46 ideas
| 24032 | Clever scholars can obscure things which are obvious even to peasants [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Scholars are usually ingenious enough to find ways of spreading darkness even in things which are obvious by themselves, and which the peasants are not ignorant of. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12) | |
| A reaction: Wonderful! I see it everywhere in philosophy. It is usually the result of finding ingenious and surprising grounds for scepticism. The amazing thing is not their lovely arguments, but that fools then take their conclusions seriously. Modus tollens. |
| 24033 | Most scholastic disputes concern words, where agreeing on meanings would settle them [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The questions on which scholars argue are almost always questions of word. …If philosophers were agreed on the meaning of words, almost all their controversies would cease. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 13) | |
| A reaction: He has a low opinion of 'scholars'! It isn't that difficult to agree on the meanings of key words, in a given context. The aim isn't to get rid of the problems, but to focus on the real problems. Some words contain problems. |
| 24024 | The secret of the method is to recognise which thing in a series is the simplest [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary, in a series of objects, to recognise which is the simplest thing, and how all the others depart from it. This rule contains the whole secret of the method. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 06) | |
| A reaction: This is an appealing thought, though deciding the criteria for 'simplest' looks tough. Are electrons, for example, simple? Is a person a simple basic thing? |
| 24018 | One truth leads us to another [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: One truth discovered helps us to discover another. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 01) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be one of the key ingredients of objectivity. People who know very little have almost no chance of objectivity. A mind full of falsehoods also blocks it. |
| 24035 | Unity is something shared by many things, so in that respect they are equals [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Unity is that common nature in which all things that are compared with each other must participate equally. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 14) | |
| A reaction: A lovely explanation of the concept of 'units' for counting. Fregeans hate units, but we Grecian thinkers love them. |
| 24036 | I can only see the proportion of two to three if there is a common measure - their unity [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I do not recognise what the proportion of magnitude is between two and three, unless I consider a third term, namely unity, which is the common measure of the one and the other. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 14) | |
| A reaction: A striking defence of the concept of the need for the unit in arithmetic. To say 'three is half as big again', you must be discussing the same size of 'half' in each instance. |
| 24029 | Among the simples are the graspable negations, such as rest and instants [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Among the simple things, we must also place their negation and deprivation, insofar as they fall under out intelligence, because the idea of nothingness, of the instant, of rest, is no less true an idea than that of existence, of duration, of motion. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12) | |
| A reaction: He sees the 'simple' things as the foundation of all knowledge, because they are self-evident. Not sure about 'no less true', since the specific nothings are parasitic on the somethings. |
| 16700 | In order to speak about time and successive entities, the 'present' must be enlarged [Wycliff] |
| Full Idea: It is clear from the way in which one must speak about time and other successive entities that talk about 'the present' must be enlarged. Otherwise it would have to be denied that any successive entity could exist, which is impossible. | |
| From: John Wycliff (De ente praedicamentali [1375], 20 p.189), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.3 | |
| A reaction: This is a lovely idea, even if it is not quite clear what it means. The mind seems to stretch out the now anyway (as the 'specious present'), so why not embrace that in language and conscious thought? |
| 16701 | To be successive a thing needs parts, which must therefore be lodged outside that instant [Wycliff] |
| Full Idea: If something is successive, it is successive with respect to its individual parts, which cannot exist at the same instant. Therefore it follows that many of its parts are lodged outside that instant. | |
| From: John Wycliff (De ente praedicamentali [1375], 20 p.189), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.3 | |
| A reaction: An obvious would be to say that there are therefore no successive entities, but Wycliff is appealing to our universal acceptance of them, and offering a transcendental argument. Nice move. |
| 24030 | 3+4=7 is necessary because we cannot conceive of seven without including three and four [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: When I say that four and three make seven, this connection is necessary, because one cannot conceive the number seven distinctly without including in it in a confused way the number four and the number three. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12) | |
| A reaction: This seems to make the truths of arithmetic conceptual, and hence analytic. |
| 24019 | If we accept mere probabilities as true we undermine our existing knowledge [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It is better never to study than to be unable to distinguish the true from the false, and be obliged to accept as certain what is doubtful. One risks losing the knowledge one already has. Hence we reject all those knowledges which are only probable. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 02) | |
