108 ideas
| 7001 | If you begin philosophy with language, you find yourself trapped in it [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you start with language and try to work your way outwards, you will never get outside language. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This voices my pessimism about the linguistic approach to philosophy (and I don't just mean analysis of ordinary language), though I wonder if the career of (say) John Searle is a counterexample. |
| 7038 | A theory with few fundamental principles might still posit a lot of entities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It could well turn out that a simpler theory - a theory with fewer fundamental principles - posits more entities than a more complex competitor. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 4036. The point here is that you can't simply translate Ockham as 'keep it simple', as there are different types of simplicity. The best theory will negotiate a balance between entities and principles. |
| 7037 | Parsimony does not imply the world is simple, but that our theories should try to be [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A commitment to parsimony is not a commitment to a conception of the world as simple. The idea, rather, is that we should not complicate our theories about the world unnecessarily. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
| A reaction: In other words, Ockham's Razor is about us, not about the world. It would be absurd to make the a priori assumption that the world has to be simple. Are we, though, creating bad theories by insisting that they should be simple? |
| 7004 | The view that truth making is entailment is misguided and misleading [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I argue that the widely held view that truth making is to be understood as entailment is misguided in principle and potentially misleading. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If reality was just one particle, what would entail the truths about it? Suppose something appears to be self-evident true about reality, but no one can think of any entailments to derive it? Do we assume a priori that they are possible? |
| 7035 | God does not create the world, and then add the classes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see classes as an 'addition of being'; God does not create the world, and then add the classes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4 n6) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. We may be tempted into believing in the reality of classes when considering maths, but it seems utterly implausible when considering trees or cows. |
| 7017 | The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: Fodor, for example, claims that certain causal laws only operate at high levels of reality. I agree with Heil's idea - the notion that there are different realities around here that don't connect properly to one another is philosopher's madness. |
| 7003 | There are levels of organisation, complexity, description and explanation, but not of reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We should accept levels of organisation, levels of complexity, levels of description, and levels of explanation, but not the levels of reality favoured by many anti-reductionists. The world is then ontologically, but not analytically, reductive. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right to me. The crunch questions seem to be whether the boundaries at higher levels of organisation exist lower down, and whether the causal laws of the higher levels can be translated without remainder into lower level laws. |
| 7045 | Realism says some of our concepts 'cut nature at the joints' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Realism is sometimes said to involve a commitment to the idea that certain of our concepts, those with respect to which we are realists, 'carve reality at the joints'. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.11) | |
| A reaction: Clearly not all concepts cut nature at the joints (e.g. we have concepts of things we know to be imaginary). Personally I am committed to this view of realism. I try very hard to use concepts that cut accurately; why shouldn't I sometimes succeed? |
| 7065 | Anti-realists who reduce reality to language must explain the existence of language [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Anti-realist philosophers, and those who hope to reduce metaphysics to (or replace it with) the philosophy of language, owe the rest of us an account of the ontology of language. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice turning-the-tables question. In all accounts of relativism, x is usually said to be relative to y. You haven't got proper relativism if you haven't relativised both x and y. But relativised them to what? Nietzsche's 'perspectivism' (Idea 4420)? |
| 7020 | Concepts don't carve up the world, which has endless overlooked or ignored divisions [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Concepts do not 'carve up' the world; the world already contains endless divisions, most of which we remain oblivious to or ignore. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: Concepts could still carve up the world, without ever aspiring to do a complete job. We carve up the aspects that interest us, but the majority of the carving is in response to natural divisions, not whimsical conventions. |
| 7007 | I think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers who accept that properties are intrinsic features of objects regard them as pure powers, pure dispositionalities; I prefer to think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am uneasy about 'qualitative' as a category, and am inclined to reduce it to being a dispositional power to cause primary and secondary qualities in observers. Roughness is only a power, not a quality, if there are no observers. |
| 7015 | A predicate applies truly if it picks out a real property of objects [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When a predicate applies truly to an object, it does so in virtue of designating a property possessed by that object and by every object to which the predicate truly applies (or would apply). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: I am sympathetic to Heil's aim of shifting our attention from arbitrary predicates to natural properties, but it won't avoid Fodor's problem (Idea 7014) that all kinds of whimsical predicates will apply 'truly', but fail to pick out anything significant. |
| 7042 | A theory of universals says similarity is identity of parts; for modes, similarity is primitive [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The friend of universals has an account of similarity relations as relations of identity and partial identity; the friend of modes must regard similarity relations as primitive and irreducible. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.5) | |
| A reaction: We always seem to be able to ask 'in what respect' a similarity occurs. If similarity is 'primitive and irreducible', we should not be able to analyse and explain a similarity, yet we seem able to. I conclude that Heil is wrong. |
| 7023 | Powers or dispositions are usually seen as caused by lower-level qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The modern default position on dispositionality is that powers or dispositions are higher-level properties objects possess by virtue of those objects' possession of lower-level qualitative (categorical) properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: The new idea which is being floated by Heil, and which I prefer, is that dispositions or powers are basic. A 'quality' is a much more dubious entity than a power. |
