48 ideas
| 12766 | Logical space is abstracted from the actual world [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Logical space is not given independently of the individuals that occupy it, but is abstracted from the world as we find it. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.85) | |
| A reaction: I very much like the second half of this idea, and am delighted to find Stalnaker endorsing it. I take the logical connectives to be descriptions of how things behave, at a high level of generality. |
| 9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Maybe a disposition is a more fundamental notion than a cause, in which case Lewis has from the very start erred in seeking a causal analysis, in a traditional, conceptual sense, of disposition terms. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Causation [1973]) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 2.2.8 | |
| A reaction: Is this right about Lewis? I see him as reducing both dispositions and causes to a set of bald facts, which exist in possible and actual worlds. Conditionals and counterfactuals also suffer the same fate. |
| 12764 | For the bare particular view, properties must be features, not just groups of objects [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If we are to make sense of the bare particular theory, a property must be not just a rule for grouping individuals, but a feature of individuals in virtue of which they may be grouped. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.76) | |
| A reaction: He is offering an objection to the thoroughly extensional account of properties that is found in standard possible worlds semantics. Quite right too. We can't give up on the common sense notion of a property. |
| 12761 | An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If necessity is explained in terms of possible worlds, ...then an essential property is a property that a thing has in all possible worlds in which it exists. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be a quite shocking confusion of necessary properties with essential properties. The point is that utterly trivial properties can be necessary, but in no way part of the real essence of something. |
| 12763 | Necessarily self-identical, or being what it is, or its world-indexed properties, aren't essential [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: We can remain anti-essentialist while allowing some necessary properties: those essential to everything (self-identity), relational properties (being what it is), and world-indexed properties (being snub-nosed-only-in-Kronos). | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.73) | |
| A reaction: [a summary] He defined essential properties as necessary properties (Idea 12761), and now backpeddles. World-indexed properties are an invention of Plantinga, as essential properties to don't limit individuals. But they are necessary, not essential! |
| 12762 | Bare particular anti-essentialism makes no sense within modal logic semantics [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: I argue that one cannot make semantical sense out of bare particular anti-essentialism within the framework of standard semantics for modal logic. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
| A reaction: Stalnaker characterises the bare particular view as ANTI-essentialist, because he has defined essence in terms of necessary properties. The bare particular seems to allow the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg. |
| 8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A counterfactual is non-vacuously true iff it takes less of a departure from actuality to make the consequent true along with the antecedent than it does to make the antecedent true without the consequent. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.197) | |
| A reaction: Almost every theory proposed by Lewis hangs on the meaning of the word 'close', as used here. If you visited twenty Earth-like worlds (watch Startrek?), it would be a struggle to decide their closeness to ours in rank order. |
| 12765 | Why imagine that Babe Ruth might be a billiard ball; nothing useful could be said about the ball [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: I cannot think of any point in making the counterfactual supposition that Babe Ruth is a billiard ball; there is nothing I can say about him in that imagined state that I could not just as well say about billiard balls that are not him. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.79) | |
| A reaction: A bizarrely circumspect semanticists way of saying that Ruth couldn't possibly be a billiard ball! Would he say the same about a group of old men in wheelchairs, one of whom IS Babe Ruth? |
| 8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: By determinism I mean that the prevailing laws of nature are such that there do not exist any two possible worlds which are exactly alike up to that time, which differ thereafter, and in which those laws are never violated. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.196) | |
| A reaction: This would mean that the only way an action of free will could creep in would be if it accepted being a 'violation' of the laws of nature. Fans of free will would probably prefer to call it a 'natural' phenomenon. I'm with Lewis. |
| 8420 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I identify a proposition with the set of possible worlds where it is true. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.193) | |
| A reaction: As it stands, I'm baffled by this. How can 'it is raining' be a set of possible worlds? I assume it expands to refer to the truth-conditions, among possibilities as well as actualities. 'It is raining' fits all worlds where it is raining. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 8405 | A theory of causation should explain why cause precedes effect, not take it for granted [Lewis, by Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Lewis thinks it is a major defect in a theory of causation that it builds in the condition that the time of the cause precede that of the effect: that cause precedes effect is something we ought to explain (which his counterfactual theory claims to do). | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Causation [1973]) by Hartry Field - Causation in a Physical World | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is that the chances of explaining such a thing are probably nil, and that we might as well just accept the direction of causation as a given. Even philosophers balk at the question 'why doesn't time go backwards?' |