| A reaction: This is usually seen nowadays (and I agree) that this is a false dichotomy. Knowledge can't be all-or-nothing. We should accept probabilities as probable, not as knowledge. Probability became a science after Descartes. |
| 24020 | We all see intuitively that we exist, where intuition is attentive, clear and distinct rational understanding [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: By intuition I mean the conception of an attentive mind, so distinct and clear that it has no doubt about what it understands, …a conception that is borne of the sole light of reason. Thus everyone can see intuitively that he exists. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 03) | |
| A reaction: By 'intuition' he means self-evident certainty, whereas my concept is of a judgement of which I am reasonably confident, but without sufficient grounds for certainty. This is an early assertion of the Cogito, with a clear statement of its grounding. |
| 24031 | When Socrates doubts, he know he doubts, and that truth is possible [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: If Socrates says he doubts everything, it necessarily follows that he at least understands that he doubts, and that he knows that something can be true or false: for these are notions that necessarily accompany doubt. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12) | |
| A reaction: An early commitment to the Cogito. But note that the inescapable commitment is not just to his existence, but also to his own reasoning, and his own commitment, and to the possibility of truth. Many, many things are undeniable. |
| 24025 | Clear and distinct truths must be known all at once (unlike deductions) [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: We require two conditions for intuition, namely that the proposition appear clear and distinct, and then that it be understood all at once and not successively. Deduction, on the other hand, implies a certain movement of the mind. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 11) | |
| A reaction: A nice distinction. Presumably with deduction you grasp each step clearly, and then the inference and conclusion, and you can then forget the previous steps because you have something secure. |
| 24022 | Our souls possess divine seeds of knowledge, which can bear spontaneous fruit [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The human soul possesses something divine in which are deposited the first seeds of useful knowledge, which, in spite of the negligence and embarrassment of poorly done studies, bear spontaneous fruit. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 04) | |
| A reaction: This makes clear the religious underpinning which is required for his commitment to such useful innate ideas (such as basic geometry) |
| 24034 | If someone had only seen the basic colours, they could deduce the others from resemblance [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Let there be a man who has sometimes seen the fundamental colours, and never the intermediate and mixed colours; it may be that by a sort of deduction he will represent those he has not seen, by their resemblance to the others. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 14) | |
| A reaction: Thus Descartes solved Hume's shade of blue problem, by means of 'a sort of deduction' from resemblance, where Hume was paralysed by his need to actually experience it. Dogmatic empiricism is a false doctrine! |
| 24021 | The method starts with clear intuitions, followed by a process of deduction [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: If the method shows clearly how we must use intuition to avoid mistaking the false for the true, and how deduction must operate to lead us to the knowledge of all things, it will be complete in my opinion. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 04) | |
| A reaction: A perfect statement of his foundationalist view. It needs a clear and distinct basis, and the steps of building must be strictly logical. Of course, most of our knowledge relies on induction, rather than deduction. |
| 24027 | Nerves and movement originate in the brain, where imagination moves them [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The motive power or the nerves themselves originate in the brain, which contains the imagination, which moves them in a thousand ways, as the common sense is moved by the external sense. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a lot more physicalist than his later explicit dualism in Meditations. Even in that work the famous passage on the ship's pilot acknowledged tight integration of mind and brain. |
| 24026 | Our four knowledge faculties are intelligence, imagination, the senses, and memory [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: There are four faculties in us which we can use to know: intelligence, imagination, the senses, and memory. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12) | |
| A reaction: Philosophers have to attribute faculties to the mind, even if the psychologists and neuroscientists won't accept them. We must infer the sources of our modes of understanding. He is cautious about imagination. |
| 24028 | The force by which we know things is spiritual, and quite distinct from the body [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: This force by which we properly know objects is purely spiritual, and is no less distinct from the body than is the blood from the bones. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 12) | |
| A reaction: This firmly contradicts any physicalism I thought I detected in Idea 24027! He uses the word 'spiritual' of the mind here, which I don't think he uses in later writings. |