| 7025 | Are a property's dispositions built in, or contingently added? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is a dispute over whether a property's dispositionality is built into the property or whether it is a contingent add-on. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.4) | |
| A reaction: Put that way, the idea that it is built in seems much more plausible. If it is an add-on, an explanation of why that disposition is added to that particular property seems required. If it is built in, it seems legitimate to accept it as a brute fact. |
| 7034 | Universals explain one-over-many relations, and similar qualities, and similar behaviour [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Universals can explain the one-over-many problem, and easily explain similarity relations between objects, and explain the similar behaviour of similar objects. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.1) | |
| A reaction: A useful summary. If you accept it, you seem to be faced with a choice between Plato (who has universals existing independently of particulars) and Armstrong (who makes them real, but existing only in particulars). |
| 7039 | How could you tell if the universals were missing from a world of instances? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a pair of worlds, one in which there are the universals and their instances and one in which there are just the instances (a world of modes). How would the absence of universals make itself felt? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.7) | |
| A reaction: A nice question for Plato, very much in the spirit of Aristotle's string of questions. Compare 'suppose the physics remained, but someone removed the laws'. Either chaos ensues, or you realise they were redundant. Same with Forms. |
| 7009 | Similarity among modes will explain everthing universals were for [Heil] |
| Full Idea: My contention is that similarity among modes can do the job universals are conventionally postulated to do. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 4441 for Russell's nice objection to this view. The very process by which we observes similarities (as assess their degrees) needs to be explained by any adequate theory of properties or universals. |
| 7041 | Similar objects have similar properties; properties are directly similar [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Objects are similar by virtue of possessing similar properties; properties, in contrast, are not similar in virtue of anything. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.2) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure if I can understand the concept of similarity if there is no answer to the question 'In what respect?' I suppose David Hume is happy to take resemblance as given and basic, but it could be defined as 'sharing identical properties'. |
| 7032 | Objects join sets because of properties; the property is not bestowed by set membership [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The set of red objects is the set of objects possessing a property: being red. Objects are members of the set in virtue of possessing this property; they do not possess the property in virtue of belonging to the set. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very effective denial of the claim that universals are sets. However, if 'being a Londoner' counts as a property, you can only have it by joining the London set. Being tall is more fundamental than being a Londoner. |
| 7008 | Trope theorists usually see objects as 'bundles' of tropes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers identifying themselves as trope theorists have, by and large, accepted some form of the 'bundle theory' of objects: an object is a bundle of compresent tropes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This view eliminates anything called 'matter' or 'substance' or a 'bare particular'. I think I agree with Heil that this doesn't give a coherent picture, as properties seem to be 'of' something, and bundles always raise the question of what unites them. |
| 7018 | Objects are substances, which are objects considered as the bearer of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I think of objects as substances, and a substance is an object considered as a bearer of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.2) | |
| A reaction: This is an area of philosophy I always find disconcerting, where an account of how we should see objects seems to have no connection at all to what physicists report about objects. 'Considered as' seems to make substances entirely conventional. |
| 7019 | Maybe there is only one substance, space-time or a quantum field [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It would seem distinctly possible that there is but a single substance: space-time or some all-encompassing quantum field. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.2) | |
| A reaction: This would at least meet my concern that philosophers' 'substances' don't seem to connect to what physicists talk about. I wonder if anyone knows what a 'quantum field' is? The clash between relativity and quantum theory is being alluded to. |
| 7046 | Rather than 'substance' I use 'objects', which have properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I prefer the more colloquial 'object' to the traditional term 'substance'. An object can be regarded as a possessor of properties: as something that is red, spherical and pungent, for instance. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 15.3) | |
| A reaction: A nice move, but it seems to beg the question of 'what is it that has the properties?' Objects and substances do two different jobs in our ontology. Heil is just refusing to discuss what it is that has properties. |
| 7047 | Statues and bronze lumps have discernible differences, so can't be identical [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Applications of the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals apparently obliges us to distinguish the statue and the lump of bronze making it up. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.3) | |
| A reaction: In other words, statues and lumps of bronze have different properties. It is a moot point, though, whether there are any discernible differences between that statue at time t and its constituting lump of bronze at time t. |
| 7048 | Do we reduce statues to bronze, or eliminate statues, or allow statues and bronze? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Must we choose between reductionism (the statue is the lump of bronze), eliminativism (there are no statues, only statue-shaped lumps of bronze), and a commitment to coincident objects? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.5) | |
| A reaction: (Heil goes on to offer his own view). Coincident objects sounds the least plausible view. Modern statues are only statues if we see them that way, but a tree is definitely a tree. Trenton Merricks is good on eliminativism. |
| 7030 | Properties don't possess ways they are, because that just is the property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Objects possess properties, but I am sceptical of the idea that properties possess properties; just as a property is a way some object is, a property of a property would be a way a property is, but that is just the property itself. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a good defence of the idea that properties are qualities as well as dispositions. However, if we make the qualities of properties into secondary qualities, and the dispositions into primary qualities, the absurdity melts away. |