| 8427 | I reject making the direction of causation axiomatic, since that takes too much for granted [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: One might stipulate that a cause must always precede its effect, but I reject this solution. It won't solve the problem of epiphenomena, it rejects a priori any backwards causation, and it trivializes defining time-direction through causation. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.203) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Not strong arguments, I would say. Maybe apparent causes are never epiphenomenal. Maybe backwards causation is impossible. Maybe we must use time to define causal direction, and not vice versa. |
| 10392 | It is just individious discrimination to pick out one cause and label it as 'the' cause [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We sometimes single out one among all the causes of some event and call it 'the' cause. ..We may select the abnormal causes, or those under human control, or those we deem good or bad, or those we want to talk about. This is invidious discrimination. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973]) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard view expressed by Mill - presumably the obvious empiricist line. But if we specify 'the pre-conditions' for an event, we can't just mention ANY fact prior to the effect - there is obvious relevance. So why not for 'the' cause as well? |
| 8419 | The modern regularity view says a cause is a member of a minimal set of sufficient conditions [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: In present-day regularity analyses, a cause is defined (roughly) as any member of any minimal set of actual conditions that are jointly sufficient, given the laws, for the existence of the effect. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.193) | |
| A reaction: This is the view Lewis is about to reject. It seem to summarise the essence of the Mackie INUS theory. This account would make the presence of oxygen a cause of almost every human event. |
| 8421 | Regularity analyses could make c an effect of e, or an epiphenomenon, or inefficacious, or pre-empted [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: In the regularity analysis of causes, instead of c causing e, c might turn out to be an effect of e, or an epiphenomenon, or an inefficacious effect of a genuine cause, or a pre-empted cause (by some other cause) of e. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.194) | |
| A reaction: These are Lewis's reasons for rejecting the general regularity account, in favour of his own particular counterfactual account. It is unlikely that c would be regularly pre-empted or epiphenomenal. If we build time's direction in, it won't be an effect. |
| 17525 | The counterfactual view says causes are necessary (rather than sufficient) for their effects [Lewis, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: The Humean idea, developed by Lewis, is that rather than being sufficient for their effects, causes are (counterfactual) necessary for their effects. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Causation [1973]) by Alexander Bird - Causation and the Manifestation of Powers p.162 |
| 17524 | Lewis has basic causation, counterfactuals, and a general ancestral (thus handling pre-emption) [Lewis, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's basic account has a basic causal relation, counterfactual dependence, and the general causal relation is the ancestral of this basic one. ...This is motivated by counterfactual dependence failing to be general because of the pre-emption problem. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Causation [1973]) by Alexander Bird - Causation and the Manifestation of Powers p.161 | |
| A reaction: It is so nice when you struggle for ages with a topic, and then some clever person summarises it clearly for you. |
| 8397 | Counterfactual causation implies all laws are causal, which they aren't [Tooley on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Some counterfactuals are based on non-causal laws, such as Newton's Third Law of Motion. 'If no force one way, then no force the other'. Lewis's counterfactual analysis implies that one force causes the other, which is not the case. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Causation [1973]) by Michael Tooley - Causation and Supervenience 5.2 | |
| A reaction: So what exactly does 'cause' my punt to move forwards? Basing causal laws on counterfactual claims looks to me like putting the cart before the horse. |
| 8423 | My counterfactual analysis applies to particular cases, not generalisations [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: My (counterfactual) analysis is meant to apply to causation in particular cases; it is not an analysis of causal generalizations. Those presumably quantify over particulars, but it is hard to match natural language to the quantifiers. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.195) | |
| A reaction: What authority could you have for asserting a counterfactual claim, if you only had one observation? Isn't the counterfactual claim the hallmark of a generalisation? For one case, 'if not-c, then not-e' is just a speculation. |
| 8426 | One event causes another iff there is a causal chain from first to second [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: One event is the cause of another iff there exists a causal chain leading from the first to the second. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causation [1973], p.200) | |
| A reaction: It will be necessary to both explain and identify a 'chain'. Some chains are extremely tenuous (Alexander could stop a barrel of beer). Go back a hundred years, and the cause of any present event is everything back then. |
| 4795 | Lewis's account of counterfactuals is fine if we know what a law of nature is, but it won't explain the latter [Cohen,LJ on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis can elucidate the logic of counterfactuals on the assumption that you are not at all puzzled about what a law of nature is. But if you are puzzled about this, it cannot contribute anything towards resolving your puzzlement. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Causation [1973]) by L. Jonathan Cohen - The Problem of Natural Laws p.219 | |
| A reaction: This seems like a penetrating remark. The counterfactual theory is wrong, partly because it is epistemological instead of ontological, and partly because it refuses to face the really difficult problem, of what is going on out there. |