
| 22350 | Only trivial virtues can be possessed on their own [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: It would be impossible to have only one virtue, unless it were a very trivial one such as thrift. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: A nicely nuanced commitment to the unity of virtue. You might exhibit courage alone in a brute animal way, but the sort of courage we all admire is part of more extended virtues. |
| 22346 | Moral reflection and experience gradually reveals unity in the moral world [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Reflection rightly tends to unify the moral world, and increasing moral sophistication reveals increasing unity. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: As an example she suggests asking what is the best type of courage. Connections to other virtues will emerge. That is a persuasive example. We all have strong views on what type of courage is the most admirable. |
| 23223 | The word 'respect' ranges from mere non-interference to the highest levels of reverence [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: The word 'respect' seems to span a spectrum from simply not interfering, passing by on the other side, through admiration, right up to reverence and deference. This makes it uniquely well placed for ideological purposes. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Religion and Respect [2005], p.2) | |
| A reaction: Most people understand the world perfectly well, but only when they fully understand the context. I've taken to distinguishing conditional from unconditional forms of respect. Everyone is entitled to the unconditional form, which has limits. |
| 20765 | Man is a brave naked will, separate from a background of values and realities [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Existentialists no longer see man against a background of values, of realities, which transcend him. We picture man as a brave naked will. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (Against Dryness: a polemical sketch [1983], p.46), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 7 'Subjectivism' | |
| A reaction: It is one thing to deny the values, and another to deny the realities. This piece is a 'polemic', and reads more like an exhortation than a truth. Many of us are, at best, cowardly naked wills. |
| 22342 | Kantian existentialists care greatly for reasons for action, whereas Surrealists care nothing [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: What may be called the Kantian wing and the Surrealist wing of existentialism may be distinguished by the degree of their interest in reasons for action, which diminishes to nothing at the Surrealist end. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: Presumably for all existentialists moral decisions are the most important aspect of life, since they define what you are, but the Surrealist wing seem to be nihilists about that, so they barely count as existentialists. For them life is sleepwalking. |
| 22351 | Only a philosopher might think choices create values [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The ordinary person does not, unless corrupted by philosophy, believe that he creates values by his choices. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a swipe at Nietzsche, more than anyone. Sartre and co talk less about values, other than authenticity. Philosophy can definitely be corrupting. |
| 22345 | Moral philosophy needs a central concept with all the traditional attributes of God [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: God was (or is) a single perfect transcendent non-representable and necessarily real object of attention. ....Moral philosophy should attempt to retain a central concept which has all these characteristics. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: This is a combination of middle Platonism (which sees the Form of the Good as the mind of God) and G.E. Moore's indefinable ideal of goodness. Murdoch connects this suggestion with the centrality of love in moral philosophy. I disagree. |
| 3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stilpo asked a man whether Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and when he said yes, said,"But this statue of Athena by Phidias is the child of Phidias, so it is not a god." | |
| From: report of Stilpo (fragments/reports [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.10.5 |