| 7028 | If properties were qualities without dispositions, they would be undetectable [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A pure quality, a property altogether lacking in dispositionality, would be undetectable and would, in one obvious sense, make no difference to its possessor. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very forceful and simple reason why we cannot view properties simply as qualities of things. Heil wants properties to be dispositions and qualities; personally I would vote for them just being dispositions or powers. |
| 7029 | Can we distinguish the way a property is from the property? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear to me that we easily distinguish ways a property is from the property itself. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.6) | |
| A reaction: To defend properties as qualities, he is confusing ontology and epistemology. Presumably he means by 'ways a property is' what I would prefer to call 'ways a property seems to be'. I don't believe a smell is simply what it seems to be. |
| 7051 | Objects only have secondary qualities because they have primary qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Secondary qualities are not distinct from primary qualities: an object's possession of a given secondary quality is a matter of its possession of certain complex primary qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.3) | |
| A reaction: The bottom line here is that, if essentialism is right, colours are not properties at all (see Idea 5456). Heil wants to subsume secondary properties within primary properties. I think we should sharply distinguish them. |
| 7044 | Secondary qualities are just primary qualities considered in the light of their effect on us [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Secondary qualities are just ordinary properties - roughly, Locke's primary qualities - considered in the light of their effects on us. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.10) | |
| A reaction: Unconvincing. If they only acquire their ontological status as primary qualities if they have to be considered in relation to something (us), then that is not a primary quality. |
| 7052 | Colours aren't surface properties, because of radiant sources and the colour of the sky [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Theories that take colours to be properties of the surfaces of objects have difficulty accounting for a host of phenomena including coloured light emitted by radiant sources and so-called film colours (the colour of the sky, for instance). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I never thought that colours might be actual properties of surfaces, but it is nice to have spelled out a couple of instances that make it very implausible. Neon and sodium lights I take to be examples of the first case. |
| 7053 | Treating colour as light radiation has the implausible result that tomatoes are not red [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Theories that tie colours to features of light radiation deal with radiant and diffused colours, but yield implausible results for objects; tomatoes are not red, on such a view, but merely reflect red light. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
| A reaction: I see absolutely no problem with the philosophical denial that tomatoes are actually red, while continuing to use 'red' of tomatoes in the normal way. When we analyse our processes of knowledge acquisition, we must give up 'common sense'. |
| 7066 | If the world is just texts or social constructs, what are texts and social constructs? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: For those who regard the world as text or a social construct, are texts and social constructs real entities? If they are, what are they? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice turn-the-tables question. The oldest attacks of all on scepticism and relativism consist of showing that the positions themselves rest on knowledge or truth. Nietzsche may be the best model for relativists. E.g. Idea 4420. |
| 22179 | Explanatory facts also predict, and predictive facts also explain [Hempel, by Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Hempel said every scientific explanation is potentially a prediction - it would have predicted the phenomenon in question, had it not already been known. But also the information used to make a prediction is potentially an explanation. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 3 | |
| A reaction: Sounds too neatly glib to be quite true. If you explain a single event there is nothing to predict. You might predict accurately from a repetitive pattern, with no understanding at all of the pattern. |
| 7021 | If the world is theory-dependent, the theories themselves can't be theory-dependent [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If the world is somehow theory-dependent, this implies, on pain of a regress, that theories are not theory-dependent. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure where this puts the ontology of theories, but this is a nice question, of a type which never seems to occur to your more simple-minded relativist. |
| 7026 | Science is sometimes said to classify powers, neglecting qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The sciences are sometimes said to be in the business of identifying and classifying powers; the mass of an electron, its spin and charge, could be regarded as powers possessed by the electron; science is silent on an electron's qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: Heil raises the possibility that qualities are real, despite the silence of science; he wants colour to be a real quality. I like the simpler version of science. Qualities are the mental effects of powers; there exist substances, powers and effects. |
| 6755 | For Hempel, explanations are deductive-nomological or probabilistic-statistical [Hempel, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Hempel proposes that explanations involve covering laws and antecedent conditions; this view (the 'covering law' view) has two versions, the deductive-nomological model and the probabilistic-statistical model of explanation. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: The obvious problem with this approach, it seem to me, is that the laws themselves need explanation, and I don't see how a law can be foundational unless there is a divine law-giver. Are the laws arbitrary and axiomatic? |
| 17083 | The covering-law model is for scientific explanation; historical explanation is quite different [Hempel] |
| Full Idea: To put forward the covering-law models of scientific explanation is not to deny that there are other contexts in which we speak of explanation. ….That it does not fit explaining the rules of Hanoverian succession is to miss the intent of our model. | |
| From: Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p. 412-3), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 1 | |
| A reaction: Important to get that clear. It then requires a clear demarcation between science and the rest, and it had better not rule out biology because it is having a love affair with physics. |
