15 ideas
| 1389 | If memory is the sole criterion of identity, we ought to use it for other people too [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If memory were the sole criterion of personal identity it would have to be the sole criterion that we use in making identity statements about persons other than ourselves. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Personal Identity and Memory [1959], §4) | |
| A reaction: From Locke's point of view, he is much less certain about the continued identity of other people, because he allows the possibility of transference of minds. Even we might reject physical identity, if a person had suffered a severe trauma. |
| 1390 | Bodily identity is one criterion and memory another, for personal identity [Shoemaker, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Bodily identity must be one of the criteria for personal identity (to establish that a rememberer was present at a past event), but memory itself must also be accepted as one of the criteria. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Personal Identity and Memory [1959], §5) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This concerns the epistemology of personal identity, not the ontology. Someone with total amnesia would probably accept a driving licence as a criterion. Is personal identity a mental state, or a precondition which makes mental states possible? |
| 22809 | The social contract sees society as constituted by and for individuals [Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: The social contract theory …has a vision of society as in some sense constituted by individuals for the fulfilment of ends which are primarily individual. | |
| From: Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979], p.29) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be initiated by individuals who are only motivated by what is in it for them. This presumes self-sufficient adults, rather than children, or parents with children, or dependent people. The epitome of liberalism, perhaps. |
| 22811 | Assigning a right based on a human capacity implies that the capacity should be developed [Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: It would be incomprehensible and incoherent to ascribe rights to human beings in respect of the specifically human capacities (such as the right to beliefs or life-style) while at the same time denying that those capacities ought to be developed. | |
| From: Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979], p.33) | |
| A reaction: Developed by whom? The agent, their family, or the state? At what point has someone got a capacity, with no further requirement to develop it? Taylor pulls rather large rabbits out of small hats. |
| 22815 | If freedom depends on society and culture, the greatest freedom is in shaping them [Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: If realising our freedom partly depends on the society and culture in which we live, then we exercise a fuller freedom if we can help determine the shape of this society and culture. | |
| From: Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979], p.47) | |
| A reaction: This is clearly in response to the critics of communitarianism who say that it is too conservative, because your values are created for you, by your community. |
| 22814 | Our reliance on other people close to us does not imply any political obligations [Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: We must all be nurtures by others as children, and we only flourish as adults in relationship with friends, mates, children and so on. But this has nothing to do with any obligation to belong to political society. | |
| From: Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979], p.42) | |
| A reaction: He is defending community, but not at that minimal human level. Political obligations follows from our need for a wider society, to achieve justice, education, travel, health etc. There are no rights without a society |
| 22812 | For most people the primacy of rights mainly concerns freedom [Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: Most of those who want to affirm the primacy of rights are more interested in asserting the right of freedom, and in a sense which can only be attributed to humans. | |
| From: Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979], p.40) | |
| A reaction: This is probably more pronounced in North America than in Europe. It may be that without freedom a lot of the other rights are impossible. |
| 22810 | A right is not just a rule, but also asserts certain ideas of moral worth [Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: Asserting a right is more than issuing an injunction. It has an essential conceptual background, in some notion of the moral worth of certain properties or capacities, without which it would not make. | |
| From: Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979], p.33) | |
| A reaction: A simple right may arise from a contract, which could be quite trivial, and of no moral importance. The winner of the egg and spoon race has a right to the prize, which is an ice cream. I think he means legal rights in a state. |
| 22813 | Property is not essential for life, but it may be essential for independence [Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: It is standardly said that we need the right to property as an essential underpinning of life, but this is patently not true. …In reality it is actually seen as an essential part of a life of independence. | |
| From: Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979], p.41) | |
| A reaction: Hence it has a high value for liberals, for whom an independent life is the prime social aspiration. The law of trespass will define the degree of independence provided by property. |
| 23417 | If the state is neutral, there won't be sufficient community to support a welfare state [Taylor,C, by Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: Charles Taylor says the neutral [liberal] state undermines the sense of community which is required for citizens to accept the sacrifices demanded by the welfare state. | |
| From: report of Charles Taylor (Atomism [1979]) by Will Kymlicka - Community 'legitimacy' | |
| A reaction: As someone who believes in the welfare state, I think this is correct. Extreme individualistic liberalism is incompatible with a welfare state. A liberal society needs institutions which draw free individuals into the community. |
| 6613 | The natural kinds are objects, processes and properties/relations [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are three hierarchies of natural kinds: objects or substances (substantive universals), events or processes (dynamic universals), and properties or relations (tropic universals). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Most interesting here is the identifying of natural kinds with universals, making universals into the families of nature. Universals are high-level sets of natural kinds. To grasp universals you must see patterns, and infer the underlying order. |
| 6616 | Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005]) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects. |
| 6615 | A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action. |
| 6614 | A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out. |
| 6612 | Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90) | |
| A reaction: Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences. |