5 ideas
| 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? |
| 6853 | Consequentialism wrongly assumes a clear line between an act and its consequences [Crisp,R] |
| Full Idea: What is wrong with consequentialism is that it assumes that there is agreement about when an act ends and when its consequences begin. | |
| From: Roger Crisp (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.31) | |
| A reaction: I certainly agree that this is a mistake in consequentialism, which has a crude idea of what an action is, though I am not convinced that this is the key fault in the theory. The theory doesn't distinguish acts by people from those by machines. |
| 12719 | Clearly, force is that from which action follows, when unimpeded [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The notion of force is as clear as that of action and passion, because it is that from which action follows when nothing prevents it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Paul Pellison-Fontinier [1691], A1.6.226), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: For Leibniz, force seems to be a metaphysical notion, rather than a feature of the physical world. I take it to be the bottom level of explanation, and it equates with Aristotelian form and essence. |
| 12720 | Time doesn't exist, since its parts don't coexist [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Time never exists, since all of its parts never exist together. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Paul Pellison-Fontinier [1691], A1.6.226), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: The problem here is that he seems to be admitting that time has 'parts'. Can something have parts and not exist? Events will also fail to exist by this criterion, though we could hardly deny that events (or some such) 'happen'. |
| 6854 | Does the environment have value in itself? [Crisp,R] |
| Full Idea: The debate which dominates environmental ethics is whether the environment has value in itself. | |
| From: Roger Crisp (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.37) | |
| A reaction: I say the answer has to be 'yes'. If it only has value in relation to conscious or human life, it will be difficult to demonstrate that they have value. Pleasure and pain, or wisdom, can't imply value on their own; a bigger picture is needed. |