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4 ideas
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro | |
| A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it. |
| 5901 | Is 'productive of happiness' the definition of 'right', or the cause of it? [Ross on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Bentham has not made up his mind whether he thinks that 'right' means 'productive of the general happiness', or that being productive of the general happiness is what makes acts right (and he would have thought the difference unimportant). | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
| A reaction: The issue is whether rightness exists as a concept separate from happiness. I take it Bentham would vote for the first reading, as he has no interest in what is right, apart from increasing happiness. |
| 5934 | Of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure, only intensity and duration matter [Ross on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Most of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure refer to further pleasures, or are irrelevant to the pleasure; we are left with intensity and duration as the characteristics on which depend the value of a pleasure qua pleasure, and there is nothing to add. | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §VI | |
| A reaction: I agree. When Bentham produces his list he seems to be trying to add a bogus enrichment to what is really a rather crude and basic notion of the aim of life. Your simple hedonist appears to only desire high intensity and long duration. |
| 3777 | Pleasure and pain control all human desires and duties [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.1) | |
| A reaction: Ridiculous. Both halves are false. We pursue things for other reasons, and to deny this makes his idea a tautology. Deep ecology has nothing to do with human pleasure or pain. |