| 13052 | Hempel rejects causation as part of explanation [Hempel, by Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Hempel explicitly rejects the idea that causality plays any essential explanatory role. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p.352) by Wesley Salmon - Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1.1 | |
| A reaction: Hempel champions the 'covering-law' model of explanation. It strikes me that Hempel is so utterly wrong about this that his views aren't even a candidate for correctness, but then for a long time his views were orthodoxy. |
| 7060 | One form of explanation is by decomposition [Heil] |
| Full Idea: One form of explanation is by decomposition. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a fancy word for taking it apart, presumably to see how it works, which implies a functional explanation, rather than to see what it is made of, which seeks an ontological explanation. Simply 'decomposing' something wouldn't in itself explain. |
| 7054 | Intentionality now has internalist (intrinsic to thinkers) and externalist (environment or community) views [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays philosophers concerned with intentionality divide into two camps. Internalists epitomise a traditional approach to thought, as intrinsic features of thinkers; externalists say it depends on contextual factors (environment or community). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: This is basic to understanding modern debates (those that grow out of Putnam's Twin Earth). Externalism is fashionable, but I am reluctant to shake off my quaint internalism. Start by separating strict and literal meaning from speaker's meaning. |
| 7010 | Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a view with which I am sympathetic, though I am not sure if it explains anything. It would be necessary to identify a disposition of basic matter that could be built up into the disposition of a brain to think about things. |
| 7011 | Qualia are not extra appendages, but intrinsic ingredients of material states and processes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Properties of conscious experience, the so-called qualia, are not dangling appendages to material states and processes but intrinsic ingredients of those states and processes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to the view that qualia are intrinsic to the processes and NOT to the 'states'. Heil must be right, though. I am sure qualia are not just epiphenomena - they are too useful. |
| 7061 | Philosophers' zombies aim to show consciousness is over and above the physical world [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers' zombies (invented by Robert Kirk) differ from the zombies of folklore; they are intended to make clear the idea that consciousness is an addition of being, something 'over and above' the physical world. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.1 n1) | |
| A reaction: The famous defender of zombies is David Chalmers. You can't believe in zombies if you believe (as I do) that 'the physical entails the mental'. Could there be redness without something that is red? If consciousness is extra, what is conscious? |
| 7063 | Zombies are based on the idea that consciousness relates contingently to the physical [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of zombies is founded on the idea that consciousness is related contingently to physical states and processes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.3) | |
| A reaction: The question is, how do you decide whether the relationship is contingent or necessary? Hence the interest in whether conceivability entails possibility. Kripke attacks the idea of contingent identity, pointing towards necessity, and away from zombies. |
| 7064 | Functionalists deny zombies, since identity of functional state means identity of mental state [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists deny that zombies are possible since states of mind (including conscious states) are purely functional states. If two agents are in the same functional state, regardless of qualitative difference, they are in the same mental state. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.5) | |
| A reaction: In its 'brief' form this idea begins to smell of tautology. Only the right sort of functional state would entail a mental state, and how else can that functional state be defined, apart from its leading to a mental state? |
| 7027 | Functionalists say objects can be the same in disposition but differ in quality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A central tenet of functionalism is that objects can be dispositionally indiscernible but differ qualitatively as much as you please. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.3) | |
| A reaction: This refers to the multiple realisability of functions. Presumably we reconcile essentialism with the functionalist view by saying that dispositions result from combinations of qualities. A unique combination of qualities will necessitate a disposition. |
| 7062 | Functionalism cannot explain consciousness just by functional organisation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism has been widely criticized on the grounds that it is implausible to think that functional organization alone could suffice for conscious experience. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites Block's 'Chinese Mind' as an example. The obvious reply is that you can't explain consciousness with a lump of meat, or with behaviour, or with an anomalous property, or even with a non-physical substance. |
| 7059 | The 'explanatory gap' is used to say consciousness is inexplicable, at least with current concepts [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The expression 'explanatory gap' was coined by Joseph Levine in 1983. McGinn and Chalmers have invoked it in defence of the view that consciousness is physically inexplicable, and Nagel that it is inexplicable given existing conceptual resources. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8 n14) | |
| A reaction: Coining a few concepts isn't going to help, but discovering more about the brain might. With computer simulations we will 'see' more of the physical end of thought. Psychologists may break thought down into physically more manageable components. |
| 7012 | If a car is a higher-level entity, distinct from its parts, how could it ever do anything? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If we regard a Volvo car as a higher-level entity with its own independent reality, something distinct from its constituents (arranged in particular ways and variously connected to other things), we render mysterious how Volvos could do anything at all. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me perhaps the key reason why we have to be reductionists. The so-called 'bridge laws' from mind to brain are not just needed to explain the mind, they are also essential to show how a mind would cause behaviour. |
| 7043 | Multiple realisability is actually one predicate applying to a diverse range of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Cases of multiple realisability are typically cases in which some predicate ('is red', 'is in pain') applies to an object in virtue of that object's possession of any of a diverse range of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.8) | |
| A reaction: If the properties are diverse, why does one predicate apply to them? I take it that in the case of the pain, the predicate is ambiguous in applying to the behaviour or the phenomenal property. Same behaviour is possible with many qualia. |
