40 ideas
| 1350 | Continuity is needed for existence, otherwise we would say a thing existed after it ceased to exist [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Identity supposes an uninterrupted continuance of existence….Otherwise we must suppose a being to exist after it has ceased to exist, and to have existed before it was produced, which are manifest contradictions. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: I take the point to be that if something is supposed to survive a gap in its existence, that must imply that it somehow exists during the gap. If a light flashes on and off, is it really a new entity each time? |
| 21322 | We treat slowly changing things as identical for the sake of economy in language [Reid] |
| Full Idea: All bodies, as they consist of innumerable parts, are subject to continual changes of their substance. When such changes are gradual, because language could not afford a different name for each state, it retains the same name and is considered the same. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: This is hard to deny. We could hardly rename a child each morning. Simlarly, we can't have a unique name for each leaf on a tree. Economy of language explains a huge amount in philosophy. |
| 21320 | Identity is familiar to common sense, but very hard to define [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Every man of common sense has a clear and distinct notion of identity. If you ask for a definition of identity, I confess I can give none. It is too simple a notion. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: 'Identical' seems to be a two-place predicate, but the only strict way two things can be identical is if there is actually just one thing. In which case just drop the word 'identity' (instead of defining it), and say there is just one thing here. |
| 1367 | Identity can only be affirmed of things which have a continued existence [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Identity can only be affirmed of things which have a continued existence. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't mean that Reid thinks there is nothing more to the identity than their similitude. But he, like Hume, denies that there is personal identity at any given instant. Reid is better at criticism than at formulating his own theory. |
| 23644 | Without memory we could have no concept of duration [Reid] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to show how we could acquire a notion of duration if we had no memory. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: We would probably not have a notion of duration if we possessed a memory, but nothing ever changed. Maybe in Shoemaker's frozen worlds they retain memories, but nothing happens? |
| 23643 | We all trust our distinct memories (but not our distinct imaginings) [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Every man feels he must believe what he distinctly remembers, though he can give no other reason for his belief, but that he remembers the thing distinctly; whereas, when he merely distinctly imagines a thing, he has no belief in it upon that account. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: The word 'distinct' is doing some heavy work here. I fear that believing the memory is the only criterion we have for calling it distinct. As a boy I was persuaded to change my testimony about a car accident, and I realised I was not distinct about it. |
| 1356 | A person is a unity, and doesn't come in degrees [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The identity of a person is a perfect identity: wherever it is real, it admits of no degrees; and it is impossible that a person should be in part the same, and in part different; because a person is a 'monad', and is not divisible into parts. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept this, because I don't accept the metaphysics needed to underpin it. To watch a person with Alzheimer's disease fade out of existence before they die seems sufficient counter-evidence. I believe in personal identity, but it isn't 'perfect'. |
| 1359 | Personal identity is the basis of all rights, obligations and responsibility [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Identity, when applied to persons, has no ambiguity, and admits of no degrees. It is the foundation of all rights and obligations, and of all accountableness. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be one of the key mistakes in all of philosophy - thinking that items must always be all-or-nothing. If a person deteriorates through Alzheimer's, there seem to be obvious degrees of personhood. Responsibility comes in degrees, too. |
| 21319 | I can hardly care about rational consequence if it wasn't me conceiving the antecedent [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The conviction of personal identity is indispensably necessary to all exercise of reason. Reasoning is made up of successive parts. Without the conviction that the antecedent have been seen by me, I could have no reason to proceed to the consequent. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: Society needs philosophers precisely to point such things out. It isn't conclusive, but populist waffle about the self not existing undermines the very concept of a 'train of thought', which everybody is signed up to. Trains of thought can take years. |
| 21323 | The identity of a thief is only known by similarity, but memory gives certainty in our own case [Reid] |
| Full Idea: A man challenges a thief in possession of his horse only on similarity. The testimony of witnesses to the identity of a person is commonly grounded on no other evidence. ...Evidence of our own identity is grounded in memory, and gives undoubted certainty. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: With other people the best we can hope for is type-identity, hoping that each individual being is a unique type, but with otherselves we are always confident of establishing token identity. Could I have been someone different yesterday, without realising? |
