Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'Experience First (and reply)' and 'On the analysis of moral judgements'

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11 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding
19542 It is nonsense that understanding does not involve knowledge; to understand, you must know [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: The proposition that understanding does not involve knowledge is widespread (for example, in discussions of what philosophy aims at), but hardly withstands scrutiny. If you do not know how a jet engine works, you do not understand how it works.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.24)
     A reaction: This seems a bit disingenuous. As in 'Theaetetus', knowing the million parts of a jet engine is not to understand it. More strongly - how could knowledge of an infinity of separate propositional truths amount to understanding on their own?
19543 To grasp understanding, we should be more explicit about what needs to be known [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: An essential prerequisite for useful discussion of the relation between knowledge and understanding is systematic explicitness about what is to be known or understood.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.25)
     A reaction: This is better. I say what needs to be known for understanding is the essence of the item under discussion (my PhD thesis!). Obviously understanding needs some knowledge, but I take it that epistemology should be understanding-first. That is the main aim.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 7. Knowledge First
19541 Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: If we say our cognitive aim is to get knowledge, the opposing views are the naturalistic view that what matters is just true belief (or just 'getting by'), or that there are rival epistemic goods such as understanding and wisdom.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.17)
     A reaction: [compressed summary] I'm a fan of understanding. The accumulation of propositional knowledge would relish knowing the mass of every grain of sand on a beach. If you say the propositions should be 'important', other values are invoked.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / b. Defining ethics
6968 Some people think there are ethical facts, but of a 'queer' sort [Ayer]
     Full Idea: If someone wishes to say that ethical statements are statements of fact, only it is a queer sort of fact, he is welcome to do so.
     From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.233)
     A reaction: The word 'queer' was picked up by Mackie and developed into his error theory, that moral facts are a misunderstanding. Personally I think that moral facts might be teleological facts, but that is rather hard to demonstrate.
6972 A right attitude is just an attitude one is prepared to stand by [Ayer]
     Full Idea: Asking whether the attitude that one has adopted is the right attitude comes down to asking whether one is prepared to stand by it.
     From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.244)
     A reaction: I would have thought that someone who persisted in being ruthlessly selfish might nevertheless distinguish their behaviour from the grudging concession that the 'right' thing to do might be quite different.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / d. Ethical theory
6973 Moral theories are all meta-ethical, and are neutral as regards actual conduct [Ayer]
     Full Idea: All moral theories, intuitionist, naturalistic, objectivist, emotive, and the rest, in so far as they are philosophical theories, are neutral as regards actual conduct; they belong to the field of meta-ethics, not ethics proper.
     From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949])
     A reaction: Interestingly, Ayer doesn't seem willing to accept 'ethics proper' as being 'philosophical'. Given the modern rise of applied ethics, it seems suprising to say that even normative ethics is not philosophical. Utilitarianism seems not to be philosophical.
6974 Moral judgements cannot be the logical consequence of a moral philosophy [Ayer]
     Full Idea: A moral philosopher will have his moral standards and will sometimes make moral judgements, but these moral judgements cannot be a logical consequence of his philosophy.
     From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.247)
     A reaction: I take this to be an assertion of the is-ought distinction. Personally this strikes me as totally false. Ayer needs to think more deeply about moral philosophy!
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / c. Ethical intuitionism
6971 I would describe intuitions of good as feelings of approval [Ayer]
     Full Idea: I suspect that the experiences which some philosophers want to describe as intuitions, or a quasi-sensory apprehensions, of good are not significantly different from those that I want to describe as feelings of approval.
     From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.239)
     A reaction: This is the standard ground for rejecting intuitionism, along with the point that even if intuitions are not just feelings of approval, it seems impossible to tell the difference.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
7667 There are two sides to men - the pleasantly social, and the violent and creative [Diderot, by Berlin]
     Full Idea: Diderot is among the first to preach that there are two men: the artificial man, who belongs in society and seeks to please, and the violent, bold, criminal instinct of a man who wishes to break out (and, if controlled, is responsible for works of genius.
     From: report of Denis Diderot (works [1769], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism
     A reaction: This has an obvious ancestor in Plato's picture (esp. in 'Phaedrus') of the two conflicting sides to the psuché, which seem to be reason and emotion. In Diderot, though, the suppressed man has virtues, which Plato would deny.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / h. Expressivism
6969 Approval of historical or fictional murders gives us leave to imitate them [Ayer]
     Full Idea: In saying that Brutus or Raskolnikov acted rightly, I am giving myself and others leave to imitate them should similar circumstances arise.
     From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.237)
     A reaction: This seems to be a reply to the Frege-Geach Problem, of why we have emotional attitudes to crimes that mean nothing to us. Such crimes, however, involve our virtues, and don't depend on awaiting 'similar circumstances'.
6970 Moral judgements are not expressions, but are elements in a behaviour pattern [Ayer]
     Full Idea: To say, as I once did, that moral judgements are merely expressive of certain feelings is an oversimplification; ..moral attitudes consist in certain patterns of behaviour, and the expression of a judgement is an element in the pattern.
     From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.238)
     A reaction: This seems to switch from emotivism to what Frank Jackson calls 'moral functionalism', where morality is what gets us from certain emotional responses to willed actions. This strikes me, like most functional explanations, as wrong.