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| 5937 | The goodness of opinions depends on their grounds, and corresponding degrees of conviction |
| Full Idea: A state of opinion is good because of its degree of groundedness, and because the degree of conviction corresponds to the degree of groundedness. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §VI) | |||
| A reaction: This is an early statement (from an ethical intuitionist) of what are now called the 'epistemic virtues'. It seems impossible to prove that these characteristics make an opinion good, but it also seems hard to deny either of them. |
| 5936 | Knowledge is superior to opinion because it is certain |
| Full Idea: Knowledge is superior in value to opinion because it has certainty or complete absence of doubt. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §VI) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as a classic blunder, dating back to Descartes, which I think of as 'setting the bar too high'. It leads without fail to scepticism, because certainty is simply impossible for human beings. I am a committed fallibilist about knowledge. |
| 5927 | I prefer the causal theory to sense data, because sensations are events, not apprehensions |
| Full Idea: The sensum-theory seems to me less probable than a causal theory of perception, which regards sensuous experience as not being apprehension at all, but a set of mental events produced by external bodies on our bodies and minds. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: The point is that there is no third item between the object and the mind, which has to be 'apprehended'. Sense-data give a good account of delusions (where we apprehend the 'data', but not the real object). I think I agree with Ross. |
| 5940 | Two goods may be comparable, although they are not commensurable |
| Full Idea: It may be that two orders or classes of good things are not commensurable, though they are comparable, with those in the other. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §VI) | |||
| A reaction: This refers to moral issues, but seems helpful when faced with Kuhn's claim that Newton and Einstein are 'incommensurable'. We could hardly prefer one theory to another if we couldn't compare them. |
| 5924 | Identical objects must have identical value |
| Full Idea: If a thing possesses any kind of intrinsic value in a certain degree, anything exactly like it must in all circumstances possess it in the same degree. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: This is the earlier notion of supervenience in philosophy, before it was applied to the mind. So a perfect duplication of the Mona Lisa will be worth as much as the original? A perfect clone of your partner is as good as the original? |
| 5933 | Aesthetic enjoyment combines pleasure with insight |
| Full Idea: Aesthetic enjoyment seems to be a blend of pleasure with insight into the nature of the object that inspires it. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §V) | |||
| A reaction: This is persuasive. Concentration seems required for aesthetic pleasure. It probably enhances sensual pleasure, but it doesn't seem essential. Some literature only gives the illusion of insight, and there is no real insight in listening to music. |
| 5928 | Beauty is neither objective nor subjective, but a power of producing certain mental events |
| Full Idea: In order to avoid the difficulties that beset both a purely objective and a purely subjective view of beauty, I find myself driven to one which identifies beauty with the power of producing a certain sort of experience in minds. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: This makes beauty a relational quality, rather than an intrinsic one. Ross's theory won't avoid the many usual problems about relativism. Do we define colour similarly, as a power in objects to produce certain sensations? |
| 5911 | Moral duties are as fundamental to the universe as the axioms of mathematics |
| Full Idea: The moral order expressed in the propositions of duties is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe (or any possible universe) as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: A few of the axioms of geometry (e.g. the parallel line postulate) have been changed, with interesting results. Moral duties seem to change dramatically in a crisis, such as a war, or a ship sinking. Can I have a duty if I am too dim to perceive it? |
| 5926 | The beauty of a patch of colour might be the most important fact about it |
| Full Idea: I cannot agree that a description of a patch of colour would be complete without the statement that it is beautiful (if that is so); for its beauty might be for some purposes the most important fact about it. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: 'Important' to whom. To me the most important fact about my pen might be that it is mine, but that doesn't seem to be a feature of an intrinsic description of the pen. If beauty is a relational quality, Ross's point is undermined. |
| 7259 | Ross said moral principles are self-evident from the facts, but not from pure thought |
| Full Idea: Ross held that moral principles are self-evident to us, meaning that no more is needed to reveal their truth to us as general guides to behaviour than what is the case before us, not that we can discover a moral truth just by thinking about it. | |||
| From: report of W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intuitionism | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be a crucial distinction between two types of intuitionism, one that is purely a priori, and one that chimes in with the 'particularist' reading of virtue theory. The former is implausible and much attacked; the latter is more interesting. |
| 5913 | The moral convictions of thoughtful educated people are the raw data of ethics |