| 21321 | Memory reveals my past identity - but so does testimony of other witnesses [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Although memory gives the most irresistible evidence of my being the identical person that did such a thing, I may have other good evidence of things which befell me. I know who bare me and suckled me, but I do not remember those events. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: A splendidly accurate and simple observation. Reid's criticisms of Locke are greatly superior to those of Butler. We now have vast collections of photographs showing our past identities. |
| 21324 | If consciousness is transferable 20 persons can be 1; forgetting implies 1 can be 20 [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If the same consciousness can be transferred from one intelligent being to another, then two or twenty beings may be the same person. If he may lose the consciousness of actions done by him, one intelligent being may be two or twenty different persons. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: Reid says Locke was aware of these two implications of his theory of personal identity (based on consciousness). The first example is me replicated like software. The second is if I forget that I turned the light off, then who did turn the light off? |
| 21325 | Boy same as young man, young man same as old man, old man not boy, if forgotten! [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Suppose a brave officer, flogged as a boy for robbing an orchard, to have captured a standard in his first campaign, and become a general in advanced life. [If the general forgets the flogging] he is and at the same time is not the same as the boy. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: The point is that strict identity has to be transitive, and if the general forgets his boyhood that breaks the transitivity. If identity is less strict there is no problem. The general may only have memories related to some part of his boyhood. |
| 21327 | If a stolen horse is identified by similitude, its identity is not therefore merely similitude [Reid] |
| Full Idea: When a stolen horse is claimed, the only evidence that this is the same horse is similitude. But would it not be ridiculous from this to infer that the identity of a horse consists in similitude only? | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: Actually that is exactly Hume's view of the matter (Idea 21292). For a strict empiricist there is nothing else be close resemblance over time. I prefer Reid's account to Hume's. - but then I am not a 'strict' empiricist. |
| 1366 | If consciousness is personal identity, it is continually changing [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Is it not strange that the identity of a person should consist in a thing (consciousness) which is continually changing? | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the panicky slippery slope view of Locke, that sees his doctrine as the first step to the destruction of religion. The fact is, though, that parts of my consciousness changes continually, but other parts stay the same for years on end. |
| 1352 | Thoughts change continually, but the self doesn't [Reid] |
| Full Idea: My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment: they have no continued, but a successive, existence: but that self, or I, to which they belong, is permanent. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: The word 'permanent' may be excessive, but one could hardly say there is nothing more to personal identity than the contents of consciousnes, given how much and how quickly those continually fluctuate. |
| 23616 | Legal excuses are duress, ignorance, and diminished responsibility [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: The common legal practice is to distinguish three broad categories of excuse: duress, epistemic limitation, and diminished responsibility. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: McMahan cites these with reference to soldiers in wartime, but they have general application. The third one seems particularly open to very wide interpretation. Presumably I can't be excused by just being irresponsible. |
| 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? |
| 23606 | Liberty Rights are permissions, and Claim Rights are freedom from intervention [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There are two types of right. A Liberty right is merely a permission, meaning it is not wrong to do it. But a Claim right is a right against intervention, meaning no one has a liberty right to prevent it. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: There must also be a third type of right, which requires other people to perform actions on your behalf. If you pay for a book in a shop, you must then be given the book. |
| 23620 | A person or state may be attacked if they are responsible for an unjustified threat [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is a necessary condition of liability to defensive attack that one be morally responsible for posing an objectively unjustified threat. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 4.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This implies that one may not actually be doing the threatening (but merely ordering it, or enabling it). McMahan aims to have the same criteria for wartime as for peacetime. He denies Anscombe's claim that merely posing the threat is enough. |
