34 ideas
| 8013 | In the Reformation, morality became unconditional but irrational, individually autonomous, and secular [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Three concepts about morality emerge from the Reformation period: that moral rules are unconditional demands that lack rational justification; that moral agents are sovereign in choices; and that secular powers have their own norms and justifications. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that a rather frank admission of the role of self-interest emerged at that time as well. It is only in the late seventeenth century that the possibility of a secular altruism begins to be investigated. But there's Shakespeare... |
| 8021 | The Levellers and the Diggers mark a turning point in the history of morality [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The Levellers and the Diggers mark a turning point in the history of morality. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: John Lilburne, the Leveller, 'Free-Born John', was the most important of them. They mainly fought for rights of religious conscience, but it quickly escalated into a demand for economic and social rights. It spread to France and the United States. |
| 14018 | Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Mackie (1983) dismisses the Principle of Sufficient Reason quickly, arguing that it is self-refuting: there is no sufficient reason to accept it. However, a principle is not invalidated by not applying to itself; it can be a powerful heuristic tool. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VI) | |
| A reaction: If God was entirely rational, and created everything, that would be a sufficient reason to accept the principle. You would never, though, get to the reason why God was entirely rational. Something will always elude the principle. |
| 14008 | The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: The problem with the redundancy theory of truth is that it conflates the metalinguistic notion of bivalence with a theorem of the object language, namely the law of excluded middle. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr3) |
| 14010 | All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: If there are any genuine relations at all between spatio-temporal objects, then they are all either spatio-temporal or causal. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds too easy, but I have wracked my brains for counterexamples and failed to find any. How about qualitative relations? |
| 14009 | It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: It is widely held, and I think correctly so, that a necessary condition for the existence of relations is that both of the relata exist. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4) | |
| A reaction: This is either trivial or false. Relations in the actual world self-evidently relate components of it. But I seem able to revere Sherlock Holmes, and speculate about relations between possible entities. |
| 8006 | When Aristotle speaks of soul he means something like personality [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: When Aristotle speaks of the soul we could very often retain his meaning by speaking of personality. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre contrasts this strongly with Plato's dualist view. Famously Aristotle thinks the soul is the 'form' of the body, but this implies that he also includes the higher-level functions of the body. Soul is character? |
| 8002 | Sophists don't distinguish a person outside one social order from someone outside all order [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The sophist tradition failed to distinguish the difference between the concept of a man who stands outside and is able to question the conventions of some one given social order, and the concept of a man who stands outside social life as such. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: A very nice distinction. Compare foreigners in Athens with Diogenes of Sinope, who renounced all cities. This is the germ of MacIntyre's view that morality is essentially dependent on some sort of social order. He is a reviver of virtue theory. |
| 8012 | The value/fact logical gulf is misleading, because social facts involve values [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: One reason why it is highly misleading to talk of a logical gulf between value and fact....is that we cannot characterize the social life of a tribe in their factual terms and escape their evaluations. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: Personally I like the objection that facts about functions cannot avoid the value of good functions, but this is very good. It is much better than simply trying to find a specific counterexample, such as facts about promises. Values just are facts. |
| 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. |
| 8005 | 'Happiness' is a bad translation of 'eudaimonia', which includes both behaving and faring well [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The name 'eudaimonia' is badly but inevitably translated by 'happiness', badly because it includes both the notion of behaving well and the notion of faring well. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that it does not include the notion of feeling good. Aristotle, however, concludes that pleasure is part of eudaimonia. I take our 'happiness' to be an internal notion, while the Greek word is an external notion. |
| 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. |
| 8001 | 'Dikaiosune' is justice, but also fairness and personal integrity [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The Greek 'dikaiosune' is inadequately translated as 'justice', but also as any other word; it combines the notion of fairness in externals with that of personal integrity in a way that no English word does. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 1) | |
| A reaction: 'Dikaiosune' is said to be the main topic of Plato's 'Republic'. Plato seems to have meant it to cover whatever makes a good character. Justice in behaviour presumably flows from internal justice of character (which is, roughly, inner harmony). |
| 8023 | My duties depend on my identity, which depends on my social relations [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: I cannot answer the question 'What ought I to do?' until I have answered the question 'Who am I?', and any answer to this question will specify my place in a nexus of social relationships. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern critique of deontological ethics coming from revived virtue theory. As it stands, MacIntyre's idea sounds contractual, but I think he intends it in a more organic way. I am a fan. |
| 3554 | Bentham thinks happiness is feeling good, but why use morality to achieve that? [Annas on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to fall into Bentham's mindless assumption that happiness must be a specific state of feeling good about something, but it is mysterious why anyone would think morality a good strategy for achieving this. | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.7 |
| 3781 | The value of pleasures and pains is their force [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It behoves the legislator to understand the force of pleasures and pains, which is their value. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], IV.1) |
| 8022 | I am naturally free if I am not tied to anyone by a contract [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The essence of the claim to natural rights is that no one has a right against me unless he can cite some contract, my consent to it, and his performance of his obligations under it. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This has become the foundation of western democracy, and the rebellious teenager's charter. Children have not consented to a contract with their parents. Close and loving relationships cease to be contractual. |