| 7222 | It is a crime for someone with a violent disposition to get drunk [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This principle (based on knowing your own dispositions) is a very good account of the ethics drunkenness. We have a moral duty to know and remember our own dispositions. Violent people should avoid arguments as well as alcohol. |
| 7214 | Ethics rests on utility, which is the permanent progressive interests of people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Mill, writing in praise of personal liberty, is desperate to introduce a paternalistic element into his politics, and the 'maximisation of happiness' will justify such paternalism, while his basic liberal principle (Idea 7211) won't. Mill's Dilemma. |
| 7212 | Individuals have sovereignty over their own bodies and minds [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: If I should not even think about evil deeds, then neither should you. I would prevent you if I could. I would prevent you from drinking yourself to death, if I could. It is just that intrusions into private lives leads to greater trouble. |
| 7210 | The will of the people is that of the largest or most active part of the people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The will of the people practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence the nicely coined modern phrase 'the silent majority', on whose behalf certain politicians, usually conservative, offer to speak. It is unlikely that the silent majority are actually deeply opposed to the views of the very active part. |
| 7227 | It is evil to give a government any more power than is necessary [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government interference should be restricted because of the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This would need justification, because it might be replied that individuals should not have unnecessary power either. The main problem is that governments have armies, police and money. |
| 7228 | Individuals often do things better than governments [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government power should be restricted because things are often done better by individuals. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This contains some truth, but it is obvious that innumerable things can be done better by governments, and also (and more importantly) that innumerable other good things might be done by governments which individuals can't be bothered to do. |
| 7230 | Aim for the maximum dissemination of power consistent with efficiency [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The safest practical ideal is to aim for the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice principle, which I would think desirable within an institution as well as on the scale of the state. I am becoming a fan of Mill's politics. I still say that freedom is an overrated virtue, so efficiency must be underrated. |
| 20515 | Maximise happiness by an area of strict privacy, and an area of utilitarian interventions [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: For Mill the greatest happiness will be achieved by giving people a private sphere of interests where no intervention is permitted, while allowing a public sphere where intervention is possible, but only on utilitarian grounds. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Liberty' | |
| A reaction: This is probably standard liberal practice nowadays. Freely consenting adult sexual activity is agreed to be wholly private. At least some lip-service is paid to increasing happiness when government intervenes. |
| 7229 | People who transact their own business will also have the initiative to control their government [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A people accustomed to transacting their own business is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes reference to Americans. This is an important idea, because it shows that democratic control is not just a matter of elections (which can be abolished or suborned), but is also a characteristic of a certain way of life. |
| 7211 | Prevention of harm to others is the only justification for exercising power over people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others; his own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea in Mill's liberalism, though he goes on to offer some qualifications of this absolute prohibition. I don't disagree with this principle, but there may be a lot more indirect harm than we realise (eg. in allowing liberal sex or drugs). |
| 7231 | The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, opposed to any idea that we should abandon our own value to that of our state. I agree, but communitarians can subscribe to this too, while disagreeing that maximum freedom is the strategy to follow. |
| 7217 | The main argument for freedom is that interference with it is usually misguided [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that, when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is also a well known objection to capital punishment. Generalised, well established, legal interferences are perhaps more likely to get it right than ad hoc decisions about individuals by individual officials. |
| 7213 | Liberty arises at the point where people can freely and equally discuss things [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: There is a Victorian (and Enlightenment) optimism here which a glimpse of the freedoms of the early twenty-first century might dampen. I doubt if Mill expected British tabloid newspapers, or porn on cable TV. Education and freedom connect. |
| 20517 | Utilitarianism values liberty, but guides us on which ones we should have or not have [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism provides an account of what liberties we should and should not have. Mill argues we should be free to compete in trade, but not to use another's property without consent. Thus he sets limits to liberty, while paying it great respect. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' |
