Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty', 'Letters to Fardella' and 'Holism: a Shopper's Guide'

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4 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
12708 The soul is not a substance but a substantial form, the first active faculty [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: The soul, properly and accurately speaking, is not a substance, but a substantial form, or the primitive form existing in substances, the first act, the first active faculty.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Fardella [1690], A6.4.1670), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 2
     A reaction: In all of Leibniz's many gropings towards what is at the heart of a unified object, I pounce on the phrase "the first active faculty" as the one that suits me. I take that to be a 'power'. It has two characteristics - it is active, and it is basic.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
9381 If some inferences are needed to fix meaning, but we don't know which, they are all relevant [Fodor/Lepore, by Boghossian]
     Full Idea: The Master Argument for linguistic holism is: Some of an expression's inferences are relevant to fixing its meaning; there is no way to distinguish the inferences that are constitutive (from Quine); so all inferences are relevant to fixing meaning.
     From: report of J Fodor / E Lepore (Holism: a Shopper's Guide [1993], §III) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered
     A reaction: This would only be if you thought that the pattern of inferences is what fixes the meanings, but how can you derive inferences before you have meanings? The underlying language of thought generates the inferences? Meanings are involved!
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / d. Good as virtue
5121 Basing ethics on flourishing makes it consequentialist, as actions are judged by contributing to it [Harman]
     Full Idea: Basing ethics on human flourishing tends towards utilitarianism or consequentialism; actions, character traits, laws, and so on are to be assessed with reference to their contributions to human flourishing.
     From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.2)
     A reaction: This raises the question of whether only virtue can contribute to flourishing, or whether a bit of vice might be helpful. This problem presumably pushed the Stoics to say that virtue itself is the good, rather than the resulting flourishing.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / b. Eudaimonia
5120 What counts as 'flourishing' must be relative to various sets of values [Harman]
     Full Idea: If we base our ethics on human flourishing, one implication would seem to be moral relativism, since what counts as 'flourishing' seems inevitably relative to one or other set of values.
     From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.1)
     A reaction: This remark seems to make the relativist assumption that all value systems are equal. For Aristotle, flourishing is no more relative than health is. No one can assert that illness has an intrinsically high value in human life.