| Full Idea: We have no more direct way of access to the facts about rightness and goodness and their objects, than by thinking about them; the moral convictions of thoughtful and well-educated people are the data of ethics just as perceptions are the data of science. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like 'the intuitions of people like me', and hence gets a bad name in late twentieth century super-democratic society (esp. in America), but personally I think you can only value education if you think educated people are superior. |
| 5920 | Value is held to be either a quality, or a relation (usually between a thing and a mind) |
| Full Idea: For most theories of value may be divided into those which treat it as a quality and those which treat it as a relation between that which has value and something else, usually a state of mind. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: We might say that a leaf only has value to a tree (which has no mind). Presumably if value is a relation to a mind, it can be further reduced to being an object of desire, but this will give class A drugs a greater value than a beautiful deed. |
| 5923 | The arguments for value being an objective or a relation fail, so it appears to be a quality |
| Full Idea: I conclude that the arguments in favour of thinking of value as an objective are no more successful than those in favour of treating it as a relation, ..and the natural view that value is a quality therefore holds its ground. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: See Ross's text for the arguments. It seems unlikely that argument could fully demonstrate his claim. Even physical qualities (such as weight or velocity) can have a relational component, and many things can only have value in a cultural context. |
| 5918 | The thing is intrinsically good if it would be good when nothing else existed |
| Full Idea: By calling a thing intrinsically good we mean that it would be good even if nothing else existed. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: This dramatic image (the Mona Lisa alone in vacancy) raises grave doubts about whether there is very much that could qualify for 'intrinsic value'. I even doubt the value of the MS of the Goldberg Variations, if nothing else exists. |
| 5930 | All things being equal, we all prefer the virtuous to be happy, not the vicious |
| Full Idea: Everyone would prefer the second of two universes, if each had equal vice and virtue, and each had equal pleasure and pain, but in the first the virtuous were miserable and the vicious happy, while in the second universe it was the opposite. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §V) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as a very good example of an intuition which it is hard to resist. Would some vile Mafia boss really want heaven to be full of murderers, while good-hearted and kind people all went to hell? |
| 5922 | An instrumentally good thing might stay the same, but change its value because of circumstances |
| Full Idea: If a thing is only instrumentally good or bad, then even when its nature remains the same it might have a different instrumental value if the causal laws of the universe, or of other things in the universe, were different. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: A bad tin-opener might be instrumentally good if it was the only one you owned, so we don't need to change the causal laws of the universe. |
| 5921 | We can ask of pleasure or beauty whether they are valuable, but not of goodness |
| Full Idea: While it can be intelligently asked whether the pleasant or beautiful has value, it cannot be intelligently asked whether the good has value, since the good is just to be valuable. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: It is simply tautological that goodness has value, and that valuable things are good. But an assassin might 'value' a 'good' way of killing someone, or an instrument of torture. We might say "He values x, but x is bad". Still, he must think x is good. |
| 5910 | The three intrinsic goods are virtue, knowledge and pleasure |
| Full Idea: There are three main things which are intrinsically good - virtue, knowledge, and with certain limitations, pleasure. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: This combines the views of most of the main schools of ancient Greece. For Socrates, knowledge delivers the others; for Aristippus, pleasure eclipses the others; for Zeno of Citium, virtue is all that matters. Ross is a pluralist, like Aristotle. |
| 5932 | The four goods are: virtue, pleasure, just allocation of pleasure, and knowledge |
| Full Idea: Four things seem to be intrinsically good - virtue, pleasure, the allocation of pleasure to the virtuous, and knowledge. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §V) | |||
| A reaction: I greatly admire a philosopher who has the courage to assert such a thing, in the face of centuries of scepticism about anyone's ability to even get started in this area. We need the bold assertions first; we can work back to doubts later, if necessary. |
| 5898 | 'Right' and 'good' differ in meaning, as in a 'right action' and a 'good man' |
| Full Idea: 'Right' does not mean the same as 'morally good'; we cannot substitute 'he is a right man' for 'he is a morally good man'; this is not just an English idiom, as it is clear that a 'right act' is the act which ought to be done. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §I) | |||
| A reaction: This is nowadays accepted as a basic distinction in ethical discussions. Shooting a prisoner might be the right thing to do, but it is unlikely to be good. We may talk of 'good deeds', but never of 'right' people. |
| 5899 | If there are two equally good acts, they may both be right, but neither a duty |
