56 ideas
| 7623 | For ancient Greeks being wise was an ethical value [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: An ancient Greek would have said that being wise is an ethical value. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This is instantly appealing, but since the Enlightenment we are under an obligation to attempt to justify absolutely everything, including the value of wisdom. I'm thinking that it only has value if it leads to eudaimonia. |
| 4714 | Putnam's epistemic notion of truth replaces the realism of correspondence with ontological relativism [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Putnam replaces a correspondence theory of truth with an epistemic notion of truth - truth is idealized rational acceptability. The correspondence theory is committed to realism, but his allows ontological relativism. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be part of a slide by Putnam away from realism towards pragmatism. As a robust and defiant realist, this always strikes me as the road to hell. |
| 7617 | Before Kant, all philosophers had a correspondence theory of truth [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Before Kant it is impossible to find any philosopher who did not have a correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe this is true of Descartes. See ideas 2266 and 4298. Truth is 'clear and distinct' conceptions, but if you enlarge (and maybe socialise) 'clear' you get coherent. Descartes firmly avoids correspondence, because he can't trust 'facts'. |
| 4716 | The correspondence theory is wrong, because there is no one correspondence between reality and fact [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Putnam argues that theory does not correspond to reality, because there are myriad correspondences possible, and we cannot single out "the" relation of correspondence. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This obviously depends on views about reference and meaning. I don't see the problem in simple cases, which is all the correspondence theory needs. Complex cases, like chemistry, may well have ambiguities, but so what? |
| 7616 | Truth is an idealisation of rational acceptability [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Truth is an idealisation of rational acceptability; we speak as if there were such things as epistemically ideal conditions, and we call a statement 'true' if it would be justified under such conditions. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The second part makes human beings sound stupid (which they are not), but the first part is right, and incredibly important. Peirce is behind Putnam's thought. Truth is the target of belief. It isn't a nonsense just because we can't be infallible. |
| 14203 | Intension is not meaning, as 'cube' and 'square-faced polyhedron' are intensionally the same [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Intension cannot be identified with meaning. ..'Cube' and 'regular polyhedron with six square faces' are logically equivalent predicates. The intension is the same (the function giving the cubes in any possible world) but there is a difference of meaning. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) |
| 14207 | If cats equal cherries, model theory allows reinterpretation of the whole language preserving truth [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: If the number of cats happens to equal the cherries, then it follows from the theory of models that there is a reinterpretation of the entire language that leaves all sentences unchanged in truth value while permuting the extensions of 'cat' and 'cherry'. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This horrifying result seems to come simply from the fact that there is an isomorphism between two models, which in turn seems to rest largely on the cardinality of the models. There seems to be something wrong with model theory here (?). |
| 14214 | If we try to cure the abundance of theories with causal links, this is 'just more theory' [Putnam, by Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If we try to base determinate reference on natural causal connection, Putnam says this is just more theory, as subject as any theory to overabundant, conflicting intended interpretations. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981]) by David Lewis - Putnam's Paradox 'Why Are' | |
| A reaction: This is the 1981 Putnam, moving away from the realism that was implicit in the original causal theory of reference developed by himself and Kripke. His 'just more theory' is the slogan of Putnam's later anti-realism. |
| 14205 | The sentence 'A cat is on a mat' remains always true when 'cat' means cherry and 'mat' means tree [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The sentence 'A cat is on a mat' can be reinterpreted so that in the actual world 'cat' refers to cherries and 'mat' refers to trees, without affecting the truth-value of the sentence in any possible world. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This simple suggestion is the basis of a notorious argument in favour of anti-realism. See D.Lewis's 'Putnam's Paradox'. It tracks back to Skolem's doubts about whether infinitary mathematics is possible. Putnam's conclusion sounds daft. |
| 7610 | A fact is simply what it is rational to accept [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: I propose that the only criterion for what is a fact is what it is rational to accept. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An epistemological-ontological confusion here. The concept of a fact is of something which is the case quite independently of our criteria for believing it. There are facts which are unknowable for humans. It is, of course, rational to accept facts. |
| 7618 | Very nominalistic philosophers deny properties, though scientists accept them [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers are so nominalistic that they would deny the existence of such entities as 'properties' altogether; but science itself does not hesitate to talk freely of properties. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Maybe scientists aren't very good at ontology? They talk about forces and energy, but don't seem to know what they are. I am inclined to think that we must include properties in the working ontology of humans, but not into strict physics. |
| 11976 | Aristotelian essentialism says essences are not relative to specification [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'Aristotelian essentialism' is the doctrine of essences not relative to specifications. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: In other words, they are so-called 'real essences', understood as de re. Quine says essences are all de dicto, and relative to some specification. I vote for Aristotle. |
| 11978 | Causal necessities hold in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Just as a sentence is necessary if it holds in all worlds, so it is causally necessary if it holds in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], V) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe in the so-called 'laws of nature', so I'm not buying that. Is there no distinction in Lewis's view between those sentences which must hold, and those which happen to hold universally? |
| 4718 | If necessity is always relative to a description in a language, then there is only 'de dicto' necessity [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Putnam endorses the view that necessity is relative to a description, so there is only necessity 'de dicto': relative to language, not to reality. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: Even a realist must take this proposal seriously. The facts may contain de re necessities, but we could be very sceptical about our capacity to know them. Personally I enjoy speculating about de re necessities. They can't stop you. |
| 11979 | It doesn't take the whole of a possible Humphrey to win the election [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Even if Humphrey is a modal continuant, it doesn't take the whole of him to do such things as winning. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], Post B) | |
| A reaction: This responds to Kripke's famous example, that people only care about what happens to themselves, and not to some 'counterpart' of themselves. |
| 16994 | Counterpart theory is bizarre, as no one cares what happens to a mere counterpart [Kripke on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Probably Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world. Thus Lewis's view seems even more bizarre that the usual transworld identification it replaces. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity notes and addenda note 13 | |
| A reaction: I begin to see this as a devastating reply to a theory I previously found quite congenial. |
| 11974 | Counterparts are not the original thing, but resemble it more than other things do [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Your counterparts resemble you closely in content and context in important respects. They resemble you more closely than do the other things in their worlds. But they are not really you. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: It is a dilemma. If my counterpart were exactly me, I couldn't contemplate possibly losing a leg, or my sanity. But if my counterpart isn't exactly me, then I don't have much interest in its fate. Only essences can save us here. Cf. me tomorrow. |
| 11975 | If the closest resembler to you is in fact quite unlike you, then you have no counterpart [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If whatever thing in world w6 it is that resembles you more closely than anything else in w6 is nevertheless quite unlike you; nothing in w6 resembles you at all closely. If so, you have no counterpart in w6. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: This is the nub, because the whole theory rests on deciding whether two things resemble sufficiently 'closely'. But then we need a criterion of closeness, so we must start talking about which properties matter. Essences loom. |
| 11977 | Essential attributes are those shared with all the counterparts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An essential attribute of something is an attribute it shares with all its counterparts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: I don't like this. It ties essence entirely to identity, but I think essence precedes identity. Essence is a nexus of causal and explanatory powers which bestows an identity on each thing. But essence might be unstable, and identity with it. |
| 7620 | Some kind of objective 'rightness' is a presupposition of thought itself [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What the relativist fails to see is that it is a presupposition of thought itself that some kind of objective 'rightness' exists. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This may be the key objection to relativism. If you have a frame of reference, is it a good one? If you have a new perspective, is it better than your old one? Is the culture you live in confused or clear-thinking? Jokes and metaphors rely on truth. |
| 14204 | Naïve operationalism would have meanings change every time the tests change [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: On a naïve operationalist account every time a new way of testing whether a substance is really gold is discovered, the meaning and reference of 'gold' undergoes a change. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) |
| 7611 | Rationality is one part of our conception of human flourishing [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Our notion of rationality is, at bottom, just one part of our conception of human flourishing, our idea of the good. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This looks like the beginnings of virtue epistemology, since rationality will have criteria, which would seem to be virtues. I find this idea appealing, both as a view of rationality, and as a view of the human good. |
| 14200 | 'Water' on Twin Earth doesn't refer to water, but no mental difference can account for this [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The word 'water' used on Twin Earth refers not to water but to this other liquid (XYZ). Yet there is no relevant difference in the mental state of Twin Earth speakers and speakers on Earth (in 1750) to account for this difference of reference. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: In this world, if you and I separately meet twins, and I think about this twin while you think about that one, our mental states are different even if they are indistinguishable. I know I'm thinking about my twin, not yours. Indexicals. |
| 7612 | Reference is social not individual, because we defer to experts when referring to elm trees [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: My concept of an elm tree is exactly the same as my concept of a beech tree (I blush to confess), which shows that the determination of reference is social and not individual - both you and I defer to experts who can tell elms from beeches. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: If I said 'that tree looks nice' I wouldn't be deferring to experts. Nor if I said 'that tree, which I take to be an elm, looks nice'. If I am an expert I don't defer to experts. |
