25 ideas
| 22701 | Jokes can sometimes be funny because they are offensive [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes it is exactly what is offensive about a joke that makes it funny. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'emotional') | |
| A reaction: Jacobson offers this in support of his immoralist view, that immoral literature can be aesthetically successful. It is uncomfortable to find yourself laughing at a joke of which you disapprove. |
| 6161 | Structuralism is neo-Kantian idealism, with language playing the role of categories of understanding [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Structuralism is a form of neo-Kantian idealism, in which the job of creating Kant's phenomenal world has been taken over by language instead of forms of sensibility and categories of the understanding. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A helpful connection, which explains my aversion to any attempt at understanding the world simply by analysing language, either in its ordinary usage, or in its underlying logical form. |
| 6163 | If bivalence is rejected, then excluded middle must also be rejected [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: If you reject the principle of bivalence (that a proposition is either determinately true or false), then statements are also not subject to the Law of Excluded Middle (P or not-P). | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I think Rowlands is wrong about this. Excluded Middle could be purely syntacti, or its semantics could be 'True or Not-True'. Only bivalent excluded middle introduces 'True or False'. Compare Idea 4752. |
| 6155 | Supervenience is a one-way relation of dependence or determination between properties [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is essentially a one-way relation of dependence or determination, …which holds, in the first instance, between properties. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This definition immediately shows why supervenient properties are in danger of being epiphenomenal (i.e. causally irrelevant). Carefully thought about the notion of a 'one-way' relation will, I think, make it more obscure rather than clearer. |
| 6154 | It is argued that wholes possess modal and counterfactual properties that parts lack [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Some have argued that a mereological whole should not be identified with the sum of its parts on the grounds that the former possess certain properties - specifically modal and (perhaps) counterfactual properties - that the latter lacks. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced that modal and counterfactual claims should count as properties. If my pen is heated it melts (a property), but if my pen were intelligent it could do philosophy. Intelligence is a property, but the situation isn't. |
| 6157 | Tokens are dated, concrete particulars; types are their general properties or kinds [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Tokens are dated, concrete, particular occurrences or instances; types are the general properties that these occurrences exemplify or the kinds to which they belong. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It might be said that types are sets, of which tokens are the members. The question of 'general properties' raises the question of whether universals must exist to make kinds possible. |
| 6159 | Strong idealism is the sort of mess produced by a Cartesian separation of mind and world [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Neo-Kantian idealism, and the excesses of recent versions of it, are precisely the sort of mess one can get oneself into through an uncritical acceptance of the dichotomizing of mind and world along Cartesian internalist lines. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I am unconvinced that internalism about the mind (that its contents can be defined without reference to anything external) leads to this disastrous split. We don't have to abandon the links between an internal mind and the world. |
| 6152 | Minds are rational, conscious, subjective, self-knowing, free, meaningful and self-aware [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The apparent features of mind which are not obviously physical include: rationality, thought, consciousness, subjectivity, infallible first-person knowledge, freedom, meaning and self-awareness. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: A helpful list, some of which can be challenged. Ryle challenges first-person infallibility. Hume challenges self-awareness. Quine challenges meaning. Lots of people (e.g. Spinoza) challenge freedom. The Churchlands seem to challenge consciousness. |
| 6173 | Content externalism implies that we do not have privileged access to our own minds [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Content externalism threatens the idea of first-person authority in all its forms, and does so because it calls into question the idea that the access we have to our own mental states is privileged in the way required for such authority. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to respond by saying that since we clearly have privileged access to our own minds, that means there must be something wrong with content externalism. |
| 6174 | If someone is secretly transported to Twin Earth, others know their thoughts better than they do [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: If someone knew that a thinker had, without realising it, been transported to Twin Earth, they would almost certainly be a higher authority on the content of the thinker's thoughts than would the thinker. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: They would certainly be a higher authority on the truth of the thinker's thoughts, but only in the way that you might think I hold a diamond when I know it is a club. If the thinker believes it is H2O, the fact that it isn't is irrelevant to content. |
| 6158 | Supervenience of mental and physical properties often comes with token-identity of mental and physical particulars [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: One often finds a supervenience thesis concerning the relation between mental and physical properties combined with a token identity theory concerning the relation between mental and physical particulars. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This brings out the important clarifying point that supervenience is said to be between properties, not substances. The point is that supervenience will always cry out for an explanation, preferably a sensible one. |
| 6168 | The content of a thought is just the meaning of a sentence [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The content of the thought that the sky is blue is simply the meaning of the sentence "The sky is blue". | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that it is logically impossible for a non-language-speaker, such as a chimpanzee, to think that the sky is the same colour as the water. If we allow propositions, we might be able to keep meanings without the sentences. |