| 7058 | Externalism is causal-historical, or social, or biological [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some externalists focus on causal-historical connections, others emphasise social matters (especially thinkers' linguistic communities), still others focus on biological function. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.5 n6) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. The social view strikes me as the one to take most seriously (allowing for contextual views of justification, and for the social role of experts). The problem is to combine the social view with realism and a robust view of truth. |
| 7057 | Intentionality is based in dispositions, which are intrinsic to agents, suggesting internalism [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that intentionality is grounded in the dispositionalities of agents. Dispositions are intrinsic to agents, so this places me on the side of the internalists and against the externalists. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a key idea, and the right view. The key question is whether we see intentionality as active or passive. The externalist view seems to see the brain as a passive organ which the world manipulates. If the brain is active, what is it doing? |
| 7013 | The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The theory of language which I designate the 'Picture Theory' says that language pictures reality in roughly the sense that we can 'read off' features of reality from our ways of speaking about it. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: Heil, quite rightly, attacks this view very strongly. I think of it as the great twentieth century philosophical heresy, that leads to shocking views like relativism and anti-realism. |
| 7002 | If propositions are states of affairs or sets of possible worlds, these lack truth values [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When pressed, philosophers will describe propositions as states of affairs or sets of possible worlds. But wait! Neither sets of possible worlds nor states of affairs - electrons being negatively charged, for instance - have truth values. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I see a problem. A pure proposition, expressed as, say "there is a giraffe on the roof" only acquires a truth value at the point where you assert it or believe it. There IS a possible world where there is a giraffe on the roof. |
| 19906 | All countries are in a mutual state of nature [Locke] |
| Full Idea: All commonwealths are in a state of Nature one with another. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 153) | |
| A reaction: A striking remark. It is easy to think that the state of nature no longer exists. International law attempts to rectify this, but diplomacy is much more like negotiations in nature than it is like obedience to laws. |
| 19882 | We are not created for solitude, but are driven into society by our needs [Locke] |
| Full Idea: God, having made man such a creature that, in His own judgement, it was not good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination, to drive him into society. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 077) | |
| A reaction: This is almost Aristotelian, apart from the individualistic assumption that we are 'driven' into society. The only time I see other people looking generally happy is when they are sitting around at leisure and talking to other people. |
| 19864 | In nature men can dispose of possessions and their persons in any way that is possible [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The estate all men are naturally in is perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the laws of nature. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 004) | |
| A reaction: Note that they have possessions, so property is not an invention of society, but something which society should protect. Presumably Locke thinks they could sell themselves into slavery, which Rousseau rejects. |
| 19865 | There is no subjection in nature, and all creatures of the same species are equal [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, are also equal one among another, without subordination or subjection. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 004) | |
| A reaction: The birds in my garden don't behave as if that were true. Physical strength is surely a natural inequality. |
| 19866 | The rational law of nature says we are all equal and independent, and should show mutual respect [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches mankind that all being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 006) | |
| A reaction: He adds that this is because we are all the property of God. Locke is more optimistic than Hobbes or Rousseau about this, since he thinks we have a natural obligation to be nice. |
| 19872 | The animals and fruits of the earth belong to mankind [Locke] |
| Full Idea: All the fruits the earth naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 026) | |
| A reaction: Not a popular view among 21st century ecologists, I guess, but this remains the implicit belief of anyone who goes hunting in the woods, and our enclosed gardens seem to endorse the idea. |
| 19907 | There is a natural right to inheritance within a family [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Every man is born with a right before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father's goods. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 190) | |
| A reaction: If a child is fully grown, they may well have drifted into a state of partial ownership of the goods of the parent, of which it would be hard then to deprive them. It is hard to see this as a natural right of tiny orphaned infants. |
| 19863 | Politics is the right to make enforceable laws to protect property and the state, for the common good [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Political power is the right of making laws, with penalties up to death, for the preserving of property, employing the force of community in the execution of such laws, in defence of the commonwealth, and only for the common good. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 003) | |
| A reaction: Since political power can be used for selfish corruption and genocide, this isn't very accurate, so I take it this is how power ought to be exercised! Notice that defence gets equal billing with his famous defence of property. |
| 5654 | The Second Treatise explores the consequences of the contractual view of the state [Locke, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: In his second Treatise, Locke gave us perhaps the first extended account of the true logical consequences of Hobbes's contractual view of the state. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: The issue seems to boil down to an opposition between the Cartesian and the Aristotelian view of the individual, with Locke following Descartes. The alternative, endorsed by Hegel, which I prefer, is that the state is part of human nature. |
| 19888 | A society only begins if there is consent of all the individuals to join it [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The beginning of politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals to join into and make one society. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 106) | |
| A reaction: This is the dramatic new political idea (originating with Hobbes), that all of the members must (at some point) consent to the state. In practice we are all born into a state, so it is not clear what this means in real life. |
