37 ideas
6405 | Moore's 'The Nature of Judgement' (1898) marked the rejection (with Russell) of idealism [Moore,GE, by Grayling] |
Full Idea: The rejection of idealism by Moore and Russell was marked in 1898 by the publication of Moore's article 'The Nature of Judgement'. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This now looks like a huge landmark in the history of British philosophy. |
17992 | The main aim of philosophy is to describe the whole Universe. [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: It seems to me that the most important and interesting thing which philosophers have tried to do ...is to give a general description of the whole of the Universe. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Some Main Problems of Philosophy [1911], Ch. 1) | |
A reaction: He adds that they aim to show what is in it, and what might be in it, and how the two relate. This sort of big view is the one I favour. I think the hallmark of philosophical thought is a high level of generality. He next proceeds to defend common sense. |
7527 | Analysis for Moore and Russell is carving up the world, not investigating language [Moore,GE, by Monk] |
Full Idea: For Moore and Russell analysis is not - as is commonly understood now - a linguistic activity, but an ontological one. To analyse a proposition is not to investigate language, but to carve up the world so that it begins to make some sort of sense. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4 | |
A reaction: A thought dear to my heart. The twentieth century got horribly side-tracked into thinking that ontology was an entirely linguistic problem. I suggest that physicists analyse physical reality, and philosophers analyse abstract reality. |
9978 | Analytic philosophy focuses too much on forms of expression, instead of what is actually said [Tait] |
Full Idea: The tendency to attack forms of expression rather than attempting to appreciate what is actually being said is one of the more unfortunate habits that analytic philosophy inherited from Frege. | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], IV) | |
A reaction: The key to this, I say, is to acknowledge the existence of propositions (in brains). For example, this belief will make teachers more sympathetic to pupils who are struggling to express an idea, and verbal nit-picking becomes totally irrelevant. |
9986 | The null set was doubted, because numbering seemed to require 'units' [Tait] |
Full Idea: The conception that what can be numbered is some object (including flocks of sheep) relative to a partition - a choice of unit - survived even in the late nineteenth century in the form of the rejection of the null set (and difficulties with unit sets). | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], IX) | |
A reaction: This old view can't be entirely wrong! Frege makes the point that if asked to count a pack of cards, you must decide whether to count cards, or suits, or pips. You may not need a 'unit', but you need a concept. 'Units' name concept-extensions nicely! |
18270 | Choice suggests that intensions are not needed to ensure classes [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The axiom of choice was an assumption that implicitly questioned the necessity of intensions to guarantee the presence of classes. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'Log') | |
A reaction: The point is that Choice just picks out members for no particular reason. So classes, it seems, don't need a reason to exist. |
9984 | We can have a series with identical members [Tait] |
Full Idea: Why can't we have a series (as opposed to a linearly ordered set) all of whose members are identical, such as (a, a, a...,a)? | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], VII) | |
A reaction: The question is whether the items order themselves, which presumably the natural numbers are supposed to do, or whether we impose the order (and length) of the series. What decides how many a's there are? Do we order, or does nature? |
13416 | Mathematics must be based on axioms, which are true because they are axioms, not vice versa [Tait, by Parsons,C] |
Full Idea: The axiomatic conception of mathematics is the only viable one. ...But they are true because they are axioms, in contrast to the view advanced by Frege (to Hilbert) that to be a candidate for axiomhood a statement must be true. | |
From: report of William W. Tait (Intro to 'Provenance of Pure Reason' [2005], p.4) by Charles Parsons - Review of Tait 'Provenance of Pure Reason' §2 | |
A reaction: This looks like the classic twentieth century shift in the attitude to axioms. The Greek idea is that they must be self-evident truths, but the Tait-style view is that they are just the first steps in establishing a logical structure. I prefer the Greeks. |
21342 | A relation is internal if two things possessing the relation could not fail to be related [Moore,GE, by Heil] |
Full Idea: Moore characterises internal relations modally, as those essential to their relata. If a and b are related R-wise, and R is an internal relation, a and b could not fail to be so related; otherwise R is external. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (External and Internal Relations [1919]) by John Heil - Relations 'Internal' | |
A reaction: I don't think of Moore as an essentialist, but this fits the essentialist picture nicely, and is probably best paraphrased in terms of powers. Integers are the standard example of internal relations. |
