29 ideas
| 22338 | An unexamined life can be virtuous [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: An unexamined life can be virtuous. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: Nice. A firm rejection of the intellectualist view of virtue, to which most Greeks subscribed. Jesus would have liked this one. |
| 22337 | Philosophy must keep returning to the beginning [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy has in a sense to keep trying to return to the beginning. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: This is a sign that philosophy is not like other subjects, and indicates that although the puzzles are not solved, they won't go away. Also that, unlike most other subjects, the pre-suppositions are not part of the subject. |
| 23563 | Philosophy moves continually between elaborate theories and the obvious facts [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: There is a two-way movement in philosophy, a movement towards the building of elaborate theories, and a move back again towards the consideration of simple and obvious facts. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Without the theories there is no philosophy, but without continual reference back to the obvious facts the theories are worthless. |
| 14238 | A class is an aggregate of objects; if you destroy them, you destroy the class; there is no empty class [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A class consists of objects; it is an aggregate, a collective unity, of them; if so, it must vanish when these objects vanish. If we burn down all the trees of a wood, we thereby burn down the wood. Thus there can be no empty class. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Elucidation of some points in E.Schröder [1895], p.212), quoted by Oliver,A/Smiley,T - What are Sets and What are they For? | |
| A reaction: This rests on Cantor's view of a set as a collection, rather than on Dedekind, which allows null and singleton sets. |
| 2584 | Lobotomised patients can cease to care about a pain [Block] |
| Full Idea: After frontal lobotomies, patients typically report that they still have pains, though the pains no longer bother them. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 83) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an endorsement of reductive physicalism, because what matters about pains is that they bother us, not how they feel, so frog pain could do the job, if it felt different from ours, but was disliked by the frog. |
| 2582 | A brain looks no more likely than anything else to cause qualia [Block] |
| Full Idea: NO physical mechanism seems very intuitively plausible as a seat of qualia, least of all a brain. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 78) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about "least of all", given the mind-boggling complexity of the brain's connections. Certainly, though, nothing in either folk physics or academic physics suggests that any physical object is likely to be aware of anything. |
| 2574 | Behaviour requires knowledge as well as dispositions [Block] |
| Full Idea: A desire cannot be identified with a disposition to act, since the agent might not know that a particular act leads to the thing desired, and thus might not be disposed to do it. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
| A reaction: One might have a disposition to act, but not in a particular way. "Something must be done". To get to the particular act, it seems that indeed a belief must be added to the desire. |
| 2576 | In functionalism, desires are internal states with causal relations [Block] |
| Full Idea: According to functionalism, a system might have the behaviouristic input-output relations, yet not desire something, as this requires internal states with certain causal relations. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
| A reaction: Such a system might be Putnam's 'superactor', who only behaves as if he desires something. Of course, the internal states might need more than just 'causal relations'. |
| 2575 | Functionalism is behaviourism, but with mental states as intermediaries [Block] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism is a new incarnation of behaviourism, replacing sensory inputs with sensory inputs plus mental states, and replacing dispositions to act with dispositions plus certain mental states. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 69) | |
| A reaction: I think of functionalism as behaviourism which extends inside the 'black box' between stimulus and response. It proposes internal stimuli and responses. Consequently functionalism inherits some behaviourist problems. |
| 2583 | You might invert colours, but you can't invert beliefs [Block] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see how to make sense of the analog of color spectrum inversion with respect to non-qualitative states such a beliefs (where they are functionally equivalent but have different beliefs). | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 81) | |
| A reaction: I would suggest that beliefs can be 'inverted', because there are all sorts of ways to implement a belief, but colour can't be inverted, because that depends on a particular brain state. It makes good sense to me... |
| 2578 | Could a creature without a brain be in the right functional state for pain? [Block] |
| Full Idea: If pain is a functional state, it cannot be a brain state, because creatures without brains could realise the same Turing machine as creatures with brains. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 70) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a poorly grounded claim. There may be some hypothetical world where brainless creatures implement all our functions, but from here brains look the only plausible option. |
| 2585 | Not just any old functional network will have mental states [Block] |
| Full Idea: If there are any fixed points in the mind-body problem, one of them is that the economy of Bolivia could not have mental states, no matter how it is distorted. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 86) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree with this, but then it can hardly be a serious suggestion that anyone could see how to reconfigure an economy so that it mapped the functional state of the human brain. This is not a crucial problem. |
| 2586 | In functionalism, what are the special inputs and outputs of conscious creatures? [Block] |
| Full Idea: In functionalism, it is very hard to see how there could be a single physical characterization of the inputs and outputs of all and only creatures with mentality. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 87) | |
| A reaction: It would be theoretically possible if the only way to achieve mentality was to have a particular pattern of inputs and outputs. I don't think, though, that 'mentality' is an all-or-nothing concept. |
| 2579 | Physicalism is prejudiced in favour of our neurology, when other systems might have minds [Block] |
| Full Idea: Physicalism is a chauvinist theory: it withholds mental properties from systems that in fact have them. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 71) | |
| A reaction: This criticism interprets physicalism too rigidly. There may be several ways to implement a state. My own view is that other systems might implement our functions, but they won't experience them in a human way. |
| 2577 | Simple machine-functionalism says mind just is a Turing machine [Block] |
| Full Idea: In the simplest Turing-machine version of functionalism (Putnam 1967), mental states are identified with the total Turing-machine state, involving a machine table and its inputs and outputs. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 70) | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the question of why mental states would be conscious and phenomenal, given that modern computers are devoid of same, despite being classy Turing machines. |
| 2580 | A Turing machine, given a state and input, specifies an output and the next state [Block] |
| Full Idea: In a Turing machine, given any state and input, the machine table specifies an output and the next state. …To have full power the tape must be infinite in at least one direction, and be movable in both directions. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 71) | |
| A reaction: In retrospect, the proposal that this feeble item should be taken as a model for the glorious complexity and richness of human consciousness doesn't look too plausible. |
| 2581 | Intuition may say that a complex sentence is ungrammatical, but linguistics can show that it is not [Block] |
| Full Idea: Linguistics rejects (on theoretical grounds) the intuition that the sentence "the boy the girl the cat bit scratched died" is ungrammatical. | |
| From: Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 78) | |
| A reaction: Once we have disentangled it, we practical speakers have no right to say it is ungrammatical. It isn't only theory. The sentence is just stylistically infelicitous. |
| 22341 | Literature is the most important aspect of culture, because it teaches understanding of living [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], i) | |
| A reaction: It is significant that literature belongs more clearly to a nation or community than does most music or painting. You learn about Russians from their literature, but not much from their music. |
| 22347 | Appreciating beauty in art or nature opens up the good life, by restricting selfishness [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The appreciation of beauty in art or nature is not only the easiest available spiritual exercise; it is also a completely adequate entry into (and not just analogy of) the good life, since it checks selfishness in the interest of seeing the real. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: Not keen on 'spiritual' exercises, but I very much like 'seeing the real' as a promotion of the good life. The hard bit is to know what reality you are seeing in a work of art. [p.84] Her example is the sudden sight of a hovering kestrel. |
| 22339 | Love is a central concept in morals [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Love is a central concept in morals. ....[p.30] The central concept of morality is 'the individual' thought of as knowable by love, thought of in the light of the command 'Be ye therefore perfect'. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a critique of the chillier aspects of utilitarianism and Kantian duty. Love doesn't seem essential to Aristotle's concept of virtue either, and Murdoch's tradition seems to be Christian. I'm undecided about this idea. |
| 22348 | Ordinary human love is good evidence of transcendent goodness [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Is not ordinary human love ...striking evidence of a transcendental principle of good? | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: Sorry to be mean, but I would say not. Love is tied up with sexual desire, and with family and tribal loyalty, and can be observed in quite humble animals. (Love, I should quickly add, is a very good thing indeed. Really). |
| 22343 | If I attend properly I will have no choices [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: If I attend properly I will have no choices, and this is the ultimate condition to be aimed at. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: I take it this is an expression of what we now call Particularism. It is not just that every moral situation is subtly morally different, but that the particulars of the situation will lead directly to moral choices (in a 'healthy' agent). |
| 22349 | Art trains us in the love of virtue [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The enjoyment of art is a training in the love of virtue. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: Very Aristotelian to talk of 'training'. Unfortunately it is children who have the greatest need for training, but most art is aimed at mature adults. Can you be too old to be trained by art, even if you enjoy it? |
| 22340 | It is hard to learn goodness from others, because their virtues are part of their personal history [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: It is the historical, individual, nature of the virtues as actually exemplified which makes it difficult to learn goodness from another person. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating remark, which strikes me as true. When confronted with a virtuous person you might want to acquire their virtue, just as you might want them to teach you algebra, but their virtues are too bound up with their individuality. |
| 22350 | Only trivial virtues can be possessed on their own [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: It would be impossible to have only one virtue, unless it were a very trivial one such as thrift. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: A nicely nuanced commitment to the unity of virtue. You might exhibit courage alone in a brute animal way, but the sort of courage we all admire is part of more extended virtues. |
| 22346 | Moral reflection and experience gradually reveals unity in the moral world [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Reflection rightly tends to unify the moral world, and increasing moral sophistication reveals increasing unity. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: As an example she suggests asking what is the best type of courage. Connections to other virtues will emerge. That is a persuasive example. We all have strong views on what type of courage is the most admirable. |
| 22342 | Kantian existentialists care greatly for reasons for action, whereas Surrealists care nothing [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: What may be called the Kantian wing and the Surrealist wing of existentialism may be distinguished by the degree of their interest in reasons for action, which diminishes to nothing at the Surrealist end. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: Presumably for all existentialists moral decisions are the most important aspect of life, since they define what you are, but the Surrealist wing seem to be nihilists about that, so they barely count as existentialists. For them life is sleepwalking. |
| 22351 | Only a philosopher might think choices create values [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: The ordinary person does not, unless corrupted by philosophy, believe that he creates values by his choices. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a swipe at Nietzsche, more than anyone. Sartre and co talk less about values, other than authenticity. Philosophy can definitely be corrupting. |
| 22345 | Moral philosophy needs a central concept with all the traditional attributes of God [Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: God was (or is) a single perfect transcendent non-representable and necessarily real object of attention. ....Moral philosophy should attempt to retain a central concept which has all these characteristics. | |
| From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: This is a combination of middle Platonism (which sees the Form of the Good as the mind of God) and G.E. Moore's indefinable ideal of goodness. Murdoch connects this suggestion with the centrality of love in moral philosophy. I disagree. |