Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding' and 'No Moral Difference'

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4 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding

19261	Understanding is seeing coherent relationships in the relevant information [Kvanvig]
	Full Idea: What is distinctive about understanding (after truth is satisfied) is the internal seeing or appreciating of explanatory and other coherence-inducing relationships in a body of information that is crucial for understanding.
	From: Jonathan Kvanvig (The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding [2003], 198), quoted by Anand Vaidya - Understanding and Essence 'Distinction'
	A reaction: For me this ticks exactly the right boxes. Coherent explanations are what we want. The hardest part is the ensure their truth. Kvanvig claims this is internal, so we can understand even if, Gettier-style, our external connections are lucky.

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.

25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 2. Euthanasia

4053	If it is desirable that a given patient die, then moral objections to killing them do not apply [Rachels]
	Full Idea: The cause of death (injection or disease) is important from the legal point of view, but not morally. If euthanasia is desirable in a given case then the patient's death is not an evil, so the usual objections to killing do not apply.
	From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.102)
	A reaction: Seems reasonable, but a very consequentialist view. Is it good that small children should clean public toilets?

4052	It has become normal to consider passive euthanasia while condemning active euthanasia [Rachels]
	Full Idea: It seems to have become accepted that passive euthanasia (by withholding treatment and allowing a patient to die) may be acceptable, whereas active euthanasia (direct action to kill the patient) is never acceptable.
	From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.97)
	A reaction: He goes on to attack the distinction. It is hard to distinguish the two cases, as well as being hard to judge them.