6672 | Moore's Paradox: you can't assert 'I believe that p but p is false', but can assert 'You believe p but p is false' [Moore,GE, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: Moore's Paradox says it makes no sense to assert 'I believe that p, but p is false', even though it makes perfectly good sense to assert 'I used to believe p, but p is false' or 'You believe p, but p is false'. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (works [1905]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.10 | |
A reaction: I'm not sure if this really deserves the label of 'paradox'. I take it as drawing attention to the obvious fact that belief is commitment to truth. I think my assessment that p is true is correct, but your assessment is wrong. ('True' is not redundant!) |
20147 | Arguments that my finger does not exist are less certain than your seeing my finger [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: This really is a finger ...and you all know it. ...I can safely challenge anyone to give an argument that it is not true, which does not rest upon some premise which is less certain than is the proposition which it is designed to attack. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Some Judgements of Perception [1922], p.228), quoted by John Kekes - The Human Condition 01.3 | |
A reaction: [In Moore's 'Philosophical Studies'] This is a particularly clear statement from Moore of his famous claim. I'm not sure what to make of an attempt to compare a sceptical argument (dreams, demons) with the sight of a finger. |
6349 | I can prove a hand exists, by holding one up, pointing to it, and saying 'here is one hand' [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: I can prove now that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, 'Here is one hand', and adding, as I gesture with the left, 'and here is another'. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Proof of an External World [1939], p.1) | |
A reaction: The words need to be spoken, presumably, so that what he is doing fits into the linguistic conventions of what will normally be accepted as a proof. In fact, just holding the hand up seems enough. The proof begs the question of virtual reality. |
18263 | The semantic tradition aimed to explain the a priori semantically, not by Kantian intuition [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The semantic tradition's problem was the a priori; its enemy, Kantian pure intuition; its purpose, to develop a conception of the a priori in which pure intuition played no role; its strategy, to base that theory on a development of semantics. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 2 Intro) | |
A reaction: It seems to me that intuition, in the modern sense, has been unnecessarily demonised. I would define it as 'rational insights which cannot be fully articulated'. Sherlock Holmes embodies it. |
18272 | Platonism defines the a priori in a way that makes it unknowable [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The trouble with Platonism had always been its inability to define a priori knowledge in a way that made it possible for human beings to have it. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'What') | |
A reaction: This is the famous argument of Benacerraf 1973. |
18266 | Mathematics generalises by using variables [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The instrument of generality in mathematics is the variable. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 4 'The conc') | |
A reaction: I like the idea that there are variables in ordinary speech, pronouns being the most obvious example. 'Cats' is a variable involving quantification over a domain of lovable fluffy mammals. |
9981 | Abstraction is 'logical' if the sense and truth of the abstraction depend on the concrete [Tait] |
Full Idea: If the sense of a proposition about the abstract domain is given in terms of the corresponding proposition about the (relatively) concrete domain, ..and the truth of the former is founded upon the truth of the latter, then this is 'logical abstraction'. | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], V) | |
A reaction: The 'relatively' in parentheses allows us to apply his idea to levels of abstraction, and not just to the simple jump up from the concrete. I think Tait's proposal is excellent, rather than purloining 'abstraction' for an internal concept within logic. |
9982 | Cantor and Dedekind use abstraction to fix grammar and objects, not to carry out proofs [Tait] |
Full Idea: Although (in Cantor and Dedekind) abstraction does not (as has often been observed) play any role in their proofs, but it does play a role, in that it fixes the grammar, the domain of meaningful propositions, and so determining the objects in the proofs. | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], V) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This is part of a defence of abstractionism in Cantor and Dedekind (see K.Fine also on the subject). To know the members of a set, or size of a domain, you need to know the process or function which created the set. |
9985 | Abstraction may concern the individuation of the set itself, not its elements [Tait] |
Full Idea: A different reading of abstraction is that it concerns, not the individuating properties of the elements relative to one another, but rather the individuating properties of the set itself, for example the concept of what is its extension. | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], VIII) | |