| 6702 | If anyone enjoys the benefits of government (even using a road) they give tacit assent to its laws [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Every man, that hath an possession, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is obliged to obedience to the laws, ..whether it be barely travelling on the highway. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 119), quoted by Gordon Graham - Eight Theories of Ethics Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: Locke's famous assertion of an unspoken and inescapable contract, to which we are all subject. Hume gave an effective reply (Idea 6703). Locke has a point though. The more you accept, the more obliged you are. I accept the law more as I get older. |
| 19909 | A politic society is created from a state of nature by a unanimous agreement [Locke] |
| Full Idea: That which makes the community, and brings men out of the loose state of Nature into one politic society, is the agreement that everyone has with the rest to incorporate and act as one body. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 211) | |
| A reaction: Geography usually keeps commonwealths in place once they have been established, but some of them become disfunctional hell holes because they are trapped in perpetual disagreement. |
| 19910 | A single will creates the legislature, which is duty-bound to preserve that will [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The essence and union of the society consisting in having one will; the legislative, when once established by the majority, has the declaring and, as it were, keeping of that will. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 212) | |
| A reaction: Not far from Rousseau's big idea, apart from the emphasis on the 'majority'. Rousseau reduced the role of the general will to preliminaries and basics, but wanted close to unanimity, so that everyone accepts being a subject, to government and law. |
| 19893 | Anyone who enjoys the benefits of a state has given tacit consent to be part of it [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Every man that hath any possession or enjoyment of any part of the dominions of any government doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 119) | |
| A reaction: I wondered at the age of about 18 whether I had given tacit consent to be a British citizen. Locke says you only have to travel freely down the highways to give consent! We are all free, of course, to apply for citizenship elsewhere. But Idea 19894. |
| 19894 | You can only become an actual member of a commonwealth by an express promise [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can make any man a subject or member of a commonwealth but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 122) | |
| A reaction: In practice the indigenous population never do this. But it a clear distinction for foreign residents in any country. States cannot induct resident foreigners into their army, or allow them to vote. |
| 19892 | Children are not born into citizenship of a state [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It is plain, by the practices of governments themselves, as well as by the laws of right reason, that a child is born a subject of no country nor government. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 118) | |
| A reaction: At what age do they become citizens, given that there is no induction ceremony? If a small British child were attacked overseas, we would expect the British government to defend its rights. |
| 19885 | Absolute monarchy is inconsistent with civil society [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted for the only government in the world, is inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 090) | |
| A reaction: This is because citizens do not have a 'decisive' power to appeal for redress of injuries. Rousseau thought that there could be an absolute monarchy, as long as the general will agreed it, and its term of office could be brought to an end by the assembly. |
| 19886 | The idea that absolute power improves mankind is confuted by history [Locke] |
| Full Idea: He that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need but read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 092) | |
| A reaction: I can't imagine who proposed the view that Locke is attacking, but it will have been some real 17th century thinker. Attitudes to monarchy changed drastically in England, but Louis XIV was still ruling in France. |
| 19903 | Despotism is arbitrary power to kill, based neither on natural equality, nor any social contract [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Despotical power is an absolute, arbitrary power one man over another, to take away his life whenever he pleases; and this is a power which neither Nature gives, for it has made no such distinction between one man and another, nor compact can convey. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 172) | |
| A reaction: Colonies of seals, walruses and apes seem to display despotism, based on physical strength, though that is largely to do with mating. There could be such a compact, but Locke would regard it as invalid. |
| 19905 | People stripped of their property are legitimately subject to despotism [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Forfeiture gives despotical power to lords for their own benefit over those who are stripped of all property. ...Despotical power is over such as have no property at all. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 173) | |
| A reaction: Nasty! Shylock is stripped of his property by Venice, so these things happened. This is taking the significance of property a long way beyond its role at the beginning of Locke's book. Property is the start of society, but then becomes your passport. |
| 19904 | Legitimate prisoners of war are subject to despotism, because that continues the state of war [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Captives, taken in a just and lawful war, and such only, are subject to a despotical power, which, as it arises not from compact, so neither is it capable of any, but is the state of war continued. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 205) | |
| A reaction: How long after a war finishes is such despotism legitimate? What happened to the German prisoners in Russia in 1945? Locke defined despotism as the right to kill, but that is expressly contrary to the rules of war, look you. |
| 19895 | Even the legislature must be preceded by a law which gives it power to make laws [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power, as the first and fundamental natural law which is to govern even the legislative. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 134) | |
| A reaction: I think Rousseau says that there cannot be a law which enables the general will to set up legislative powers. It just seems to be something which happens. Locke is threatened with an infinite regress. What legitimises the enabling law? |
| 19900 | The executive must not be the legislature, or they may exempt themselves from laws [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It may be too great temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons to have the power of making laws to also have in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 143) | |
| A reaction: The main principles of modern constitutions are devised to avoid corruption. If people were incorruptible (yeah, right) the world would presumably be run very differently, and rather more efficiently, like a good family. |
