Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Value of Science', 'Representative Government' and 'Dewey'

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6 ideas

24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / b. Consultation
20508 How people vote should be on public record, so they can be held accountable [Mill, by Wolff,J]
     Full Idea: Mill believed in an open vote. People should be held accountable for how they vote, and therefore it should be a matter of public record.
     From: report of John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Representative'
     A reaction: Nowadays it is a mantra that voting should be secret, because coercion is an obvious problem, but MPs vote publicly, and are held accountable for their voting records. People like the mafia seem to make open public voting impossible.
20507 Voting is a strict duty, like jury service, and must only be aimed at the public good [Mill]
     Full Idea: The citizen's vote is not a thing in which he has an option; it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. ...he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good.
     From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.299), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Representative'
     A reaction: Mill was also concerned that voters might pursue 'class interest' (which they currently do, big time).
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / c. Direct democracy
20505 Direct democracy is inexperience judging experience, and ignorance judging knowledge [Mill]
     Full Idea: At its best [direct democracy] is inexperience sitting in judgement on experience, ignorance on knowledge.
     From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.232), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Representative'
     A reaction: Recent experiments have suggested that inexperienced people can become very good at making large decisions, if they are allowed to consult experts when they want to. See Van Reybrouck's 'Against Elections'.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / d. Representative democracy
20504 People can only participate in decisions in small communities, so representatives are needed [Mill]
     Full Idea: Since all cannot, in a community exceeding a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be representative.
     From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.217-8), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Representative'
     A reaction: Wolff offers Mill as the principal spokesman for representative democracy. It is not only the difficulty of achieving participation, but also the slowness of decision-making. Modern technology may be changing all of this.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 13. Green Politics
22881 Should we value environmental systems for human benefit, or for their own sake? [Hildebrand]
     Full Idea: There is a long-running debate between anthropo-centrists and eco-centrists. The latter believe that humans must protect environmental systems because they have intrinsic value; the former argue that human interests are the root of all value.
     From: David Hildebrand (Dewey [2008], 8 'Environ')
     A reaction: How many tigers would you kill to save a human life? Would you allow a human to die in order to save a species from extinction? It is very hard to think that the Earth has great value if humans are removed from it!
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 11. Against Laws of Nature
15877 The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré]
     Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose.
     From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2
     A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts.