31 ideas
| 6161 | Structuralism is neo-Kantian idealism, with language playing the role of categories of understanding [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Structuralism is a form of neo-Kantian idealism, in which the job of creating Kant's phenomenal world has been taken over by language instead of forms of sensibility and categories of the understanding. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A helpful connection, which explains my aversion to any attempt at understanding the world simply by analysing language, either in its ordinary usage, or in its underlying logical form. |
| 6163 | If bivalence is rejected, then excluded middle must also be rejected [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: If you reject the principle of bivalence (that a proposition is either determinately true or false), then statements are also not subject to the Law of Excluded Middle (P or not-P). | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I think Rowlands is wrong about this. Excluded Middle could be purely syntacti, or its semantics could be 'True or Not-True'. Only bivalent excluded middle introduces 'True or False'. Compare Idea 4752. |
| 6155 | Supervenience is a one-way relation of dependence or determination between properties [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is essentially a one-way relation of dependence or determination, …which holds, in the first instance, between properties. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This definition immediately shows why supervenient properties are in danger of being epiphenomenal (i.e. causally irrelevant). Carefully thought about the notion of a 'one-way' relation will, I think, make it more obscure rather than clearer. |
| 6154 | It is argued that wholes possess modal and counterfactual properties that parts lack [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Some have argued that a mereological whole should not be identified with the sum of its parts on the grounds that the former possess certain properties - specifically modal and (perhaps) counterfactual properties - that the latter lacks. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced that modal and counterfactual claims should count as properties. If my pen is heated it melts (a property), but if my pen were intelligent it could do philosophy. Intelligence is a property, but the situation isn't. |
| 6157 | Tokens are dated, concrete particulars; types are their general properties or kinds [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Tokens are dated, concrete, particular occurrences or instances; types are the general properties that these occurrences exemplify or the kinds to which they belong. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It might be said that types are sets, of which tokens are the members. The question of 'general properties' raises the question of whether universals must exist to make kinds possible. |
| 6159 | Strong idealism is the sort of mess produced by a Cartesian separation of mind and world [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Neo-Kantian idealism, and the excesses of recent versions of it, are precisely the sort of mess one can get oneself into through an uncritical acceptance of the dichotomizing of mind and world along Cartesian internalist lines. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I am unconvinced that internalism about the mind (that its contents can be defined without reference to anything external) leads to this disastrous split. We don't have to abandon the links between an internal mind and the world. |
| 6152 | Minds are rational, conscious, subjective, self-knowing, free, meaningful and self-aware [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The apparent features of mind which are not obviously physical include: rationality, thought, consciousness, subjectivity, infallible first-person knowledge, freedom, meaning and self-awareness. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: A helpful list, some of which can be challenged. Ryle challenges first-person infallibility. Hume challenges self-awareness. Quine challenges meaning. Lots of people (e.g. Spinoza) challenge freedom. The Churchlands seem to challenge consciousness. |
| 6173 | Content externalism implies that we do not have privileged access to our own minds [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Content externalism threatens the idea of first-person authority in all its forms, and does so because it calls into question the idea that the access we have to our own mental states is privileged in the way required for such authority. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to respond by saying that since we clearly have privileged access to our own minds, that means there must be something wrong with content externalism. |
| 6174 | If someone is secretly transported to Twin Earth, others know their thoughts better than they do [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: If someone knew that a thinker had, without realising it, been transported to Twin Earth, they would almost certainly be a higher authority on the content of the thinker's thoughts than would the thinker. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: They would certainly be a higher authority on the truth of the thinker's thoughts, but only in the way that you might think I hold a diamond when I know it is a club. If the thinker believes it is H2O, the fact that it isn't is irrelevant to content. |
| 6158 | Supervenience of mental and physical properties often comes with token-identity of mental and physical particulars [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: One often finds a supervenience thesis concerning the relation between mental and physical properties combined with a token identity theory concerning the relation between mental and physical particulars. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This brings out the important clarifying point that supervenience is said to be between properties, not substances. The point is that supervenience will always cry out for an explanation, preferably a sensible one. |
| 6168 | The content of a thought is just the meaning of a sentence [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The content of the thought that the sky is blue is simply the meaning of the sentence "The sky is blue". | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that it is logically impossible for a non-language-speaker, such as a chimpanzee, to think that the sky is the same colour as the water. If we allow propositions, we might be able to keep meanings without the sentences. |
| 6167 | Action is bodily movement caused by intentional states [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: An action is a bodily movement that is caused by intentional states such as beliefs, desires and so on. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: A useful definition, and clearly one that has no truck with attempts at giving behaviourist definitions of action. The definition of a 'moral action' needs to be built on this one. Particular types of belief and desire, presumably. |
| 6248 | Reason is too slow and doubtful to guide all actions, which need external and moral senses [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: We boast of our mighty reason above other animals, but its processes are too slow, too full of doubt, to serve us in every exigency, either for our preservation, without external senses, or to influence our actions for good without the moral sense. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.III) | |
| A reaction: This idea was taken up by Hume, and it must have influence Hume's general scepticism about the importance of reason. What this idea misses is the enormous influence of prior reasoning on our quick decisions. |
| 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? |
| 6238 | We approve of actions by a superior moral sense [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: By a superior sense, which I call a moral one, we approve the actions of others. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This tries to present moral insight as being on a par with the famous five senses. This doesn't seem quite right to me; separate parts of me can operate individual senses, but the whole of me is required for moral judgements, based on evidence. |
| 6239 | We dislike a traitor, even if they give us great benefit [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: Let us consider if a traitor, who would sell his own country to us, may not often be as advantageous to us, as an hero who defends us: and yet we can love the treason, and hate the traitor. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §I.VI) | |
| A reaction: A nice example, which certainly refutes any claim that morality is entirely and directly self-interested. High-minded idealism, though, is not the only alternative explanation. We admire loyalty, but not loyalty to, say, Hitler. |
| 6240 | The moral sense is not an innate idea, but an ability to approve or disapprove in a disinterested way [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: The moral sense is not an innate idea or knowledge, but a determination of our minds to receive the simple ideas of approbation or condemnation, from actions observed, antecedent to any opinions of advantage or loss to redound to ourselves. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §I.VIII) | |
| A reaction: This may claim a pure moral intuition, but it is also close to Kantian universalising of the rules for behaviour. It is also a variation on Descartes' 'natural light' of reason. Of course, if we say the ideas are 'received', where are they received from? |
| 6242 | We cannot choose our moral feelings, otherwise bribery could affect them [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: Neither benevolence nor any other affection or desire can be directly raised by volition; if they could, then we could be bribed into any affection whatsoever toward any object. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.IV) | |
| A reaction: Of course, notoriously, the vast mass of people have often been bribed to love a politician, by low taxes, or bread and circuses. Still, you cannot choose to love or admire someone, you just do. Not much free will there. |
| 6247 | Everyone feels uneasy when seeing others in pain, unless the others are evil [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: Every mortal is made uneasy by any grievous misery he sees another involved in, unless the person be imagined morally evil. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §V.VIII) | |
| A reaction: This is the natural compassion on which Hume built his moral theory. This remark emphasises that a concern for justice is just as important as a compassion for pain. Kant was more interested in what we deserve than in what we get. |
| 6177 | Moral intuition seems unevenly distributed between people [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The faculty of moral intuition seems to be unevenly distributed between people. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This would be a good argument if it was thought that the source of moral intuitions was divine, but people vary enormously in their intuitions about maths, about character, about danger. If you believe in any intuition at all, you must accept its variety. |
| 6244 | Human nature seems incapable of universal malice, except what results from self-love [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: Human nature seems scarce capable of malicious disinterested hatred, or an ultimate desire of the misery of others, when we imagine them not pernicious to us, or opposite to our interests; ..that is only the effect of self-love, not disinterested malice. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.VII) | |
| A reaction: I suppose it is true that even the worst criminals brooding in prison don't wish the entire population of some foreign country to die in pain. Only a very freakish person would wish the human race were extinct. A very nice observation. |