A reaction: If the set was 'objects in the room next door', we would not be able to abstract from the objects, but we might get to the idea of things being contain in things, or the concept of an object, or a room. Wrong. That's because they are objects... Hm. |
9972 | Why should abstraction from two equipollent sets lead to the same set of 'pure units'? [Tait] |
Full Idea: Why should abstraction from two equipollent sets lead to the same set of 'pure units'? | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996]) | |
A reaction: [Tait is criticising Cantor] This expresses rather better than Frege or Dummett the central problem with the abstractionist view of how numbers are derived from matching groups of objects. |
9980 | If abstraction produces power sets, their identity should imply identity of the originals [Tait] |
Full Idea: If the power |A| is obtained by abstraction from set A, then if A is equipollent to set B, then |A| = |B|. But this does not imply that A = B. So |A| cannot just be A, taken in abstraction, unless that can identify distinct sets, ..or create new objects. | |
From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], V) | |
A reaction: An elegant piece of argument, which shows rather crucial facts about abstraction. We are then obliged to ask how abstraction can create an object or a set, if the central activity of abstraction is just ignoring certain features. |
22302 | Moor bypassed problems of correspondence by saying true propositions ARE facts [Moore,GE, by Potter] |
Full Idea: Moore avoided the problematic correspondence between propositions and reality by identifying the former with the latter; the world consists of true propositions, and there is no difference between a true proposition and the fact that makes it true. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 28 'Refut' | |
A reaction: This is "the most platonic system of modern times", he wrote (letter 14.8.1898). He then added platonist ethics. This is a pernicious and absurd doctrine. The obvious problem is that false propositions can be indistinguishable, but differ in ontology. |
7526 | Hegelians say propositions defy analysis, but Moore says they can be broken down [Moore,GE, by Monk] |
Full Idea: Moore rejected the Hegelian view, that a proposition is a unity that defies analysis; instead, it is a complex that positively cries out to be broken up into its constituent parts, which parts Moore called 'concepts'. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4 | |
A reaction: Russell was much influenced by this idea, though it may be found in Frege. Anglophone philosophers tend to side instantly with Moore, but the Hegel view must be pondered. An idea comes to us in a unified flash, before it is articulated. |
21233 | The beautiful is whatever it is intrinsically good to admire [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: The beautiful should be defined as that of which the admiring contemplation is good in itself. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], p.210), quoted by Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man | |
A reaction: To work, this definition must exclude anything else which it is intrinsically good to admire. Good deeds obviously qualify for that, so good deeds must be intrinsically beautiful (which would be agreed by ancient Greeks). We can't ask WHY it is good! |
8039 | Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable, but doesn't understand what a definition is [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable by relying on a bad dictionary definition of 'definition'. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.2 | |
A reaction: An interesting remark, with no further explanation offered. If Moore has this problem, then Plato had it too (see Idea 3032). I would have thought that any definition MacIntyre could offer would either be naturalistic, or tautological. |
11056 | The naturalistic fallacy claims that natural qualties can define 'good' [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: The naturalistic fallacy ..consists in the contention that good means nothing but some simple or complex notion, that can be defined in terms of natural qualities. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §044) | |
A reaction: Presumably aimed at those who think morality is pleasure and pain. We could hardly attribute morality to non-human qualities. I connect morality to human deliberative functions. |
22151 | The Open Question argument leads to anti-realism and the fact-value distinction [Boulter on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore's Open Question argument led, however unintentionally, to the rise of anti-realism in meta-ethics (which leads to distinguishing values from facts). | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: I presume that Moore proves that the Good is not natural, and after that no one knows what it is, so it seems to be arbitrary or non-existent (rather than the platonic fact that Moore had hoped for). I vote for naturalistic ethics. |
8033 | Moore cannot show why something being good gives us a reason for action [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore's account leaves it entirely unexplained and inexplicable why something's being good should ever furnish us with a reason for action. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
A reaction: The same objection can be raised to Plato's Form of the Good, but Plato's answer seems to be that the Good is partly a rational entity, and partly that the Good just has a natural magnetism that makes it quasi-religious. |
