58 ideas
8013 | In the Reformation, morality became unconditional but irrational, individually autonomous, and secular [MacIntyre] |
8021 | The Levellers and the Diggers mark a turning point in the history of morality [MacIntyre] |
8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
1553 | No perceptible object is truly straight or curved [Protagoras] |
1549 | Everything that exists consists in being perceived [Protagoras] |
8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
1545 | Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything [Protagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
1547 | Man is the measure of all things - of things that are, and of things that are not [Protagoras] |
3305 | There is no more purely metaphysical doctrine than Protagorean relativism [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
3317 | You can only state the problem of the relative warmth of an object by agreeing on the underlying object [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
3313 | If my hot wind is your cold wind, then wind is neither hot nor cold, and so not as cold as itself [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
10356 | Relativism can be seen as about the rationality of different cultural traditions [MacIntyre, by Kusch] |
606 | Protagoras absurdly thought that the knowing or perceiving man is 'the measure of all things' [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
612 | Relativists think if you poke your eye and see double, there must be two things [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
247 | God is "the measure of all things", more than any man [Plato on Protagoras] |
8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
8006 | When Aristotle speaks of soul he means something like personality [MacIntyre] |
21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
6016 | Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD] |
8002 | Sophists don't distinguish a person outside one social order from someone outside all order [MacIntyre] |
8012 | The value/fact logical gulf is misleading, because social facts involve values [MacIntyre] |
8005 | 'Happiness' is a bad translation of 'eudaimonia', which includes both behaving and faring well [MacIntyre] |
1580 | For Protagoras the only bad behaviour is that which interferes with social harmony [Protagoras, by Roochnik] |
8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
205 | Protagoras contradicts himself by saying virtue is teachable, but then that it is not knowledge [Plato on Protagoras] |
8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
8001 | 'Dikaiosune' is justice, but also fairness and personal integrity [MacIntyre] |
8023 | My duties depend on my identity, which depends on my social relations [MacIntyre] |
8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
8022 | I am naturally free if I am not tied to anyone by a contract [MacIntyre] |
8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
23080 | Liberals debate how conservative or radical to be, but don't question their basics [MacIntyre] |
8031 | Fans of natural rights or laws can't agree on what the actual rights or laws are [MacIntyre] |
1659 | Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos] |
532 | Successful education must go deep into the soul [Protagoras] |
1552 | He spent public money on education, as it benefits the individual and the state [Protagoras, by Diodorus of Sicily] |
8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |
1551 | He said he didn't know whether there are gods - but this is the same as atheism [Diogenes of Oen. on Protagoras] |
8008 | The Bible is a story about God in which humans are incidental characters [MacIntyre] |