| 23598 | You (e.g. a police officer) are not liable to attack just because you pose a threat [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is false that by posing a threat to another, one necessarily makes oneself liable to defensive action. A police officer who shoots an active murderer does not thereby by make herself liable to defensive action. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is one of his arguments against the moral equality of combatants. It is not morally OK to shoot all the local soldiers when you unjustly invade a territory. Sounds right to me. |
| 23594 | Wars can be unjust, despite a just cause, if they are unnecessary or excessive or of mixed cause [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Wars can be unjust despite having a just cause, because they are not actually needed, or they will cause excessive harm, or they also pursue some unjust causes. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The point is that older writers often think that a 'just cause' is sufficient. He is obviously right. |
| 23597 | Just war theory says all and only persons posing a threat are liable to attack [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: In mainstream just war theory (Anscombe, Nagel, Walzer) the criterion of liability to attack is simply posing a threat. Since all combatants pose a threat to each other, they are morally liable to attack; because noncombatants do not, they are not liable. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: McMahan says that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets rests mostly on this basis. The problem is that a huge range of unarmed people can also pose various degrees of threat. |
| 23595 | The worst unjustified wars have no aim at all [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: The most serious reason why a war might be unjustified is that it lacks any justifying aim at all. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It seems that Louis XIV invaded the Netherlands in around 1674 purely to enhance his own glory. That strikes me as worse. I supposed Ghenghis Khan invaded places simply because he enjoyed fighting. |
| 23619 | A defensive war is unjust, if it is responding to a just war [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is possible for a defensive war to be unjust, when the defensive war to which it is a response is a just war. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.3.3) | |
| A reaction: An example might be a state resisting an intervention from outside, when the state is in the process of exterminating some unwanted minority. Or perhaps the invaders are crossing the state's territory to achieve some admirable end. |
| 23600 | Proportionality in fighting can't be judged independently of the justice of each side [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There is simply no satisfactory understanding of proportionality in war that can be applied independently of whether the acts that are evaluated support a just or an unjust cause. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: He rejects traditional just war theory, which sees both sides as morally equal in combat, and hence equally subject to the principles of proportional response. But the just can then be harsher, when their just principles should make them milder. |
| 23603 | Can an army start an unjust war, and then fight justly to defend their own civilians? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There is a paradox if the unjust are justified in fighting the just in order to protect their own civilians who have been endangered by the starting of an unjust war. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [my summary of MacMahan pp.48-49] It suggests that in a war there may be local concepts of justice which are at odds with the general situation - which is the ad bellum/in bello distinction. But this is the justice of fighting, not how it is conducted. |
| 23611 | Soldiers cannot freely fight in unjust wars, just because they behave well when fighting [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: We must stop reassuring soldiers that they act permissibly when they fight in an unjust war, provided that they conduct themselve honorably on the battlefield by fighting in accordance with the rules of engagement. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: This culminates McMahan's arguments against the moral equality of combatants, and against the sharp division of justice of war from justice in war. How rare it is for philosophy to culminate in a policy recommendation! |
| 23612 | The law of war differs from criminal law; attacking just combatants is immoral, but legal [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Unlike domestic criminal law, the law of war is designed not to protect moral rights but to prevent harm. …This means when unjust combatants attack just combatants they violate their moral rights, yet they act within their legal rights. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.1.1) | |
| A reaction: He says we must bring the law of war much closer to the morality of war. If there is any hope of slowly eliminating war, it may lie in reforms such as these. |
| 23617 | If the unjust combatants are morally excused they are innocent, so how can they be killed? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: If most unjust combatants are morally innocent because they are excused, and if it is wrong to intentionally kill morally innocent people, then a contingent form of pacificism may be inescapable. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.3.1) | |
| A reaction: A very nice argument against the moral equality of combatants. If I think we are the good guys, and the opposing troops are no morally different from us, how can I possibly kill them? |
| 23599 | You don't become a legitimate target, just because you violently resist an unjust attack [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see how just combatants could become legitimate targets simply by offering violent resistance to unjust attacks by unjust coombatants. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: It is, however, hard to criticise a soldier who is dragged into fighting for an unjust cause, and then kills just defenders in the course of the fight. Once the bullets fly, normal morality seems to be suspended. Just survive. |