| 19902 | Any obstruction to the operation of the legislature can be removed forcibly by the people [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Having erect a legislative with the power of making laws, when they are hindered by any force from what is so necessary to society, and wherein the safety and preservation of the people consists, the people have a right to remove it by force. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 155) | |
| A reaction: I doubt if he was thinking of the French Revolution, but this will clearly have application to the English events of 1642. The Speaker of the Commons was held down in his chair in the 1620s, so that some legislation could be enacted. |
| 19908 | Rebelling against an illegitimate power is no sin [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It is plain that shaking off a power which force, and not right, hath set over any one, though it have the name of rebellion, yet it is no offence against God. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 196) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hezekiah at 2 Kings 18.7] At this time the English Civil War was referred to as the 'Great Rebellion' (so this is an interesting and brave remark of Locke's), though few people would think that Charles I had illegitimate power. |
| 19911 | If legislators confiscate property, or enslave people, they are no longer owed obedience [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 222) | |
| A reaction: This might fit Louis XVI in 1788. Locke was certainly not averse to consideration the situations in which revolution might be justified. He was trying to be even-handed about 1642. Locke seems to think that without property you ARE a slave. |
| 19901 | The people have supreme power, to depose a legislature which has breached their trust [Locke] |
| Full Idea: There remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 149) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the most important aspect of representative democracy. It is not the power of people to make decisions, but the power to get rid of bad rulers. |
| 19887 | Unanimous consent makes a united community, which is then ruled by the majority [Locke] |
| Full Idea: When any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community into one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 096) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be presume democracy without discussion, although the formation of the community is by universal consent, which is the 'general will'. Rousseau has the constitution also made almost unanimously, not by a majority. |
| 19913 | A master forfeits ownership of slaves he abandons [Locke] |
| Full Idea: A master forfeits the dominion over his slaves whom he hath abandoned. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 237) | |
| A reaction: How often did slave owners take a day off, I wonder? Presumably slaves will take back their freedom, even if the masters haven't 'forfeited' their ownership, so Locke's point is fairly academic. |
| 19883 | Slaves captured in a just war have no right to property, so are not part of civil society [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Slave are captives taken in a just war, and by right of Nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. ...Being not capable of any property, they cannot in that state be considered any part of civil society. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 085) | |
| A reaction: If the test of citizenship is being capable of holding property, presumably children and mentally damaged people (including the very old) will also fail to qualify. I see no principled reason why slaves should not be allowed to vote. Note 'just' war. |
| 19870 | If you try to enslave me, you have declared war on me [Locke] |
| Full Idea: He who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 017) | |
| A reaction: So presumably actual slaves are in a state of permanent war with their owners. What of a woman who is enslaved by her husband? |
| 19871 | Freedom is not absence of laws, but living under laws arrived at by consent [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth. Freedom is not (as Filmer suggests) doing what you please while not tied by any laws. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 022) | |
| A reaction: That sounds plausible if the consent is unanimous, but a minority is not free if the laws made by a large majority are a sort of persecution. |
| 19880 | All value depends on the labour involved [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It is labour that puts the difference of value on everything. ...Whatever bread is worth more than acorns, wine than water, that is wholly owing to labour and industry. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 040) | |
| A reaction: In capitalism this is nonsense. Supply and demand fix all the values. Locke has slid from labour bestowing ownership to labour bestowing value. No one gets paid on the basis of how hard they work, except on piece rates. |
| 19884 | There is only a civil society if the members give up all of their natural executive rights [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Wherever any number of men so unite into one society as to quite every one his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a civil society. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 089) | |
| A reaction: This seems to mean that you must give up your active ('executive') natural rights, but not your passive ones (which are inviolable). |
| 19873 | We all own our bodies, and the work we do is our own [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Every man has a 'property' in his own 'person'. This nobody has any right to it but himself. The 'labour' of his body and the 'work' of his hands, we may say, are properly his. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 027) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't have any grounds for this claim. Why doesn't a cow own its body? He slides from my ownership of my laborious efforts to my ownership of what I have been working on. I can't acquire your car by servicing it. |
| 6580 | Locke (and Marx) held that ownership of objects is a natural relation, based on the labour put into it [Locke, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Locke thought that property ownership reflected a natural relationship; for him the primordial notion of the ownership of an object is a function of the labour that one puts into it; Marx held a similar view. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: Marx would have to think that, in order to believe that capitalist ownership of the means of production used by the workers was a fundamental injustice. A deeper Marxism might see the whole idea of 'ownership' as a capitalist (or feudal) conspiracy. |
| 20520 | Locke says 'mixing of labour' entitles you to land, as well as nuts and berries [Wolff,J on Locke] |
| Full Idea: The great advantage of Locke's 'labour-mixing' argument is that it seems it can justify the appropriation of land, as well as nuts and berries. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 5 'Locke' | |
| A reaction: The argument is dubious at best, and plausibly downright wicked. How much labour achieves ownership? What of previous people who worked the land but never thought to claim 'ownership'? Suppose I do more labour than you on 'your' land? |
| 19875 | A man's labour gives ownership rights - as long as there are fair shares for all [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The 'labour' being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 027) | |