| 6167 | Action is bodily movement caused by intentional states [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: An action is a bodily movement that is caused by intentional states such as beliefs, desires and so on. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: A useful definition, and clearly one that has no truck with attempts at giving behaviourist definitions of action. The definition of a 'moral action' needs to be built on this one. Particular types of belief and desire, presumably. |
| 22703 | We don't often respond to events in art as if they were real events [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: We routinely do not respond to art as if we were as if we were real-life spectators of its events. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'rejection') | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as one of the basic facts about aesthetics, and especially of narrative art. People sometimes encounter terrible events on the street, only to find someone is making a film. |
| 22702 | Audiences can be too moral [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: An audience can be overly moralistic. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'emotional') | |
| A reaction: People can be too moral in real life as well. Goody Two Shoes. |
| 22696 | 'Autonomism' says the morality is irrelevant to the aesthetics [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: 'Autonomism' is the theory that the intrinsic moral merits and defects of an artwork are irrelevant to its aesthetic value. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This contrasts with 'moralism', which says the ethics is part of the aesthetics. Autonomism seems to be the modern academic label for art for art's sake. In nineteenth century novels the ethics are central; in modernist novels they seem to be irrelevant. |
| 22697 | Moral defects of art can be among its aesthetic virtues [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: To put my claim most provocatively: the moral defects in a work of art can be among its aesthetic virtues. This claim has been called 'immoralism'. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: To describe sympathetic descriptions of vile moral behaviour as 'defects' may be a misunderstanding. If a work sets out to promote wickedness, then its wickedness isn't a defect in the work. It could be a masterpiece of corruption. |
| 22700 | Immoral art encourages immoral emotions [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: Humean moralism includes the view that immoral art prescribes unethical emotional responses. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'emotional') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hume's 'On the Standard of Taste'] 'Prescribes' is tricky. Is a vivid description of wicked events, given without comment, a prescription? What if the commentary condemns, but the description entices? Trust the work itself, said Lawrence. |
| 22699 | Moderate moralism says moral qualities can sometimes also be aesthetic qualities [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: Noël Carroll's moderate moralism maintains that some moral defects in artworks are aesthetic defects, and some moral virtues are aesthetic merits. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'How moderate') | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that moralist critics are confusing morality and wisdom. We don't admire novels for hammering on about goodness. We admire their insight into characters and actions, of which the most interesting aspects happen to be moral. |
| 22698 | We can judge art ethically, or rate its ethical influence, or assess its quality via its ethics [Jacobson,D] |
| Full Idea: Ethical criticism includes 1) ethical judgements of art works, 2) assessment of an art work's role in moral education, or 3) bringing moral praise or censure to bear on the aesthetic evaluation. | |
| From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'What is') | |
| A reaction: [a compressed summary of Jacobson. He cites Levinson 1998 and Carroll 2000 as examples of ethical criticism] |
| 6177 | Moral intuition seems unevenly distributed between people [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The faculty of moral intuition seems to be unevenly distributed between people. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This would be a good argument if it was thought that the source of moral intuitions was divine, but people vary enormously in their intuitions about maths, about character, about danger. If you believe in any intuition at all, you must accept its variety. |
| 3032 | I can form no notion of what the good is [Amphis] |
| Full Idea: What the good is I no more can form a notion of, than of the good of Plato. | |
| From: Amphis (comedies (frags) [c.350 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 03.1.22 | |
| A reaction: It was evidently a running joke in the ancient world that no one could define Plato's Form of the Good. He was said to have written a book on it, now lost. |
| 6156 | The 17th century reintroduced atoms as mathematical modes of Euclidean space [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: The seventeenth century revolution reintroduced the classical concept of the atom in somewhat new attire as an essentially mathematical entity whose primary qualities could be precisely quantified as modes or aspects of Euclidean space. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this very abstract view of atoms didn't last, once they began to identify specific physical atoms, such as oxygen. This view fits in with Newton's use of pure (abstract) points such as the 'centre of gravity'. |
| 6170 | Natural kinds are defined by their real essence, as in gold having atomic number 79 [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Part of what it means to be a natural kind is that they are defined by a real essence, a constitution that marks them out as the substance they are (as water is essentially H2O, and gold essentially has atomic number 79). | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: A 'real essence' would be the opposite of a 'conventional essence', which is just a human way of seeing things. |
| 6178 | It is common to see the value of nature in one feature, such as life, diversity, or integrity [Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: In recent environmental philosophy it is common to see the value of nature identified with one or another natural feature of the environment: life, diversity, ecosystemic integrity and so on. | |
| From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This thought seems to be asking for the Open Question argument. What is so good about life, or diversity? Our strongest intuition must be that the survival of the ecosystem, and whatever makes that possible, is the highest value. |