12 ideas
| 7388 | McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines [Dennett on McGinn] |
| Full Idea: McGinn invites his readers to join him in surrender: It's just impossible to imagine how software could make a conscious robot. Don't even try, he says. Other philosophical experiments (involving China) "work" by dissuading readers from imagining. | |
| From: comment on Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1 | |
| A reaction: I agree with Dennett. If you don't try to imagine how robots might do it, you are also denied the right to try to imagine how brains might manage it. Admittedly this is hard, but good imagination needs study, effort, discussion, time, information... |
| 3185 | Multiple realisability rules out hidden essences and experts as the source of water- and gold-concepts [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The multiple realisability emphasised by functionalists rules out the hidden essences (and the 'deferential' move in semantics) that one finds in the cases, for example, of "water" and "gold" emphasised by Kripke and Putnam. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991], p.132) | |
| A reaction: Presumably if they are 'hidden', then the people to whom we 'defer' for our concepts can't actually know about the essences we are supposed to be discussing. You can mean essences without knowing them. Cf. Loch Ness Monster. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |