25 ideas
| 17325 | Truth-maker theory can't cope with non-causal dependence [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: My charge is that truth-maker theory cannot be integrated into an attractive general account of non-causal dependence. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: [You'll have to read Liggins to see why] |
| 17318 | Truthmakers for existence is fine; otherwise maybe restrict it to synthetic truths? [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers agree that true existential propositions have a truth-maker, but some go further, claiming that every true proposition has a truth-maker. More cautious theorists specify a class of truths, such as synthetic propositions. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; Armstrong is the ambitious one, and Rodriguez-Pereyra proposes the synthetic propositions] Presumably synthetic propositions can make negative assertions, which are problematic for truth-makers. |
| 17320 | Either p is true or not-p is true, so something is true, so something exists [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Either p or not-p. If p, then the proposition 'p' is true. If not p, then the proposition 'not p' is true. Either way, something is true. Thus something exists. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.3 n5) | |
| A reaction: Liggins offers this dodgy argument as an objection to conceptual truths having truth-makers. |
| 17326 | The dependence of {Socrates} on Socrates involves a set and a philosopher, not facts [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: The dependence of {Socrates} on Socrates appears to involve a set and a philosopher, neither of which is a fact. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: He points out that defenders of facts as the basis of dependence could find a suitable factual paraphrase here. Socrates is just Socrates, but the singleton has to be understood in a particular way to generate the dependence. |
| 17327 | Non-causal dependence is at present only dimly understood [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Non-causal dependence is at present only dimly understood. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.8) | |
| A reaction: Not very helpful, you may be thinking, but it is always helpful to know where we have got to in the enquiry. |
| 17322 | Necessities supervene on everything, but don't depend on everything [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Necessities supervene upon everything, but they do not depend on everything. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if merely existing together counts as sufficiently close to be 'supervenience'. If 2+2 necessitates 4, that hardly seems to 'supervene' on the Eiffel Tower. If so, how close must things be to qualify for supervenience? |
| 17324 | 'Because' can signal an inference rather than an explanation [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: 'Because' can signal an inference rather than an explanation. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.5) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle starts from words like 'why?', but it can be a deceptive approach to explanation. |
| 17321 | Value, constitution and realisation are non-causal dependences that explain [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: 'It is wrong because it produces pain for fun', and 'these constitute a table because they are arranged tablewise', and 'tea is poisonous because it contains arsenic' are clearly non-causal uses of 'because', and neither are they conceptual. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: The general line seems to be that any form of determination will underwrite an explanation. He talks later of the 'wrongmaker' and 'poisonmaker' relationships to add to the 'truthmaker'. The table example is the 'object-maker' dependence relation. |
| 17323 | If explanations track dependence, then 'determinative' explanations seem to exist [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: If explanation often tracks dependence, then we have a theoretical reason to expect such explanations to exist. Let us call such explanations 'determinative'. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be an emerging understanding that this 'determination' relation is central to all of explanation - with causal explanations, for example, being a particular instance of it. I like it. These are real, not conventional, explanations. |
| 23110 | Human injustice is not a permanent feature of communities [Rawls] |
| Full Idea: Men's propensity to injustice is not a permanent aspect of community life. | |
| From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], p.245), quoted by John Kekes - Against Liberalism | |
| A reaction: This attitude is dismissed by Kekes, with some justification, as naïve optimism. What could be Rawls's grounds for making such a claim? It couldn't be the facts of human history. |
| 15676 | Rawls defends the priority of right over good [Rawls, by Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: Rawls defends the thesis of the priority of the right over the good. | |
| From: report of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.7:100 | |
| A reaction: It depends whether you are talking about actions, or about states of affairs. I don't see how any state of affairs can be preferred to the good one. It may be that the highest duty of action is to do what is right, rather than to achieve what is good. |
| 4123 | A fair arrangement is one that parties can agree to without knowing how it will benefit them personally [Rawls, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Rawls's theory is an elaboration of a simple idea: a fair system of arrangements is one that the parties can agree to without knowing how it will benefit them personally. | |
| From: report of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: The essence of modern Kantian contractualism. It is an appealing principle for building a rational world, but I hear Nietzsche turning in his grave. |
