14 ideas
| 22462 | We should speak the truth, but also preserve and pursue it [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There belongs to truthfulness not only the avoidance of lying but also that other kind of attachment to truth which has to do with its preservation and pursuit. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.74) | |
| A reaction: This is truth as a value, rather than as a mere phenomenon of accurate thought and speech. The importance of 'preserving' the truth is the less common part of this idea. |
| 16489 | Is it possible to state every possible truth about the whole course of nature without using 'not'? [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a person who knew everything that can be stated without using the word 'not' or some equivalent; would such a person know the whole course of nature, or would he not? | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948], 9) | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we might express Russell's thought as 'Does God need the word 'not'?'. Russell's thesis is that such words concern psychology, and not physics. God would need 'not' to describe how human minds work. |
| 16490 | Some facts about experience feel like logical necessities [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The impossibility of seeing two colours simultaneously in a given direction feels like a logical impossibility. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948], 9) | |
| A reaction: I presume all necessities feel equally necessary. If we distinguish necessities by what gives rise to them (a view I favour) then how strong they 'feel' will be irrelevant. We can see why Russell is puzzled by the phenomenon, though. |
| 16488 | It is hard to explain how a sentence like 'it is not raining' can be found true by observation [Russell] |
| Full Idea: If 'it is not raining' means 'the sentence "it is raining" is false', that makes it almost impossible to understand how a sentence containing the word 'not' can be found true by observation. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948], 9) | |
| A reaction: Russell goes on to explore the general difficulty of deciding negative truths by observation. The same problem arises for truthmaker theory. Obviously I can observe that it isn't raining, but it seems parasitic on observing when it is raining. |
| 16491 | If we define 'this is not blue' as disbelief in 'this is blue', we eliminate 'not' as an ingredient of facts [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We can reintroduce 'not' by a definition: the words 'this is not blue' are defined as expressing disbelief in what is expressed by the words 'this is blue'. In this way the need of 'not' as an indefinable constituent of facts is avoided. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948], 9) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Russell's programme of giving a psychological account of logical connectives. See other ideas from his 1940 and 1948 works. He observes that disbelief is a state just as positive as belief. I love it. |
| 22458 | Consequentialists can hurt the innocent in order to prevent further wickedness [Foot] |
| Full Idea: For consequentialists there will be nothing that it will not be right to do to a perfectly innocent individual, if that is the only way of preventing another agent from doing more things of the same kind. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.61) | |
| A reaction: This is her generalised version that Williams dramatised as Jim and the Indians. Roughly, if you achieve a good outcome, it matters little how it is achieved. Foot sees consequentialism as the main problem with utilitarianism. |
| 22460 | Why might we think that a state of affairs can be morally good or bad? [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We should ask why we think that it makes sense to talk about morally good and bad states of affairs. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.68) | |
| A reaction: This is the key question in her attack on consequentialism. There is nothing 'morally' good about my football team winning a great victory. |
| 22461 | Good outcomes are not external guides to morality, but a part of virtuous actions [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It is not that maximum welfare or 'the best outcome' stands outside morality as it foundation and arbiter, but rather that it appears within morality as the end of one of the virtues. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.73) | |
| A reaction: She cites justice and benevolence as aiming at different (and even conflicting) outcomes. I'm not sure about her distinction between 'outside' and 'within' morality. I suppose a virtuously created end is a moral end, unlike mere good states of affairs. |
| 22464 | The idea of a good state of affairs has no role in the thought of Aristotle, Rawls or Scanlon [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the goodness of total states of affairs played no part in Aristotle's moral philosophy, and in modern times plays not part either in Rawls's account of justice or in the theories of more thoroughgoing contractualists such as Scanlon. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.76) | |
| A reaction: We can add Kant to that. But if the supremely good state of affairs were permanently achieved, would that make morality irrelevant? A community of the exceptionally virtuous would not need the veil of ignorance, or contracts. |
| 22463 | Morality is seen as tacit legislation by the community [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Morality is thought of as a kind of tacit legislation by the community. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.75) | |
| A reaction: Foot presents this as a utilitarian doctrine, because the tacit legislation is felt to produce the best outcomes. This is Nietzsche's good and evil, beyond which he wished to go (presumably following other values). |
| 22459 | For consequentialism, it is irrational to follow a rule which in this instance ends badly [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It would be irrational to obey even the most useful rule if in a particular instance we clearly see that such obedience will not have the best results. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.62) | |
| A reaction: This is the simple reason why attempts at rule utilitarianism always lead back to act utilitarianism. Another way of putting it is that a good rule can only be assessed by the outcomes of individual acts that follow it. |
| 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 |
| 4786 | Russell's 'at-at' theory says motion is to be at the intervening points at the intervening instants [Russell, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: To reply to Zeno's Arrow Paradox, Russell developed his 'at-at' theory of motion, which says that to move from A to B is to be at the intervening points at the intervening instants. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.2 | |
| A reaction: I wonder whether Russell's target was actually Zeno, or was it a simplified ontology of points and instants? The ontology will also need identity, to ensure it is the same thing which arrives at each point. |
| 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. |