31 ideas
13917 | Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe] |
Full Idea: The central task of metaphysics is to chart the possibilities of existence by identifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency in which beings of different categories stand to one another. | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], Intro) | |
A reaction: I am beginning to think that he is right about the second one, and that dependency and grounding relations are the name of the game. I don't have Lowe's confidence that philosophers can parcel up reality in neat and true ways. |
13919 | Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe] |
Full Idea: The central task of philosophy is the cultivation of insights into natures or essences, and not the 'analysis of concepts', with which it is apt to be confused. | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1) | |
A reaction: This immediately strikes me as a false dichotomy. I like the idea of trying to understand the true natures of things, but how are we going to do it in our armchairs? |
21021 | Keep premises as weak as possible, to avoid controversial difficulties [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: One should always choose the weakest premises from which one's conclusion follows, rather than saddling the theory with thicker or more controversial premises. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
A reaction: I like this because it connects the rather vague Ockham's Razor to the logical concept of Thinning. The key point is that a thinner set of premises that prove something will be more persuasive, because critics may reject premises instead of conclusion. |
13918 | Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe] |
Full Idea: Holes are things of such a kind that they can coincide without being identical - as are, for example, shadows and spots of light. | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1) | |
A reaction: His point is that they thereby fail one of the standard tests for being an 'object'. |
13921 | All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe] |
Full Idea: Things must have an essence, in the sense of 'what it is to be the individual of that kind', or it would make no sense to say we can talk or think comprehendingly about things at all. If we don't know what it is, how can we think about it? | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
A reaction: Lowe presents this as a sort of Master Argument for essences. I think he is working with the wrong notion of essence. All he means is that things must have identities to be objects of thought. Why equate identity with essence, and waste a good concept? |
13922 | Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe] |
Full Idea: To know something's essence is not to be acquainted with some further thing of a special kind, but simply to understand what exactly that thing is. | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
A reaction: I think he is wrong about this, or at least is working with an unhelpful notion of essence. Identity is one thing, and essence is another. I take essences to be certain selected features of things, which explain their nature. |
13920 | Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe] |
Full Idea: Any individual thing must be a thing of some general kind - because, at the very least, it must belong to some ontological category. | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
A reaction: Where does the law that 'everything must have a category' come from? I'm baffled by remarks of this kind. Where do we get the categories from? From observing the individuals. So which has priority? Not the categories. Is God a kind? |
21007 | Storytelling is never neutral; some features of the world must be emphasised [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: Storytelling is never neutral; the narrator always directs attention to some features of the world rather than others. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 1) | |
A reaction: The audience would be a bit stupid if it insisted on neutrality. |
21025 | Particularism gives no guidance for the future [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: Situation ethics offers no guidance for the future. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
A reaction: Not sure if Situation Ethics is the same as Particularism. Jonathan Danby famously champions the latter. |
21026 | Compassion is unreliable, because it favours people close to us [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: Daniel Batson's important research has shown us that compassion is not reliable on its own, because it can easily give priority to people close to the self. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
A reaction: In Britain animal charities receive vastly more money than children's charities, presumably for this very reason. Kittens - you've got to hate them. |
21019 | Social contracts assume equal powers among the participants [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: All contract theories, including Rawls's, assume a rough equality of physical and mental power among the participants. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 4) |
21011 | We shouldn't focus on actual preferences, which may be distorted by injustices [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: When society puts things out of reach for people, they typically learn not to want those things. ..By defining the social goal in terms of satisfaction of actual preferences, utilitarian approaches often reinforce the status quo, which may be very unjust. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
A reaction: Maximising happiness is potentially very paternalistic, whereas preference satisfaction is not, which aligns utilitarianism better with liberalism. It is notorious that slaves can be contented with their slavery, and battered wives can remain loyal. |
21008 | Liberalism does not need a comprehensive account of value [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: The role of political liberalism in my theory requires me to prescind from offering any comprehensive account of value. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 2) | |
A reaction: Obviously liberalism has values, but they are the minimum ones of freedom and respect. Liberals have to tolerate some fairly ugly and miserable societies. Can liberals intervene in family life? |
21012 | Women are often treated like children, and not respected for their choices [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: Women are often treated as passive dependents, creatures to be cared for (or not), rather than as independent human beings deserving respect for their choices. In other words they are often infantilized. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
A reaction: Her prime example is from India, but you see the same thing in more subtle forms in the UK, especially among older people, and especially in art galleries. |
21015 | Negative liberty is incoherent; all liberties, to do and to be, require the prevention of interference [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: The very idea of 'negative liberty' ...is an incoherent idea: all liberties are positive, meaning liberties to do or to be something, which all require the inhibition of interference by others. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
A reaction: This rejects Isaiah Berlin's well-known claim that negative liberties are good, but positive liberties are far too dangerous. |
21017 | Political freedom is an incoherent project, because some freedoms limit other freedoms [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: It is unclear whether the idea of promoting freedom is even a coherent political project. Some freedoms limit others. The freedom of rich people to make large donations to political campaigns can limit the equal worth of the right to vote. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 4) | |
A reaction: It is not just American right-wingers who over-emphasise 'freedom'. French philosophy seems to be riddled with the same thing. |
21016 | Political and civil rights are not separate from economic and social rights [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: My approach rejects the distinction, common in the human rights movement, between 'first-generation rights' (political and civil) and 'second-generation rights' (economic and social). The second group are preconditions of the first group. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
A reaction: [last sentence compressed] This sounds like the sort of point Marx argued for. Nowadays it is feminists who make this point most strongly. |
21009 | Capabilities: Life, Health, Safety, Mental life, Love, Planning, Joining in, Nature, Play, Control [Nussbaum, by PG] |
Full Idea: Ten Capabilities: Life (decent), Health (reproduction, shelter), Safety, Mental life (with education), Love (relationships), Planning (with free beliefs), Joining in (and non-discrimination), Nature (relations to), Play, Control (politics and property). | |
From: report of Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 2) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: She gives her crucial list in rather wordy form. To have impact it needs to be reduced to brief simple slogans. |
21010 | Justice requires that the ten main capabilities of people are reasonably enabled [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: The basic claim of my account of social justice is this: respect for human dignity requires that citizens be placed above an ample (specified) threshold of capability in all ten of the areas. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 2) | |
A reaction: [The capabilities are given, briefly, in Idea 21009] The one word that bothers me here is 'dignity'. It is very vague, and can, I think, be reduced to much clearer and more obvious concepts. A person lacks dignity when they vomit, in ordinary usage. |
21013 | Capabilities are grounded in bare humanity and agency; qualifying as rational is not needed [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: The capabilities approach grounds rights claims in bare human birth and minimal agency, not in rationality or any other specific property, something that permits it to recognise the equal human rights of people with cognitive disabilities. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
A reaction: She says elsewhere that she also sees animals as included in the capabilities approach. This is a rejection of the Kantian grounds for rights (by a well-known Aristotelian). |
21014 | Rights are not just barriers against state interference; governments must affirm capabilities of citizens [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: A prominent idea, common in the U.S., sees rights as barriers against interfering state action. ...The Capabilities Approach, by contrast, insists that all entitlements involve an affirmative task for government, to actively support capabilities. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 3) | |
A reaction: This makes her approach very left wing, by U.S. standards, because it needs higher taxation and a degree of government paternalism. Her approach strikes me as an excellent agenda for a fairly interventionist European liberal party. |
21020 | Any establishment belief system is incompatible with full respect for all citizens [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: The idea of equal respect is difficult or impossible to render compatible with a religious establishment, even one that is benign and noncoercive. Any established church (or government secularism) denigrates nonbelievers, by stating they are an out-group. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 4) | |
A reaction: This sort of applies to membership of anything. She is sort of right, but there is no reason in principle why full respect should not be accorded to any out-group. |
21023 | We should respect animals in the way that we respect the animal nature in humans [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: If we show respect to our own animal natures, it is simply inconsistent, and a kind of vicious self-promoting of a sort to which Kantians are especially opposed, to refuse the same respect to our fellow creatures. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
A reaction: Nussbaum says Kant is hopeless on animals, but Christine Korsgaard offers this Kantian approach that demands genuine respect for animals, even though they are not considered rational. Nussbaum says animals are agents. Did Kant respect our animality? |
21024 | It may be no harm to kill an animal which cannot plan for its future [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: The painless killing of an animal of a species that does not make plans extending into the future may not be a harm: this depends on how we think about the harm of death. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
A reaction: Very old human beings may have no plans for the future. I, on the other hand, have got lots and lots of plans. Definitely. No one can specify the harm of death. How can it be distinguished from the harm of not being born? |
21022 | The Capabilities Approach sees animals as agents, not just as having feelings [Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: The Capabilities Approach sees animals as agents, not as receptacles of pleasure or pain. | |
From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 8) | |
A reaction: This is in opposition to the utilitarian view. The key consequence is that animals can be victims of injustice, as well as of cruelty. Nice. |
7602 | In the Bible God changes his mind (repenting of creating humanity, in the Flood) [Armstrong,K] |
Full Idea: In the Bible God changes his mind, as when he repents of having made man and decides to destroy the human race in the Flood. | |
From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: It becomes apparent that the most startling feature of Christian fundamentalism is its uncritical reading of the Bible, in which passages are wilfully lifted from context, and inconvenient inconsistencies are ruthlessly ignored. |
7605 | Monotheism introduced intolerance into religious thinking [Armstrong,K] |
Full Idea: We have become so used to the intolerance of monotheism that we may not appreciate that its hostility towards other gods was a new religious attitude; paganism was an essentially tolerant faith. | |
From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: The comedian Dave Allen always signed off with "may your god go with you". To me the most striking feature of monotheists is frequently their barely controlled aggression, beneath a mask of strained compassion. |
7599 | Around 800 BCE teachers superseded gods in India [Armstrong,K] |
Full Idea: Around the eighth century BCE the gods ceased to be very important in India, and would be superseded by the religious teacher, who would be considered higher than the gods. | |
From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: At least there has been one culture that gave an appropriate status to teachers. It seems astonishing in that age that human beings could have higher status than gods - way before the European 'humanists'. |
7597 | There is virtually no sign of monotheism in the Pentateuch [Armstrong,K] |
Full Idea: It is very difficult to find a single monotheistic statement in the whole of the Pentateuch, and even the Ten Commandments take the existence of other gods for granted ("There shall be no strange gods for you before my face"). | |
From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: The transition from polytheism to monotheism is very strange. First God is 'jealous' of other gods, then supremely above them, and eventually totally exclusive. It's like watching the rise of Stalin. |
7606 | The idea that Jesus was God was only settled in the fourth century [Armstrong,K] |
Full Idea: Jesus himself certainly never claimed to be God, and the doctrine that Jesus had been God in human form was not finalised until the fourth century. | |
From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: It was this final view which seems to have provoked Muhammed into developing a religion with the slogan "there is only one God". In Christianity an initially promising set of teachings grew into a prolonged irrational hysteria. |
7596 | Faith is not just belief in propositions, but also putting trust in them [Armstrong,K] |
Full Idea: There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them. | |
From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Intro) | |
A reaction: This is interestingly distinct from the usual idea that faith is putting belief in propositions which are not sufficiently rationally justified. How many philosophers actually have faith in the propositions they say they believe? |