| Full Idea: If it is our duty to produce one or other of two or more different states of affairs, without its being our duty to produce one rather than the another, then in such a case each of these acts will be right, and none will be our duty. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §I) | |||
| A reaction: An elegant piece of analytical philosophy, which shows fairly conclusively that 'right' is distinct from 'duty', as well as being distinct from 'good'. We can generalise about right actions, without identifying anyone who has the duty to perform them. |
| 5904 | In the past 'right' just meant what is conventionally accepted |
| Full Idea: In the past 'what is right' was hardly disentangled from 'what the tribe ordains'; ..'it is the custom' has been accompanied by 'the custom is right', or 'the custom is ordained by someone who has the right to command'. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §I) | |||
| A reaction: Ross is rejecting this older view, in favour an absolute (and intuitively known) concept of what is right. All right-thinking people should wish Ross luck in his project, no matter how pessimistic the onlooker may be. |
| 5919 | Goodness is a wider concept than just correct ethical conduct |
| Full Idea: Goodness in general runs out beyond the strict scope of ethics, if ethics be the philosophical study of good conduct; for some things that are good are neither conduct nor dispositions to conduct. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be right, just as the Greek term 'areté' extended beyond moral virtue to excellence in athletics or pottery. Maybe philosophers are too interested in ethics, and have thus missed the philosophical core of the problem. |
| 5941 | Motives decide whether an action is good, and what is done decides whether it was right |
| Full Idea: Actions are morally good in virtue of their motives; this is quite distinct from rightness, which belongs to act in virtue of the nature of what is done. So a good action may not do what is right, and a right action need not be morally good. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §VII) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds neat, but it is hard to find clearcut examples to confirm it. Having your cat put down may be right but not good, but presumably your motive was good. |
| 5938 | Virtue is superior to pleasure, as pleasure is never a duty, but goodness is |
| Full Idea: The acquisition of pleasure for oneself rarely, if ever, presents itself as a duty, while the attainment of moral goodness habitually presents itself as a duty; this surely points to an infinity superiority of virtue over pleasure. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §VI) | |||
| A reaction: You have to be a fully paid-up intuitionist (like Ross) before you can assert such gloriously confident judgements about duty. Personal pleasure could become a duty if you had mistakenly denied it to yourself for a long time. |
| 5931 | All other things being equal, a universe with more understanding is better |
| Full Idea: Can anyone doubt that it would be a better state of the universe if, with equality in respect of virtue and of pleasure, and of the allocation of pleasure to the virtuous, the persons in the universe had a far greater understanding of its laws and nature? | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §V) | |||
| A reaction: Another nice test of our intuitions, with which it is hard to disagree. This technique of argument is found in Plato's Republic (360e onwards). See also Aristotle Idea 543. There are some intuitions which you expect to be universal. |
| 5939 | Morality is not entirely social; a good moral character should love truth |
| Full Idea: The doctrine that morality is entirely social, that all duty consists in promoting the good of others, seems to me profound mistake; intellectual integrity, the love of truth for its own sake, is among the most salient elements in a good moral character. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §VI) | |||
| A reaction: The objection to this might be than an ideal love of truth is a social virtue, because it produces reliable and useful citizens. Would it be immoral for Robinson Crusoe to live by fictions, instead of facing the depressing truth? |
| 5905 | We clearly value good character or understanding, as well as pleasure |
| Full Idea: On reflection it seems clear that pleasure is not the only thing in life that we think good in itself, that for instance we think the possession of a good character, or an intelligent understanding of the world, as good or better. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: Aristotle and Plato would obviously agree with this. I agree, as I cannot comprehend the claim that pleasure is self-evidently the good, simply because it feels nice. Why shouldn't evil feel nice? |
| 5929 | No one thinks it doesn't matter whether pleasure is virtuously or viciously acquired |
| Full Idea: If anyone thinks pleasure alone is the good, it seems to me enough to ask whether, of two states of the universe holding equal amounts of pleasure, we should really think no better of one in with virtuous dispositions and actions than of its opposite. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §V) | |||
| A reaction: An important technique of argument, analagous to scientific experiment. Hold the variable which is considered to be uniquely vital constant, and see if anyone cares if some other variable changes. It is a good argument. |
| 5906 | Promise-keeping is bound by the past, and is not concerned with consequences |