| A reaction: The qualification at the end is a crucial (and problematic) addition to his theory. What is the situation when an area of wilderness is 98% owned? What of the single source of water? Who gets the best parts? Getting there first seems crucial. |
| 19874 | If a man mixes his labour with something in Nature, he thereby comes to own it [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Whatever a man removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined something to it that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. ...This excludes the common right of other men. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 027) | |
| A reaction: This is Locke's famous Labour Theory of Value. Does picking it up count as labour? Putting a fence round it? Paying someone else to do the labour? Do bees own their honey? Settlers in the wilderness own nothing on day one? |
| 19877 | Fountain water is everyone's, but a drawn pitcher of water has an owner [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Though the water running in the fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 029) | |
| A reaction: This would certainly be the normal consensus of a community, as long as there is plenty of water. The strong and fit gatherers get all the best firewood, so I suppose that is just tough on the others. |
| 19876 | Gathering natural fruits gives ownership; the consent of other people is irrelevant [Locke] |
| Full Idea: If the first gathering of acorns and apples made them not a man's, nothing else could. ...Will anyone say he had no right to them because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 028) | |
| A reaction: The ideas of Nozick are all in this sentence. Does this idea justify the enclosure of common land? The first member of the community who thought of Locke's labour theory had a huge head's start. Liberal individualism rampant. |
| 19878 | Mixing labour with a thing bestows ownership - as long as the thing is not wasted [Locke] |
| Full Idea: How far has God given us all things 'to enjoy'? As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of his life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a property in. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 031) | |
| A reaction: This adds a very different value to Locke's theory, because the person seems to be answerable to fellow citizens if they harvest important resources and then waste them. Where do luxuries fit in? |
| 19879 | A man owns land if he cultivates it, to the limits of what he needs [Locke] |
| Full Idea: As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 032) | |
| A reaction: Industrial farming rather changes this picture. Does the man himself decide how much he can use the product of, or do the neighbours tell him where his boundaries must be? 'Reason not the need', as King Lear said. What if he stops cultivating it? |
| 19898 | Soldiers can be commanded to die, but not to hand over their money [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The sergeant that can command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a cannon ...cannot command that soldier to give him one penny of his money. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 139) | |
| A reaction: A very nice and accurate illustration of a principle which runs so deep that it does indeed look like a basis of society. |
| 19881 | The aim of law is not restraint, but to make freedom possible [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom, for where there is no law there is no freedom. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 057) | |
| A reaction: This fits both the liberal and the communitarian view of the matter. Talk of 'freedom' is commonplace in England by this date, where it is hardly mention 60 years earler. John Lilburne almost single-handedly brought this about. |
| 19868 | It is only by a law of Nature that we can justify punishing foreigners [Locke] |
| Full Idea: If by the law of Nature every man hath not a power to punish offences against [the state], as he soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 009) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice point. You can't expect to be above the law in a foreign country, but you have entered into no social contract, unless visiting a place is a sort of contract. Intrusions into air space are often accidental visits. |
| 19867 | Reparation and restraint are the only justifications for punishment [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Reparation and restraint are the only two reasons why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 008) | |
| A reaction: But by 'reparation' does be mean retribution, or compensation? He doesn't rule out capital punishment, but that may qualify as maximum restraint. |
| 19912 | Self-defence is natural, but not the punishment of superiors by inferiors [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It is natural for us to defend life and limb, but that an inferior should punish a superior is against nature. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 236) | |
| A reaction: He is obliquely referring to the execution of Charles I, even though he may have been legitimately overthrown. I wonder what exactly he means by 'superior' and 'inferior'. An idea from another age! |
| 19869 | Punishment should make crime a bad bargain, leading to repentance and deterrence [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Each transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the offender, give him cause to repent, and terrify others from doing the like. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 012) | |
| A reaction: I gather that the consensus among experts is that the biggest deterrence is a high likelihood of being caught, rather than the severity of the punishment. |
| 19899 | The consent of the people is essential for any tax [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The legislative power must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of the people given by themselves or their deputies. | |
| From: John Locke (Second Treatise of Government [1690], 142) | |
| A reaction: He will be thinking of the resistance to Ship Money in the 1630s, which was a step towards civil war. The people of Boston, Ma, may have read this sentence 80 years later! |
| 7016 | The standard view is that causal sequences are backed by laws, and between particular events [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The notion that every causal sequence if backed by a law, like the idea that causation is a relation among particular events, forms a part of philosophy's Humean heritage. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: This nicely pinpoints a view that needs to come under attack. I take the view that there are no 'laws' - other than the regularities in behaviour that result from the interaction of essential dispositional properties. Essences don't need laws. |
| 7036 | The real natural properties are sparse, but there are many complex properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I am sympathetic to the idea that the real properties are 'sparse'; ...but if, in counting kinds of property, we include complex properties as well as simple properties, the image of sparseness evaporates. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems right to me, and invites the obvious question of which are the sparse real properties. Presumably we let the physicists tell us that, though Heil wants to include qualities like phenomenal colour, which physicists ignore. |