| 7613 | Concepts are (at least in part) abilities and not occurrences [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Concepts are (at least in part) abilities and not occurrences. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be building on the idea that meaning is use, and also arises from a background of pragmatism. Perhaps a concept is an acquaintance with a node in platonic space? Lots of abilities aren't concepts, so what distinguishes the concepts? |
| 14202 | Neither individual nor community mental states fix reference [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Mental state (in either the individualistic or the collective sense) does not fix reference. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The idea that communities fix reference seems to me plausible. See Tyler Burge on this. |
| 14201 | Maybe the total mental state of a language community fixes the reference of a term [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: One might concede that the reference of a person's term isn't fixed by his individual mental state, but insist that the total mental state of all the members of the language community fixes the reference of the term. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I like this reading of the problem, though Putnam himself prefers to say that things fix the reference. I take reference to be a human action, not a natural causal relation. Animals connecting thought to object may not count as reference at all. |
| 14206 | There are infinitely many interpretations of a sentence which can all seem to be 'correct' [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: There are always infinitely many different interpretations of the predicates of a language which assign 'correct' truth-values to the sentences in all possible worlds, no matter how those 'correct' truth-values are singled out. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Putnam says that he is using this argument from model theory to endorse the scepticism about 'gavagai' that Quine expressed in 1960. It is based on the ideas of Skolem, who was a renegade philosopher of mathematics. See Tim Button. |
| 7624 | The word 'inconsiderate' nicely shows the blurring of facts and values [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The use of the word 'inconsiderate' seems to me a very fine example of the way in which the fact/value distinction is hopelessly fuzzy in the real world and in the real language. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981]) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but not much of an argument. What would Nietzsche say? Was Agamemnon morally deficient because we might think him 'inconsiderate'? |
| 22849 | Rawls's theory cannot justify liberalism, since it presupposes free and equal participants [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Rawls's theory presupposes that the contractors are conceived, and conceive themselves, to be free and equal persons. Consequently, the theory cannot be presented as a justificatory theory of liberalism. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: Nice. If you imagine diverse groups with many strong beliefs coming together to form a society, Rawls is asking them all to become liberals before they all decide how to live together. |
| 22848 | People with strong prior beliefs would have nothing to do with a veil of ignorance [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Why would a group of people with strong beliefs (e.g. religious beliefs) agree to debate the problem of what norms should govern their association from behind a veil of ignorance? …They would not accept the veil of ignorance as fair. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Rawls's experiment assumes liberal people with very few beliefs. No racial supremacist is going to enter a society in which they may be of a different race. Charvet says the entrants would all need to be pluralists about the good. |
| 22838 | Societies need shared values, so conservatism is right if rational discussion of values is impossible [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Were it true that rational discussion of values is impossible, then a conservative attitude would seem to be the only viable position. Some set of common values is necessary to maintain the unity of a political society. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: Better to say that the less values can be both discussed and changed the stronger is the case for a degree of conservatism. Conservatives tend to favour values asserted by authority, rather than by popular (undiscussed) consensus. |
| 22846 | The universalism of utilitarianism implies a world state [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism is a universalist ethic, so the political realisation of this ethic would seem to be a world state seeking to maximise happiness for the world's population. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 12) | |
| A reaction: It certainly doesn't seem to favour the citizens of the state where it is implemented, since miserable people just across the border would have priority, and all miserable migrants must be welcomed. There is no loyalty to citizens. |
| 22835 | Liberals value freedom and equality, but the society itself must decide on its values [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: While freedom and equality are liberal values …they are fundamental regulative ideas of an independent society that is self-regulating …and decides what its own social and political arrangements should be. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 06) | |
| A reaction: So the central political activity is persuasion, not enforcement. Illiberal societies all contain liberal individuals. |
| 22831 | Modern libertarian societies still provide education and some housing [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: No society today is libertarian in the extreme sense. Even the freest economically, such as Singapore have their governments provide education services and public housing. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: There is a good argument that many other services should be provided by a libertarian state, on the grounds that it is more efficient, and the services must otherwise paid for by much higher salaries. |