| Full Idea: When a man fulfils a promise because he thinks he ought to do so, it seems clear that he has no thought of its total consequences; he thinks in fact much more of the past than of the future. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: Not entirely true. It is right and good and useful (etc.) to break a minor promise, in order to achieve major good consequences, like saving someone's life. Promises made when drunk should be reconsidered when sober. |
| 18622 | Promises create a new duty to a particular person; they aren't just a strategy to achieve well-being |
| Full Idea: To make a promise is not merely to adapt an ingenious device for promoting the general well-being; it is to put oneself in a new relation to one person in particular, creating a specifically new duty to him, not reducible to promoting general well-being. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], p.38), quoted by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) 2.3.a | |||
| A reaction: Of course, a politician might make a promise to society as a whole, but even there Ross seems to be right. 'I'll do it' is not the same as 'I promise you all I'll do it', which is more personal. |
| 5908 | Prima facie duties rest self-evidently on particular circumstance |
| Full Idea: There is nothing arbitrary about the prima facie duties; each rests on a definite circumstance which cannot seriously be held to be without moral significance. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: He goes on to list the duties. Some of these duties will inevitably arise if we acknowledge both the rightness of keeping contracts, and the desirability of increasing general happiness. |
| 5917 | People lose their rights if they do not respect the rights of others |
| Full Idea: The main element in any one's right to life or liberty or property is extinguished by his failure to respect the corresponding right in others. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II App II) | |||
| A reaction: This obvious truth brings out the way in which rights are based on a contract (with the whole of a society) rather than being based on 'natural rights'. If ownership were totally communal, you couldn't introduce a 'right' to private property. |
| 5900 | We should do our duty, but not from a sense of duty |
| Full Idea: Our duty is to do certain things, but not to do them from the sense of duty. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §I) | |||
| A reaction: A very nice remark, which pinpoints an aspect of Kant which makes most people feel uneasy. "I only came to visit you in hospital because it is my duty". |
| 5909 | Be faithful, grateful, just, beneficent, non-malevolent, and improve yourself |
| Full Idea: The prima facie duties are of fidelity, gratitude, justice, beneficence (the act, rather than the motive), self-improvement, and non-maleficence. | |||
| From: report of W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) by PG - Db (ideas) | |||
| A reaction: I admire anyone who has the courage to make a statement like this. A thousand analytical philosophers sharpen their knives for the attack, all armed with Cartesian or empirical scepticism. But to deny these duties is to drop out of society. |
| 5942 | We like people who act from love, but admire more the people who act from duty |
| Full Idea: We may like better the man who acts more instinctively, from love, but we are bound to think the man who acts from sense of duty the better man. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §VII) | |||
| A reaction: So why don't we like better men? Presumably a person who only acts from love might equally have acted from some other much worse feeling. Aristotle is right: we both like and admire those who act from love of virtue, not from mere self-control. |
| 5914 | An act may be described in innumerable ways |
| Full Idea: Any act may be correctly described in an indefinite, and in principle infinite, number of ways. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: This problem is right at the heart of Kant's theory - that of how precisely to state the 'maxim' which is going to be universalised. We could, of course, tell Ross to use his intuitions to decide which of the maxims is the best description. |
| 5912 | We should use money to pay debts before giving to charity |
| Full Idea: Ceteris paribus, we should pay our debts rather than give our money in charity, when we cannot do both. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II) | |||
| A reaction: This seems a neat objection to utilitarianism, though we could reply that the failure to repay a debt will lead to far more trouble, for you and for your creditor, than your failure to be charitable. |
| 5916 | Rights were originally legal, and broadened to include other things |
| Full Idea: A 'right' does not stand for a purely moral notion; it began, I suppose, by standing for a legal notion, and its usage has broadened out so as to include certain things that cannot be claimed at law, but it is not yet correlative to duty. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II App I) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably 'natural rights' are those which ought to be legal rights - or they are so obvious that there is no point in discussing legal rights until the natural rights are granted. Don't we make laws because we perceive rights? |
| 5915 | Rights can be justly claimed, so animals have no rights, as they cannot claim any |
| Full Idea: On the whole, since we mean by a right something that can be justly claimed, we should probably say that animals have not rights, not because the claim to humane treatment would not be just if it were made, but because they cannot make it. | |||
| From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §II App I) | |||
| A reaction: This would also apply to a human being who was, for some reason, unable to claim their rights. If Amnesty can claim rights for prisoners, presumably we can claim rights for dumb animals. Ross is on weak ground. |