8032 | Can learning to recognise a good friend help us to recognise a good watch? [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: How could having learned to recognize a good friend help us to recognize a good watch? Yet is Moore is right, the same simple property is present in both cases? | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
A reaction: It begins to look as if what they have in common is just that they both make you feel good. However, I like the Aristotelian idea that they both function succesfully, one as a timekeeper, the other as a citizen or companion. |
11050 | Moore's combination of antinaturalism with strong supervenience on the natural is incoherent [Hanna on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore incoherently combines his antinaturalism with the thesis that intrinsic-value properties are logically strongly supervenient on (or explanatorily reducible to) natural facts. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic Ch.1 | |
A reaction: I take this to be Moore fighting shy of the strongly Platonist view of values which his arguments all seemed to imply. |
23726 | Despite Moore's caution, non-naturalists incline towards intuitionism [Moore,GE, by Smith,M] |
Full Idea: Although Moore was reluctant to adopt it, the epistemology the non-naturalists tended to favour was intuitionism. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Michael Smith - The Moral Problem 2.2 | |
A reaction: Moore was presumably reluctant because intuitionism had been heavily criticised in the past for its inability to settle moral disputes. But if you insist that goodness is outside nature, what other means of knowing it is available? Reason? |
18676 | We should ask what we would judge to be good if it existed in absolute isolation [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: It is necessary to consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves, in absolute isolation, we should yet judge their existence to be good. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §112) | |
A reaction: This is known as the 'isolation test'. The test has an instant appeal, but looks a bit odd after a little thought. The value of most things drains out of them if they are totally isolated. The MS of the Goldberg Variations floating in outer space? |
11057 | It is always an open question whether anything that is natural is good [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Good does not, by definition, mean anything that is natural; and it is therefore always an open question whether anything that is natural is good. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §027) | |
A reaction: This is the best known modern argument for Platonist idealised ethics. But maybe there is no end to questioning anywhere, so each theory invites a further question, and nothing is ever fully explained? Next stop - pragmatism. |
5925 | The three main values are good, right and beauty [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
Full Idea: Moore describes rightness and beauty as the two main value-attributes, apart from goodness. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §IV | |
A reaction: This was a last-throw of the Platonic ideal, before we plunged into the value-free world of Darwin and the physicists. It is hard to agree with Moore, but also hard to disagree. Why do many people despise or ignore these values? |
5902 | For Moore, 'right' is what produces good [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
Full Idea: Moore claims that 'right' means 'productive of the greatest possible good'. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
A reaction: Ross is at pains to keep 'right' and 'good' as quite distinct notions. Some actions are right but very unpleasant, and seem to produce no real good at all. |
5903 | 'Right' means 'cause of good result' (hence 'useful'), so the end does justify the means [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: 'Right' does and can mean nothing but 'cause of a good result', and is thus identical with 'useful', whence it follows that the end always will justify the means. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §089) | |
A reaction: Of course, Moore does not identify utility with pleasure, as his notion of what is good concerns fairly Platonic ideals. Would Stalin's murders have been right if Russia were now the happiest nation on Earth? |
5907 | Relationships imply duties to people, not merely the obligation to benefit them [Ross on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore's 'Ideal Utilitarianism' seems to unduly simplify our relations to our fellows. My neighbours are merely possible beneficiaries by my action. But they also stand to me as promiser, creditor, husband, friend, which entails prima facie duties. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §II | |
A reaction: Perhaps it is better to say that we have obligations to benefit particular people, because of our obligations, and that we are confined to particular benefits which meet those obligations - not just any old benefit to any old person. |
18279 | Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa] |
Full Idea: If the theory of relativity might be thought to support an idealist construal of space and time, it is no less absolutistic about space-time than Newton's theory was about space. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991]) | |
A reaction: [He cites Minkowski, Weyl and Cartan for this conclusion] Coffa is clearly a bit cross about philosophers who draw naive idealist and relativist conclusions from relativity. |