| 3778 | The community's interest is a sum of individual interests [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: The interest of the community is the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.4) |
| 8031 | Fans of natural rights or laws can't agree on what the actual rights or laws are [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: It is notorious that adherents of theories about natural rights or natural laws offer lists of rights or laws which differ in substance from each other. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: There seems to have been a consensus early on that self-defence was a natural right, but divergence presumably occurs when you get bolder and more complex. There is a lot of divergence over which is Shakespeare's best play. |
| 20280 | Large mature animals are more rational than babies. But all that really matters is - can they suffer? [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational animal than an infant of a day, or even a month, old. But suppose they be otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], XVIII 1 n), quoted by Peter Singer - Practical Ethics 03 | |
| A reaction: This is certainly an inspiring, and even shocking question, which never seems to have been so directly asked before in the entire history of European thought. Awesome. |
| 3779 | Unnatural, when it means anything, means infrequent [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.14 n8.9) |
| 14016 | The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Special Relativity, with its definition of simultaneity, is shot through with verificationist assumptions. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIc) | |
| A reaction: [He credits Sklar with this] I love hearing such points made, because all my instincts have rebelled against Einstein's story, even after I have been repeatedly told how stupid I am, and how I should study more maths etc. |
| 14019 | Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Special Relativity denies absolute simultaneity, and therefore requires a past and a future, as well as a present. The Presentist, however, only requires the present. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VII) | |
| A reaction: It is nice to accuse Relativity of ontological extravagence. When it 'requires' past and future, that may not be a massive commitment, since the whole theory is fairly operationalist, according to Putnam. |
| 14013 | Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: There is in special relativity a notion of 'absolute past', and of 'absolute future', and of 'absolute elsewhere', and of 'absolute simultaneity' (of events occurring at their space-time conjunction). | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 5.III) | |
| A reaction: [My summary of his paragraph] I am inclined to agree with Bourne that there is enough here to build some sort of notion of 'present' that will support the doctrine of Presentism. |
| 14015 | No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: 'No-Futurists' believe in the real existence of the past and present but not the future, and hold that the world grows as more and more facts come into existence. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIb) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997] My sympathies are with Presentism, but there seems not denying that past events fix truths in a way that future events don't. The unchangeability of past events seems to make them factual. |
| 14007 | How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Presentists have a difficulty with how they can help themselves to the notion of 'earlier than' without having to invoke real relata, and how presentism can distinguish the past from the future. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 2.IV) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response is to infer the past from the present (fossils), and infer the future from the present (ticking bomb). But what is it that is being inferred, if the past and future are denied a priori? Tricky! |
| 14011 | Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: It seems that presentism cannot accommodate causation at all. In a true instance of 'c causes e', it seems to follow that both c and e exist, and it is widely accepted that c is earlier than e. But for presentists that means c and e can't coexist. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: A nice problem. Obviously if the flying ball smashed the window, we are left with only the effect existing - otherwise we could intercept the ball and prevent the disaster. To say this cause and this effect coexist would be even dafter than the problem. |
| 14017 | Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Since for presentism there is an ontologically significant and basic sense in which events are present, we should expect a definition of simultaneity in terms of presentness, rather than the other way round. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: Love it. I don't see how you can even articulate questions about simultaneity if you don't already have a notion of presentness. What are the relata you are enquiring about? |
| 14003 | Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Theories of time are in two broad categories, the tenseless and the tensed theories. In tenseless theories, all times are equally real, as are all objects located at them, and there is no passage of time from future to present to past. It's the B-series. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIa) | |
| A reaction: It might solve a few of the problems, but is highly counterintuitive. Presumably it makes the passage of time an illusion, and gives no account of how events 'happen', or of their direction, and it leaves causation out on a limb. I'm afraid not. |
| 14005 | B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Objects in the B-series are earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with each other, whereas objects in the A-series are earlier than, later than or simultaneous with the present. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIb) | |
| A reaction: Must we choose? Two past events relate to each other, but there is a further relation when 'now' falls between the events. If I must choose, I suppose I go for the A-series view. The B-series is a subsequent feat of imagination. McTaggart agreed. |
| 14006 | Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: We say that time 'flows', that the past is 'fixed' but the future is 'open'; we only dread the future, but not the past; we remember the past but not the future; we plan for the future but not the past. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro III) | |
| A reaction: These seem pretty overwhelming reasons for accepting an asymmetry between the past and the future. If you reject that, you seem to be mired in a multitude of contradictions. Your error theory is going to be massive. |
| 3780 | We must judge a thing morally to know if it conforms to God's will [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary to know first whether a thing is right in order to know from thence whether it be conformable to the will of God. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.18) |
| 8008 | The Bible is a story about God in which humans are incidental characters [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The Bible is a story about God in which human beings appear as incidental characters. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Very illuminating. He creates man, is betrayed by man, drowns him and starts again, sends a redeemer who gets murdered, and finally enlightens a small band who continue the uphill struggle to promote God's way. What next? |