22 ideas
| 15038 | Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: One can agree that structuralism formed the most systematic effort to evacuate the concept of the event, not only from ethnology but from a whole series of other sciences and in the extreme case from history. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.115) | |
| A reaction: 'Abstract' might be a better word than 'evacuate'. In that sense, this at least seems to have it the right way round - that structure can be abstracted, but in no way can a structure be prior to its components (pace Ladyman, Shapiro etc). |
| 15044 | 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: 'Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.132) | |
| A reaction: Foucault is not absurdly relativist about this, but I don't think I agree, even in his terms. In a sexually prudish culture, blunt sexual truths are clearly true to everyone, but totally unacceptable. Society shudders when unacceptable truths are spoken. |
| 15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Truth isn't a reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.131) | |
| A reaction: This obviously has a degree of truth in many areas of human belief, but I just don't buy it as an account of Newton's researches into optics, or Lavoisier's chemistry. Politics is more involved once big money is required. |
| 15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: How is it that at certain moments and in certain orders of knowledge, there are these sudden take-offs, these hastenings of evolution, these transformations which fail to correspond to the calm, continuist image that is normally accredited? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.114) | |
| A reaction: The answer is either in the excitement of a new motivation, which may concern power, or may concern pure understanding - or else it is just that one discovery brings a host of others along with (like discovering DNA). |
| 6386 | In no important way can psychology be reduced to the physical sciences [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: There is no important sense in which psychology can be reduced to the physical sciences. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Material Mind [1973], p.259) | |
| A reaction: In no 'important' way can the beauty of the Lake District be reduced to geology - but it is geology. 'Important' to whom? To a metaphysician, I would say psychology does reduce to physics, and that is important, but it is not important to a psychologist. |
| 15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth - the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms for distinguishing; the means of sanctioning it; the values in its acquisition; the status of its keepers. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.131) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This idea is appropriately filed under 'society' rather than under 'truth'. Foucault knows there is a genuine truth beneath the complex social story. |
| 15040 | Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Power in Western capitalism was denounced by the Marxists as class domination; but the mechanics of power in themselves were never analysed. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.117) | |
| A reaction: This seems to pinpoint Foucault's distinctive contribution to political thought, and it makes him one of the most interesting thinkers in the area. It is a good approach to history, but also to the role of power as a background to conventional thought. |
| 15041 | Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: If power was only repressive, would we obey it? What makes power accepted is the fact …that it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.120) | |
| A reaction: Once you present 'power' this way, it permeates so deeply into human activity that it is in danger of becoming a mere triviality of social analysis. Is every conversation that ever took place actually a power struggle? |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: History has no 'meaning', but it is not absurd or incoherent. On the contrary, it is intelligible and should be susceptible of analysis down to the smallest detail - but this in accordance with the intelligibility of struggles, of strategies and tactics. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.116) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an essentially Marxist view, in which one teases out the dialectical processes of any period. I can't think of a better way to approach history. The alternative is to only recount one side of the struggle, which must be bad history. |
| 20712 | God is 'eternal' either by being non-temporal, or by enduring forever [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: Saying 'God is eternal' means either that God is non-temporal or timeless, or that God has no beginning and no end. The first ('classical') view is found in Anselm, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, Calvin and Descartes. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 8 'Meaning') | |
| A reaction: A God who is outside of time but performs actions is a bit of a puzzle. It seems that Augustine started the idea of a timeless God. |
| 20701 | Can God be good, if he has not maximised goodness? [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: We may wonder whether God can be good since he has not produced more moral goodness than he has. We may wonder whether God is guilty by neglect. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 3 'Freedom') | |
| A reaction: The orthodox response is that we cannot possibly know what the maximum of moral goodness would look like, so we can't make this judgement. Atheists say that God fails by human standards, which are not particularly high. |
| 20702 | The goodness of God may be a higher form than the goodness of moral agents [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: If we can know that God exists and if God's goodness is not moral goodness, then moral goodness is not the highest form of goodness we know. There is the goodness of God to be reckoned with. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 3 'Goodness') | |
| A reaction: This idea is to counter the charge that God fails to meet human standards for an ideal moral agent. But it sounds hand-wavy, since we presumably cannot comprehend the sort of goodness that is postulated here. |
| 20703 | How could God have obligations? What law could possibly impose them? [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: We have good reason for resisting the suggestion that God has any duties or obligations. …What can oblige God in relation to his creatures? Could there be a law saying God has such obligations? Where does such a law come from? | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 3 'Goodness') | |
| A reaction: Plato can answer this question. Greek gods are not so supreme that nothing could put them under an obligation, but 'God' has to be supreme in every respect. |
| 20694 | 'Natural theology' aims to prove God to anyone (not just believers) by reason or argument [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: 'Natural theology' is the attempt to show that belief in God's existence can be defended with reference to reason or argument which ought to be acceptable to anyone, not simply to those who believe in God's existence. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 1 'Other') | |
| A reaction: I assume by 'reason or argument' he primarily means evidence (plus the ontological argument). He cites Karl Barth as objecting to the assumption of natural theology (preferring revelation). Presumably Kierkegaard offers a rival view too. |
| 20706 | A distinct cause of the universe can't be material (which would be part of the universe) [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: If the universe was caused to come into being, it presumably could not have been caused to do so by anything material. For a material object would be part of the universe, and we are now asking for a cause distinct from the universe. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 5 'God') | |
| A reaction: We're out of our depth here. We only have two modes of existence to offer, material and spiritual, and 'spiritual' means little more than non-material. |
| 20707 | The universe exhibits design either in its sense of purpose, or in its regularity [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: The design argument offers two lines: the first states that the universe displays design in the sense of purpose; the second that it displays design in the sense of regularity. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 6 'Versions') | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that you would infer the purpose from the regularity. How could you see purpose in a totally chaotic universe? |
| 20708 | If God is an orderly being, he cannot be the explanation of order [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: If God is an instance of something orderly, how can he serve to account for the order of orderly things? | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 6 'b Has') | |
| A reaction: You can at least explain the tidiness of a house by the tidiness of its owner, but obviously that won't explain the phenomenon of tidiness. |
| 20710 | Maybe an abnormal state of mind is needed to experience God? [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: Might it not be possible that experience of God requires an unusual state or psychological abnormality, just as an aerial view of Paris requires that one be in the unusual state of being abnormally elevated? | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 7 'Are the') | |
| A reaction: That would make sense if it were analogous to great mathematical or musical ability, but it sounds more like ouija boards in darkened rooms. Talent has a wonderful output, but people in mystical states don't return with proofs. |
| 20711 | A believer can experience the world as infused with God [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: Maybe someone who believes in God can be regarded as experiencing everything as something behind which God lies. Believers see the world as a world in which God is present. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 7 'Experiencing') | |
| A reaction: [Attributed to John Hick] This would count as supporting evidence for God, perhaps, if seeing reality as infused with God produces a consistent and plausible picture. But seeing reality as infused with other things might pass the same test. |
| 20709 | The experiences of God are inconsistent, not universal, and untestable [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: A proclaimed experience of God must be rejected because a) there is no agreed test that it is such an experience, b) some people experience God's absence, and c) there is no uniformity of testimony about the experience. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 7 'Objections') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I'm not sure that absence of an experience is experience of an absence. Compare it with experiencing the greatness of Beethoven's Ninth. |
| 20697 | One does not need a full understanding of God in order to speak of God [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: In order to speak meaningfully about God, it is not necessary that one should understand exactly the import of one's statements about him. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 2 'Sayng') | |
| A reaction: Perfectly reasonable. To insist that all discussion of a thing requires exact understanding of the thing is ridiculous. Equally, though, to discuss God while denying all understanding of God is just as ridiculous. |
| 20699 | Paradise would not contain some virtues, such as courage [Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: There are virtues (such as courage) that would not be present in a paradise. | |
| From: Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 3 'Evil') | |
| A reaction: Part of a suggestion that morality would be entirely inapplicable in paradise, and so we need dangers etc in the world. |