66 ideas
| 19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
| A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
| 4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
| 5937 | The goodness of opinions depends on their grounds, and corresponding degrees of conviction [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
| 5927 | I prefer the causal theory to sense data, because sensations are events, not apprehensions [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 5940 | Two goods may be comparable, although they are not commensurable [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
| 3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
| 12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
| 5924 | Identical objects must have identical value [Ross] |
| 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? |
| 23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
| 3193 | Turing showed that logical rules can be specified computationally and mechanically [Turing, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Turing showed that any formal process can be specified computationally, and captured by a Turing Machine. Hence logical rules (and arithmetic) could be obeyed not by someone representing and following them, but by causal organisation of the brain. | |
| From: report of Alan Turing (works [1935]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 8.2 | |
| A reaction: It is questionable whether logic is an entirely formal process, if it involves truth. You would need an entirely formal notion of truth for that. But a brain can do whatever a flow diagram can do. |
| 11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
| 5933 | Aesthetic enjoyment combines pleasure with insight [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross, by Dancy,J] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
| 5920 | Value is held to be either a quality, or a relation (usually between a thing and a mind) [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 5932 | The four goods are: virtue, pleasure, just allocation of pleasure, and knowledge [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 5910 | The three intrinsic goods are virtue, knowledge and pleasure [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 5898 | 'Right' and 'good' differ in meaning, as in a 'right action' and a 'good man' [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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". |
| 5942 | We like people who act from love, but admire more the people who act from duty [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 5909 | Be faithful, grateful, just, beneficent, non-malevolent, and improve yourself [Ross, by PG] |
| 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. |
| 5914 | An act may be described in innumerable ways [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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 [Ross] |
| 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? |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 5915 | Rights can be justly claimed, so animals have no rights, as they cannot claim any [Ross] |
| 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. |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
| A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |