Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty', 'fragments/reports' and 'Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth''

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6 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers
10845 To be true a sentence must express a proposition, and not be ambiguous or vague or just expressive [Lewis]
     Full Idea: Sentences or assertions can be derivately called true, if they succeed in expressing determinate propositions. A sentence can be ambiguous or vague or paradoxical or ungrounded or not declarative or a mere expression of feeling.
     From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.276)
     A reaction: Lewis has, of course, a peculiar notion of what a proposition is - it's a set of possible worlds. I, with my more psychological approach, take a proposition to be a particular sort of brain event.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 2. Truthmaker Relation
10847 Truthmakers are about existential grounding, not about truth [Lewis]
     Full Idea: Instances of the truthmaker principle are equivalent to biconditionals not about truth but about the existential grounding of all manner of other things; the flying pigs, or what-have-you.
     From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001])
     A reaction: The question then is what the difference is between 'existential grounding' and 'truth'. There wouldn't seem to be any difference at all if the proposition in question was a simple existential claim.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 11. Truthmaking and Correspondence
10846 Truthmaker is correspondence, but without the requirement to be one-to-one [Lewis]
     Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems to be a version of the correspondence theory of truth, but differs mostly in denying that the correspondence of truths to facts must be one-to-one.
     From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.277)
     A reaction: In other words, several different sentences might have exactly the same truthmaker.
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.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
6004 The cardinal virtues are theoretical (based on knowledge), and others are 'non-theoretical' [Hecato, by Dorandi]
     Full Idea: Hecato defined the cardinal virtues as 'theoretical', that is, based on knowledge, and to these he opposed those that are 'non-theoretical', for example, health, beauty, strength of spirit, and courage.
     From: report of Hecato (fragments/reports [c.70 BCE]) by Tiziano Dorandi - Hecato of Rhodes
     A reaction: Mostly these are Aristotle's external and non-external virtues, except that courage is here included among the former, implying, presumably, that it is more of a natural gift than an intellectual achievement.