| 22839 | Liberalism needs people to either have equal autonomy, or everyone to have enough autonomy [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: To get a liberal society one would have to claim that either everyone possesses autonomy to an equal degree or that everyone possesses a threshold level of the capacity that entitles them to enjoy the full liberal rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: This leaves out the more right-wing attitude that people can increase their capacity for autonomy if they are forced to stand on their own feet. A liberal society must decide how to treat persons incapable of proper autonomy. |
| 22847 | Kant places a higher value on the universal rational will than on the people asserting it [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: For Kant what is of absolute worth is the universal rational will which become an individual's actual will. Insofar as the individual fails to will the universal, they have no absolute worth, so whether or not they exist is unimportant. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: A lovely demolition of the claims of Kant to be the patriarch of liberalism! Liberalism must place supreme value on each individual, not on some abstracted realm of pure reason and moral good. Liberals are motivated by love, not reason. |
| 22821 | Liberalism asserts maximum freedom, but that must be equal for all participants [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism attaches fundamental value to leaving individuals as free as possible … - but there is another fundamental value implicit in this idea - the equal status of the participants in the practice. By this I mean that they all have the same rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Libertarian liberalism (e.g. Nozick) only asserts the fundament principle of freedom, but such a society swiftly deprives most of its members of those very freedoms. Egalitarian Liberalism should be our default political ideology. |
| 22834 | Egalitarian liberals prefer equality (either of input or outcome) to liberty [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Rather than libertarianism, egalitarian liberals promote equality, either of outcomes (of happiness or of well-being), or of inputs (such as opportunities, capacities or resources), which they favour ahead of freedom. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 06) | |
| A reaction: This is my team, I think. I think I'm a liberal who thinks liberty is a bit overrated. Equal outcome according to capacity (promoted by Nussbaum) seems attractive. |
| 22822 | Liberals promote community and well-being - because all good societies need them [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Community and well-being are not specifically liberal values. They are values any independent political society must pursue whether it is a liberal society or not. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems, at a stroke, to undermine the familiar debate between liberals and communitarians. I've switched to the former from the latter, because communitarians is potentially too paternalistic and conservative. Persuade individuals to be communal! |
| 22841 | Identity multiculturalism emerges from communitarianism, preferring community to humanity [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Identity-based multiculturalism developed from communitarianism. …People come to consciousness of themselves as members of some community before they identify themselves as members of the human race. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: This is 'identity politics', which Carvet sees as a problem from liberalism. Is it more important to be a woman or a Muslim or a Scot than to be a human being? It seems to create institutional antagonisms. |
| 22842 | For communitarians it seems that you must accept the culture you are born into [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Communitarians have difficulty avoiding the relativist trap. It seems they must claim that if one is born into a liberal society one cannot but be a liberal, and if one is born into a communist society one cannot but be a communist. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who accepts the Hegelian view of history and culture seems doomed to such relativism, and Hegel is a communitarian precursor. This is a good reason for me to reject communitarianism, after a long flirtation. We can criticise our own culture. |
| 22830 | Give by ability and receive by need, rather than a free labour market [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Only the most extreme collective socialism denies the freedom to sell one's labour power and buy that of others, under the communist slogan 'from each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs'. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Marx 'Critique of the Gotha Programme'] I would guess that this practice is not abnormal in old traditional villages, though a community would be tempted to reward highly a very successful member. |
| 22829 | Allowing defamatory speech is against society's interests, by blurring which people are trustworthy [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The argument for restricting defamatory speech is that unrestricted speech makes it impossible, or too difficult, to distinguish between those who deserve a trustworthy reputation and those who don't - a distinction in society's best interests. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 03) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of appeal to the common good, in opposition to the normal freedoms of liberalism. An example of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Should assertion of the common good of a group be a prime value of liberalism? |
| 22836 | 'Freedom from' is an empty idea, if the freedom is not from impediments to my desires [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Berlin's distinction of 'freedom from' and 'freedom to' is worthless …because to say that I want to be free from something for absolutely no reason makes no sense. Unfreedom is being blocked from what I want to do, which ceases if I no longer want it. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The government could guarantee us against attacks by albatrosses, but we would hardly have a national holiday to celebrate the freedom. Still, there is freedom from incoming troubles, and freedom to output things. |