| 23596 | If all combatants are seen as morally equal, that facilitates starting unjust wars [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It would be naïve to doubt that the widespread acceptance of the moral equality of combatants has facilitated the ability of governments to fight unjust wars. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The point is that their armies are both compliant and seeing their actions as guiltless, which makes them perfect tools for evil. McMahan's ideal is an army which asks sharp questions about the justification of the war, before they fight it. |
| 23604 | Volunteer soldiers accept the risk of attack, but they don't agree to it, or to their deaths [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: When soldiers go to war, they undoubtedly assume a certain risk. They voluntarily expose themselves to a significant risk of being attacked. But this is entirely different from consenting to being attacked. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is his response to Walzer's thought that soldiers resemble people who volunteer for a boxing match. The sailors at Pearl Harbour obviously didn't consent to the attack, or accept the Japanese right to kill them. |
| 23608 | If being part of a big collective relieves soldiers of moral responsibility, why not the leaders too? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: If acting as an agent of a political collective justifies the combatants fighting an unjust war, that should also release the leaders from responsibility for their role in the fighting of that war. No one ever explains why this is not so. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: At the very least there seems to be a problem of the cut off point between innocent soldiers and culpable leaders. Which rank in the army or executive triggers the blame? |
| 23610 | If soldiers can't refuse to fight in unjust wars, can they choose to fight in just wars? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There is a certain symmetry here. The permissibility of disobeying a command to fight in an unjust war suggests the permissibility of disobeying a command not to fight in a just war. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: The argument considered here is that since we could never allow soldiers to choose to fight in their own wars, we similarly cannot let them opt out of the official wars. Implying obedience is absolute. Soldiers don't get to 'choose' anything! |
| 23613 | Equality is both sides have permission, or both sides are justified, or one justified the other permitted [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Moral equality means either 1) because just combatants are permitted to fight in a just way, so are the unjust , or 2) because the just are justified, so are the unjust, or 3) because the just are justified, the unjust are therefore permitted. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: [summary] McMahan calls 1) the weak version, and 2) the strong. He suggests that although 3) is unusual, it is what most people believe - that if the good are justified, the bad are permitted to fight back. He rejects them all. |
| 23615 | Fighting unjustly under duress does not justify it, or permit it, but it may excuse it [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is said that combatants are compelled to fight; they have no choice. But duress is not a justification; nor does it ground a permission - not even a subjective permission. It is, instead, an excusing condition. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: The 'subjective' permission is believing you are just, even if you aren't. A nice, accurate and true distinction made by McMahan, I think. It is roughly our postwar attitude to the Nazi army. |
| 23605 | Soldiers cannot know enough facts to evaluate the justice of their war [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: When soldiers are commanded to fight, they cannot reasonably be expected to have the factual knowledge necessary to evaluate the war as just or unjust. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of the 'epistemic' justification for a soldier to fight in an unjust war. Sometimes soldiers do have enoough knowledge, especially if they join up late on in a war, when they have studied and observed its progress. |
| 23602 | Innocence implies not being morally responsible, rather than merely being guiltless [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: My alternative conception is that one is 'innocent' if one is neither morally responsible for nor guilty of a wrong. Classical theory focused on guilt, but I think we should focus on moral responsibility (which is something less). | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to make the supporters of evil equally liable to attack with its perpetrators. But you can observe perpetration a lot more easily than you can observe support. |
| 23618 | Unconditional surrender can't be demanded, since evil losers still have legitimate conditions [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Achieving unconditional surrender can never be a justification for the continuation of war, since there are always conditions that a vanquished adversary, no matter how evil, can be justified in demanding. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.3.1) | |
| A reaction: McMahan is particularly discussing Hiroshima, but this also applies to the European war in 1945. Presumably a civilised victor will grant the conditions which the losers would have demanded, and that probably happened in 1945. It's about power. |