Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty', 'There is no a Priori' and 'Spreading the Word'

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6 ideas

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
19284 Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false [Blackburn]
     Full Idea: To say that we dignify a truth as necessary we are expressing our own mental attitudes - our own inability to make anything of a possible way of thinking which denies it. It is this blank unimaginability which we voice when we use the modal vocabulary.
     From: Simon Blackburn (Spreading the Word [1984], 6.5)
     A reaction: Yes, but why are we unable to imagine it? I accept that the truth or falsity of Goldbach's Conjecture may well be necessary, but I have no imagination one way or the other about it. Philosophers like Blackburn are very alien to me!
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities
9354 Why should necessities only be knowable a priori? That Hesperus is Phosporus is known empirically [Devitt]
     Full Idea: Why should we accept that necessities can only be known a priori? Prima facie, some necessities are known empirically; for example, that water is necessarily H2O, and that Hesperus is necessarily Phosphorus.
     From: Michael Devitt (There is no a Priori [2005], §2)
     A reaction: An important question, whatever your view. If the only thing we can know a priori is necessities, it doesn't follow that necessities can only be known a priori. It gets interesting if we say that some necessities can never be known a priori.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 9. A Priori from Concepts
9353 We explain away a priori knowledge, not as directly empirical, but as indirectly holistically empirical [Devitt]
     Full Idea: We have no need to turn to an a priori explanation of our knowledge of mathematics and logic. Our intuitions that this knowledge is not justified in some direct empirical way is preserved. It is justified in an indirect holistic way.
     From: Michael Devitt (There is no a Priori [2005], §2)
     A reaction: I think this is roughly the right story, but the only way it will work is if we have some sort of theory of abstraction, which gets us up the ladder of generalisations to the ones which, it appears, are necessarily true.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 11. Denying the A Priori
9356 The idea of the a priori is so obscure that it won't explain anything [Devitt]
     Full Idea: The whole idea of the a priori is too obscure for it to feature in a good explanation of our knowledge of anything.
     From: Michael Devitt (There is no a Priori [2005], §3)
     A reaction: I never like this style of argument. It would be nice if all the components of all our our explanations were crystal clear. Total clarity about anything is probably a hopeless dream, and we may have to settle for murky corners in all explanations.
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.