| 20516 | Mill defends freedom as increasing happiness, but maybe it is an intrinsic good [Wolff,J on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill has presented liberty as instrumentally valuable, as a way of achieving the greatest possible happiness in society. But perhaps he should have argued that liberty is an intrinsic good, good in itself. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' | |
| A reaction: If freedom is intrinsically good, does this leave us (as Wolff warned earlier) unable to defend its value? Freedom isn't an intrinsic good for infants, so why should it be so for adults? Good because it brings happiness, or fulfils our nature? |
| 7215 | True freedom is pursuing our own good, while not impeding others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This principle will probably lead up a Prisoner's Dilemma cul-de-sac. The only freedom which deserves the name is the collective agreed freedom of a whole community to live well, when citizens volunteer to restrict their individual freedoms. |
| 7218 | Individuals are not accountable for actions which only concern themselves [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My first maxim is that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, and one which communitarians have doubts about (because it is almost impossible to perform an action which is of no interest, in the short or long term, to others). I share these doubts. |
| 7221 | Blocking entry to an unsafe bridge does not infringe liberty, since no one wants unsafe bridges [Mill] |
| Full Idea: An official could turn a person back from an unsafe bridge without infringeing their liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Seems fair enough, but it justifies paternalist interference. The tricky one is where the official and the citizen disagree over what the citizen 'truly' desires. Asking people may involve too much time, but it could also involve too much effort. |
| 7223 | Pimping and running a gambling-house are on the border between toleration and restraint [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A person being free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house, lies on the exact boundary line between two principles, of toleration and of restraint. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Nothing illuminates a philosopher's principles more than for them to specify cases that lie on their borderlines. Both professions seem, unfortunately, to lead people into worse activities, such as violent bullying, or theft. Tricky.. |
| 7220 | Restraint for its own sake is an evil [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All restraint, qua restraint, is an evil. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The ultimate justification for this is (presumably) utilitarian, but that would mean that there was nothing wrong with restraint if the person did not mind, or was not aware of the restraint. What is intrinsically wrong with restraint? |
| 7219 | Society can punish actions which it believes to be prejudicial to others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My second maxim is that for actions that are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and subject to social or legal punishment, if society believes that this is requisite for its protection. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: (wording compressed). The trouble with this would seem to be the possible disagreement between the individual and the society over whether the actions actually are prejudicial to others. It would justify a conservative society in being repressive. |
| 7226 | Benefits performed by individuals, not by government, help also to educate them [Mill] |
| Full Idea: It is often desirable that beneficial things should be done by individuals, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This raises the important danger, which even those on the political left must acknowledge, of the 'nanny state'. It offers a nicely paternalistic, and even patronising reason for giving people freedom, just as a parent might to a child. |
| 7224 | We need individual opinions and conduct, and State education is a means to prevent that [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves diversity of education; a general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being particularly true with the advent in Britain of the National Curriculum in the early 1990s. However, if there is a pressure towards conformity in state education, private education is dominated by class and money. |
| 7225 | It is a crime to create a being who lacks the ordinary chances of a desirable existence [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To bestow a life on someone which may be either a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard utilitarian attitude to engendering people. I think I have to agree. It is no argument against this to say that we value people with poor life prospects, once they have arrived. Altruism towards children may disguise selfish parents. |
| 24023 | All the sciences searching for order and measure are related to mathematics [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have discovered that all the sciences which have as their aim the search for order and measure are related to mathematics. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 04) | |
| A reaction: Note that he sound a more cautious note than Galileo's famous remark. It leaves room for biology to still be a science, even when it fails to be mathematical. |
| 7216 | The ethics of the Gospel has been supplemented by barbarous Old Testament values [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To extract from the Gospel a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible withouth eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: 'Barbarous' has a quaint Victorian ring to it, but his point is that the surviving teachings of Jesus are very thin and generalised. Christians would do better to expand their implications, than to borrow from the Old Testament. |