| 3279 | Utilitarianism inappropriately scales up the individual willingness to make sacrifices [Rawls, by Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Rawls claims that utilitarianism applies to the problem of many interests a method appropriate for one individual. A single person may accept disadvantages in exchange for benefits, but in society other people get the benefits. | |
| From: report of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], p.74,104) by Thomas Nagel - Equality §7 |
| 3280 | Why does the rational agreement of the 'Original Position' in Rawls make it right? [Nagel on Rawls] |
| Full Idea: Why does what it is rational to agree to in Rawls' 'Original Position' determine what is right? | |
| From: comment on John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by Thomas Nagel - Equality §7 |
| 20552 | The original position models the idea that citizens start as free and equal [Rawls, by Swift] |
| Full Idea: The original position is presented by Rawls as modelling the sense in which citizens are to be understood as free and equal. | |
| From: report of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by Adam Swift - Political Philosophy (3rd ed) 3 'Strikes' | |
| A reaction: In other words, Rawls's philosophy is not a demonstration of why we should be liberals, but a guidebook for how liberals should go about organising society. |
| 18636 | Choose justice principles in ignorance of your own social situation [Rawls] |
| Full Idea: The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. ...Since all are similarly situated and no one is able to design principles to favor his particular condition, the principles of justice are the rest of a fair agreement or bargain. | |
| From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], §03) | |
| A reaction: A famous idea. It tries to impose a Kantian impartiality onto the assessment of political principles. It is a beautifully simple idea, and saying that such impartiality never occurs is no objection to it. Think of a planet far far away. |
| 18631 | All desirable social features should be equal, unless inequality favours the disadvantaged [Rawls] |
| Full Idea: All social primary goods - liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect - are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favoured. | |
| From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], §46) | |
| A reaction: In the wholehearted capitalism of the 21st century this sounds like cloud-cuckoo land. As an 'initial position' (just as in the 'Republic') the clean slate brings out some interesting principles. Actual politics takes vested interests as axiomatic. |
| 20538 | Utilitarians lump persons together; Rawls somewhat separates them; Nozick wholly separates them [Swift on Rawls] |
| Full Idea: Rawls objects to utilitarianism because it fails to take seriously the separateness of persons (because there is no overall person to enjoy the overall happiness). But Nozick thinks Rawls does not take the separateness of persons seriously enough. | |
| From: comment on John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by Adam Swift - Political Philosophy (3rd ed) 1 'Nozick' | |
| A reaction: In this sense, Nozick seems to fit our picture of a liberal more closely than Rawls does. I think they both exaggerate the separateness of persons, based on a false concept of human nature. |
| 9277 | Rawls's account of justice relies on conventional fairness, avoiding all moral controversy [Gray on Rawls] |
| Full Idea: Rawls's account of justice works only with widely accepted intuitions of fairness and relies at no point on controversial positions in ethics. The fruit of this modesty is a pious commentary on conventional moral beliefs. | |
| From: comment on John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 3.6 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is the thought which provoked Nozick to lob his grenade on the subject. It resembles the charges of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche against Kant, that he was just dressing up conventional morality. Are 'controversial' ethics good? |
| 20527 | Liberty Principle: everyone has an equal right to liberties, if compatible with others' liberties [Rawls] |
| Full Idea: First Principle [Liberty]: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. | |
| From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], 46) | |
| A reaction: This is the result of consensus after the initial ignorant position of assessment. It is characteristic of liberalism. I'm struggling to think of a disagreement. |
| 21018 | The social contract has problems with future generations, national boundaries, disabilities and animals [Rawls, by Nussbaum] |
| Full Idea: Rawls saw four difficulties for justice in the social contract approach: future generations; justice across national boundaries; fair treatment of people with disabilities; and moral issues involving non-human animals. | |
| From: report of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by Martha Nussbaum - Creating Capabilities 4 | |
| A reaction: These are all classic examples of groups who do not have sufficient power to negotiate contracts. |
| 21041 | Justice concerns not natural distributions, or our born location, but what we do about them [Rawls] |
| Full Idea: The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. | |
| From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], 17) | |
| A reaction: Lovely quotation. There is no point in railing against the given, and that includes what is given by history, as well as what is given by nature. It comes down to intervening, in history and in nature. How much intervention will individuals tolerate? |
| 23583 | If an aggression is unjust, the constraints on how it is fought are much stricter [Rawls] |
| Full Idea: When a country's right to war is questionable and uncertain, the constraints on the means it can use are all the more severe. | |
| From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], p.379), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 14 | |
| A reaction: This is Rawls opposing the idea that combatants are moral equals. The restraints are, of course, moral. In practice aggressors are usually the worst behaved. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |