Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts', 'How free does the will need to be?' and 'works'

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5 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 3. Value of Logic

9390	Logic guides thinking, but it isn't a substitute for it [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: Logic is part of a normative theory of thinking, not a substitute for thinking.
	From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.13)
	A reaction: There is some sort of logicians' dream, going back to Leibniz, of a reasoning engine, which accepts propositions and outputs inferences. I agree with this idea. People who excel at logic are often, it seems to me, modest at philosophy.

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 4. Substitutional Quantification

10800	The values of variables can't determine existence, because they are just expressions [Ryle, by Quine]
	Full Idea: Ryle objected somewhere to my dictum that 'to be is to be the value of a variable', arguing that the values of variables are expressions, and hence that my dictum repudiates all things except expressions.
	From: report of Gilbert Ryle (works [1950]) by Willard Quine - Reply to Professor Marcus p.183
	A reaction: I have a lot of sympathy with Ryle's view, and I associate it with the peculiar Millian view that we can somehow replace a name in a sentence with the actual physical object. Objects can't be parts of sentences - and maybe they can't be 'values'.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects

9389	Vague membership of sets is possible if the set is defined by its concept, not its members [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: Vagueness in respect of membership is consistency with determinacy of the set's identity, so long as a set's identity is taken to consist, not in its having such-and-such members, but in its being the extension of a concept.
	From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.5)
	A reaction: I find this view of sets much more appealing than the one that identifies a set with its members. The empty set is less of a problem, as well as non-existents. Logicians prefer the extensional view because it is tidy.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / g. Moral responsibility

20168	Blame usually has no effect if the recipient thinks it unjustified [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: One of the most obvious facts about blame is that in many cases it is effective only if the recipient thinks that it is justified.
	From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5)
	A reaction: The point of the blame might not be reform of the agent, but a public justification for punishment as deterrence, in which case who cares what the agent thinks? Is blame attribution of causes, or reasons to punish?

20167	Blame partly rests on the fiction that blamed agents always know their obligations [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: Blame rests, in part, on a fiction; the idea that ethical reasons, in particular the special kind of ethical reasons that are obligations, must, really, be available to the blamed agent.
	From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5)
	A reaction: In blaming someone, you may be telling them that they should know their obligations, rather than assuming that they do know them. How else can we give children a moral education?