| 6243 | As death approaches, why do we still care about family, friends or country? [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: How comes it that we do not lose, at the approach of death, all concern for our families, friends, or country? | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.V) | |
| A reaction: A nice question. No doubt some people do cease to care, but on the whole it raises the 'last round' problem in social contract theory, which is why fulfil your part of a bargain if it is too late to receive the repayment afterwards? |
| 6246 | My action is not made good by a good effect, if I did not foresee and intend it [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: No good effect, which I did not actually foresee and intend, makes my action morally good. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §III.XII) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the parents of utilitarianism repudiating pure consequentialism. Bentham sharply divided the action (which is consequentialist) from the person (who has useful intentions, but is not particulary important); this division is misleading. |
| 6241 | Contempt of danger is just madness if it is not in some worthy cause [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: Mere courage, or contempt of danger, if we conceive it to have no regard to the defence of the innocent, or repairing of wrongs or self-interest, would only entitle its possessor to bedlam. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.I) | |
| A reaction: If many criminals would love to rob a bank, but only a few have the nerve to attempt it, we can hardly deny that the latter exhibit a sort of courage. The Greeks say that good sense must be involved, but few of them were so moral about courage. |
| 6245 | That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest number [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest number; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §III.VIII) | |
| A reaction: The first use of a phrase taken up by Bentham. This is not just an anticipation of utilitarianism, it is utilitarianism, with all its commitment to consequentialism (but see Idea 6246), and to the maximising of happiness. It is a brilliant idea. |
| 6251 | The loss of perfect rights causes misery, but the loss of imperfect rights reduces social good [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: Perfect rights are necessary to the public good, and it makes those miserable whose rights are thus violated; …imperfect rights tend to the improvement and increase of good in a society, but are not necessary to prevent universal misery. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.VI) | |
| A reaction: This is a very utilitarian streak in Hutcheson, converting natural law into its tangible outcome in actual happiness or misery. The distinction here is interesting (taken up by Mill), but there is a very blurred borderline. |
| 6156 | The 17th century reintroduced atoms as mathematical modes of Euclidean space [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The seventeenth century revolution reintroduced the classical concept of the atom in somewhat new attire as an essentially mathematical entity whose primary qualities could be precisely quantified as modes or aspects of Euclidean space. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this very abstract view of atoms didn't last, once they began to identify specific physical atoms, such as oxygen. This view fits in with Newton's use of pure (abstract) points such as the 'centre of gravity'. |
| 6170 | Natural kinds are defined by their real essence, as in gold having atomic number 79 [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Part of what it means to be a natural kind is that they are defined by a real essence, a constitution that marks them out as the substance they are (as water is essentially H2O, and gold essentially has atomic number 79). | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: A 'real essence' would be the opposite of a 'conventional essence', which is just a human way of seeing things. |
| 6178 | It is common to see the value of nature in one feature, such as life, diversity, or integrity [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: In recent environmental philosophy it is common to see the value of nature identified with one or another natural feature of the environment: life, diversity, ecosystemic integrity and so on. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This thought seems to be asking for the Open Question argument. What is so good about life, or diversity? Our strongest intuition must be that the survival of the ecosystem, and whatever makes that possible, is the highest value. |
| 6250 | We say God is good if we think everything he does aims at the happiness of his creatures [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: We call the Deity morally good, when we apprehend that his whole providence tends to the universal happiness of his creatures. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.V) | |
| A reaction: From the point of view of eternity, we might accept that God aims at some even greater good than the happiness of a bunch of miserable little creatures whose bad behaviour merits little reward. The greater good needs to be impressive, though. |
| 6249 | If goodness is constituted by God's will, it is a tautology to say God's will is good [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: To call the laws of the supreme Deity good or holy or just, if these be constituted by laws, or the will of a superior, must be an insignificant tautology, amounting to no more than 'God wills what he wills' or 'His will is conformable to his will'. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.V) | |
| A reaction: This argues not only against God as the source of morality, but also against any rules, such as those of the Categorical Imperative. Why should I follow the Categorical Imperative? What has value must dictate the rules. Is obedience the highest value? |