20 ideas
| 13737 | The empiricist says that metaphysics is meaningless, rather than false [Schlick] |
| Full Idea: The empiricist does not say to the metaphysician 'what you say is false', but 'what you say asserts nothing at all!' He does not contradict him, but says 'I don't understand you'. | |
| From: Moritz Schlick (Positivism and Realism [1934], p.107), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What 1.1 | |
| A reaction: I take metaphysics to be meaningful, but at such a high level of abstraction that it is easy to drift into vague nonsense, and incredibly hard to assess what is meant, and whether it is correct. The truths of metaphysics are not recursive. |
| 23438 | Full rationality must include morality [Foot] |
| Full Idea: You haven't got a full idea of rationality until you've got morality within it. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that mathematical proofs are not rational, or that they are moral? |
| 23437 | Practical reason is goodness in choosing actions [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Practical rationality is goodness in respect of reason for actions, just as rationality of thinking is goodness in respect of beliefs. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.35) | |
| A reaction: It is very Greek to think that rationality involves goodness. There seems to be a purely instrumental form of practical reason that just gets from A to B, as when giving accurate street directions to someone. |
| 23436 | It is an odd Humean view to think a reason to act must always involve caring [Foot] |
| Full Idea: One would need a very special, very Humean, view about reasons for actions to think a man doesn't have a reason unless he cares. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.34-5) | |
| A reaction: She says she used to believe this, but was wrong. It is hard to imagine acting for reasons if they don't care about anything at all (even that it's their job). But then people just do care about things. |
| 23431 | Human defects are just like plant or animal defects [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We describe defects in human beings in the same way as we do defects in plants and animals. …You cannot talk about a river as being defective. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: This is a much clearer commitment to naturalistic ethics than I have found in her more academic writings. My opinion of Foot (which was already high) went up when I read this interview. …She says vice is a defect of the will. |
| 23432 | Concepts such as function, welfare, flourishing and interests only apply to living things [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There are concepts which apply only to living things, considered in their own right, which would include function, welfare, flourishing, interests and the good of something. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: This is a very Aristotelian view, with which I entirely agree. The central concept is function. |
| 23433 | Humans need courage like a plant needs roots [Foot] |
| Full Idea: A plant needs strong roots in the same way human beings need courage. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite convince by the analogy, but I strongly agree with her basic approach. |
| 23434 | There is no fact-value gap in 'owls should see in the dark' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If you say 'an owl should be able to see in the dark' …you're not going to think that there's a gap between facts and evaluation. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a major and fundamental idea, which pinpoints the failure of Humeans to understand the world correctly. There is always total nihilism, of course, but that is a sort of blindness to how things are. Demanding 'proof' of values is crazy. |
| 23439 | Principles are not ultimate, but arise from the necessities of human life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe in ultimate principles that must be simply affirmed or denied, but rather in an appeal to the necessities of human life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.37) | |
| A reaction: I agree. Humans have a strong tendency to elevate anything which they consider important into an absolute (such as the value of life, or freedom). |
| 23435 | If you demonstrate the reason to act, there is no further question of 'why should I?' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: You lose the sense of 'should' if you go on saying 'why should I?' when you've finished the argument about what is rational to do, what you've got reason to do. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], P.34) | |
| A reaction: Some people reify the concept of duty, so that they do what is required without caring about the reason. I suppose that would wither if they were shown that no reason exists. |
| 23529 | Conduct is not isolated from its effect on the moral code [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: We must not view conduct in isolation from its effect on the moral code. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Moderate') | |
| A reaction: The moral code may be excessively conservative, but there is no denying this point. Extreme individualistic libertarians must recognise that 'no man is an island'. |
| 23530 | The great danger of democracy is that the oppression of the minority becomes unobjectionable [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: For Mill and De Tocqueville the greatest of the dangers was not that in fact the majority might use their power to oppress a minority, but that, with the spread of democratic ideas, it might come to be thought unobjectionable that they should do so. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], III 'Populism') | |
| A reaction: This was vivid in the 2016 Brexit referendum, which was 52-48 in favour of leaving. There were lots voices saying 'you lost, get over it'. It should be a basic (if neglected) principle that the winners of elections now represent the whole population. |
| 23522 | In an organised society all actions have some effect on other people [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: In an organised society it is impossible to identify classes of actions which harm no one, or no one but the individual who does them. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Enforcement') | |
| A reaction: This is attributed to 'some critics' of Mill. I agree with this. The idea that actions performed behind close doors never come to influence social life is an illusion, held by people whose quest for freedom is selfish. |
| 23528 | The value of liberty allows freedom of action, even if that distresses other people [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: Recognition of individual liberty as a value involves, as a minimum, acceptance of the principle that the individual may do what he wants, even if others are distressed when the learn what it is that he does. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Private') | |
| A reaction: He notes that there could be other reasons to block the freedom, such as harm done. This idea seems to identify a key component of liberalism - that we must all tolerate actions which we dislike. |
| 23523 | The principle of legality requires crimes to be precisely defined in advance of any action [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: The principle of legality requires criminal offences to be as precisely defined as possible, so that it can be known with reasonable certainty beforehand what acts are criminal and what are not. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Conspiracy') | |
| A reaction: Hart is discussing a breach of this, where moral judgements are used to condemn something which was not obviously illegal. Families and schools don't have such precise rules, but it seems needed in a vast and pluralistic society. |
| 23524 | Some private moral issues are no concern of the law [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: An official report [of 1957] on homosexuality declared that 'there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law's business'. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Conspiracy') | |
| A reaction: We might wonder whether these issues are actually moral, if the law is not interested in them. Are they just a matter of taste? The law doesn't enforce a preference for Mozart over Salieri. |
| 23521 | Do morals influence law? Is morality an aspect of law? Can law be morally criticised? [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: Four questions: 1) Has the development of law been influenced by morals? 2) Must reference to morality enter into an adequate definition of law or legal system? 3) Is law open to moral criticism? 4) Does immorality justify legal punishment? | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Enforcement') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Three nice questions, which are his agenda for the book. It is obvious that immoral laws can be created, and that laws can be criticised for being too concerned with morality, so there is no clear general answer to these dilemmas. |
| 23525 | Is the enforcement of morality morally justifiable? [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: The question about morality and the law is also a question of morality - of whether the enforcement of morality is morally justified. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], I 'Positive') | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice meta-moral question. What moral standards are used to justify the enforcement of moral standards? Presumably there should be no contradiction between the levels, to brutally enforce softness, or softly recommend brutality? |
| 23526 | Modern law still suppresses practices seen as immoral, and yet harmless [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: English and American law still [in1963] contain rules which suppress practices condemned as immoral by positive morality though they involve nothing that would be ordinarily thought of as harm to other persons. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Use') | |
| A reaction: He says most of the examples of this concern sexual practices. In the UK we have moved away from such laws, but many states of the USA still maintain them (or are reintroducing them, in 2023). |
| 23527 | Moral wickedness of an offence is always relevant to the degree of punishment [Hart,HLA] |
| Full Idea: Leslie Stephen argued that when the question is how severely an offender should be punished, an estimate of the degree of moral wickedness involved in the crime is always relevant. | |
| From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Moral') | |
| A reaction: [Stephen 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' 1873] The degree of responsibility (after excuses etc.) is obviously also highly relevant. If vicious murder is punished more harshly, that seems to be an assessment of the character of the murderer. |