| 22837 | Positive freedom can lead to coercion, if you are forced to do what you chose to do [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Berlin saw positive freedom as a justification for illiberal coercion. If I am positively free only in doing X, then if I am forced to do X, I will still be free. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: I suppose Berlin is thinking of Russian farmers, who wanted to farm, but then found they were forced to do what they were going to do anyway. It's better than being forced to do what you didn't want to do. Forcing clearly isn't freedom. |
| 22844 | First level autonomy is application of personal values; second level is criticising them [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: First level autonomy is being able to apply one's scheme of values to one's actions and life; second level autonomy is being able to subject those values to critical evaluation. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 10) | |
| A reaction: Charvet sees this as a key issue for liberalism. How do you treat citizens who cannot advance beyond the first level? He mentions the elitism of Plato's Republic that results. |
| 22840 | Mere equality, as in two trees being the same height, has no value at all [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: That the relation of equality might be considered a value in itself is an absurdity. Would the equality of blinding the only sighted person in a blind society be good? Is it inherently good that two trees are the same height? This is nonsense. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: He cites Temkin 1993 as defending the blinding example! Obviously equality is only possible in certain respects (though electrons might be equal in all respects). So the point is to identify the important respects. The rest is rhetoric. |
| 22843 | Inequalities are worse if they seem to be your fault, rather than social facts [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Inequality is worse in a meritocracy than in a stratified society, because everyone enjoys a formal equality of status and your position in the social order is due to your merit or lack of merit, so you have only yourself to blame for being at the bottom. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 10) | |
| A reaction: This is the simple point that it is worse to lack some good if you might have possessed it, rather than it being entirely out of reach. It also makes the false assumption that people are largely responsible for their merit or lack of it (ignoring luck). |
| 22845 | Money allows unlimited inequalities, and we obviously all agree to money [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The introduction of money allows people to accumulate wealth without limit. Since money only works through everyone's agreement …everyone can be taken to have agreed to the consequences of money in the unequal distribution of wealth. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 11) | |
| A reaction: [Locke] Presumably large inequalities of possessions and territory were possible before money, but there was at least an upper limit. The current owner of Amazon may end up with more wealth than the whole of the rest of humanity combined. |
| 22828 | The rule of law mainly benefits those with property and liberties [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: A rule of law regime will primarily benefit those possessing property and liberty rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: Important. It's no good fighting for the law if the law doesn't protect what you have got, or if you have got nothing to protect. Important steps must precede assertion of the rule of law. |
| 22826 | From 1701 only parliament could remove judges, whose decisions could not be discussed [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: In 1701 UK judges were given secure tenure, being removable only by parliament which at the same time undertook to follow a convention not to discuss particular judicial decisions. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: In recent years the UK Daily Mail published the pictures of three judges, and labelled them 'traitors' because of their verdict about leaving the European Union. |
| 22823 | The rule of law is mainly to restrict governments [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The rule of law is directed at the restriction of the power of governments as much, if not more, then the power of private individuals. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: The more powerful you are the more restricting is the rule of law. Every government is tempted to change the law to expand its powers. The UK government has just legislated to restrict public demonstrations. Law is the people's weapon against autocrats. |
| 22827 | Justice superior to the rule of law is claimed on behalf of the workers, or the will of the nation [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Communist leaders justify themselves as the embodiment of the people's will as workers, and fascist leaders as expressing the will of the nation. Both believe their policies contain a superior justice on this basis. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] A neat summary of why the rule of law might be rejected (other than by simple tyrrany justified only by force). In modern democracies recent right-wing governments have pushed back the law and attacked justice on this basis. |
| 22825 | The 1689 Bill of Rights denied the monarch new courts, or the right to sit as judge [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The 1689 Bill of Rights said the monarch could not create new courts of law, or act as a judge at law. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: The background was the abolition of the court of Star Chamber in 1641, which had been secret, severe, and controlled by the monarch. Is it possible to create a new type of court, or are we stuck with the current ones? |
| 22832 | Welfare is needed if citizens are to accept the obligations of a liberal state [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The welfare state provides the background conditions under which it is reasonable to expect one's fellow citizens to commit to liberal principles of interaction, even if those conditions can only be achieved through a degree of compulsion. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: You cannot expect people to accept the role of 'free' citizen if that is likely to result in swift misery. A liberal state will only command loyalty if it has a safety net. Fully committed liberalism implies modest socialism. |