71 ideas
| 18495 | The best philosophers I know are the best people I know [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are not invariably the best people, but the best philosophers I know are the best people I know. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], Pref) | |
| A reaction: How very nicely expressed. I have often thought the same about lovers of literature, but been horribly disappointed by some of them. On the whole I have found philosophy-lovers to be slightly superior to literature-lovers! |
| 8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: It was in the seventeenth and eighteenth century that morality came generally to be understood as offering a solution to the problems posed by human egoism and that the content of morality came to be largely equated with altruism. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: It was the elevation of altruism that caused Nietzsche's rebellion. The sixteenth century certainly looks striking cynical to modern eyes. The development was an attempt to secularise Jesus. Altruism has a paradox: it needs victims. |
| 8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Twentieth century social life turns out in key part to be the concrete and dramatic re-enactment of eighteenth-century philosophy. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This suggest a two hundred year lag between the philosophy and its impact on the culture. One might note the Victorian insistence on 'duty' (e.g. in George Eliot), alongside Mill's view that the Kantian account of it didn't work (Idea 3768). |
| 8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The failure, in the Enlightenment, of philosophy to provide what religion could no longer furnish was an important cause of philosophy losing its central cultural role and becoming a marginal, narrowly academic subject. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: A strange way of presenting the situation. Philosophy has never aspired to furnish beliefs for the masses. Plato offered them myths. The refutation of religion was difficult and complex. There is no returning from there to a new folk simplicity. |
| 18494 | Using a technical vocabulary actually prevents discussion of the presuppositions [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Sharing a technical vocabulary is to share a tidy collection of assumptions. Reliance on that vocabulary serves to foreclose discussion of those assumptions. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Love it! I am endlessly frustrated by papers that launch into a discussion using a terminology that is riddled with dubious prior assumptions. And that includes common terms like 'property', as well as obscure neologisms. |
| 18506 | Questions of explanation should not be confused with metaphyics [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is an unfortunate tendency to conflate epistemological issues bearing on explanation with issues in metaphysics. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: This is where Heil and I part ways. I just don't believe in the utterly pure metaphysics which he thinks we can do. Our drive to explain moulds our vision of reality, say I. |
| 18535 | Without abstraction we couldn't think systematically [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A capacity for abstraction is central to our capacity to think about the universe systematically. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 09.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as obvious. We pick out the similarities, and then discuss them, as separate from their bearers. We explain why things have features in common. Some would just say systematic thinking needs universals, but that's less good. |
| 8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Arguments in philosophy rarely take the form of proofs; and the most successful arguments on topics central to philosophy never do. (The ideal of proof is a relatively barren one in philosophy). | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: He seems proud of this, but he must settle for something which is less than proof, which has to be vindicated to the mathematicians and scientists. I agree, though. Plato is the model, and the best philosophy builds a broad persuasive picture. |
| 18534 | Truth relates truthbearers to truthmakers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Truth is a relation between a truthbearer and a truthmaker. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.02) | |
| A reaction: This implies that all truths have truthmakers, which is fairly controversial. Heil himself denies it! |
| 18531 | Philosophers of the past took the truthmaking idea for granted [Heil] |
| Full Idea: For millenia, philosophers operated with an implicit conception of truthmaking, a conception that remained unarticulated only because it was part of the very fabric of philosophy. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably it is an advance that we have brought it out into the open, and subjected it to critical study. Does Heil want us to return to it being unquestioned? I like truthmaking, but that can't be right. |
| 18509 | Not all truths need truthmakers - mathematics and logic seem to be just true [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I do not subscribe to the thesis that every truth requires a truthmaker. Mathematical truths and truths of logic are compatible with any way the universe could be. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes that sound like a knock-down argument, but I'm not convinced. I see logic and mathematics as growing out of nature, though that is a very unfashionable view. I'm almost ashamed of it. But I'm not giving it up. See Carrie Jenkins. |
| 18518 | Infinite numbers are qualitatively different - they are not just very large numbers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is a mistake to think of an infinite number as a very large number. Infinite numbers differ qualitatively from finite numbers. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.5) | |
| A reaction: He cites Dedekind's idea that a proper subset of an infinite number can match one-one with the number. Respectable numbers don't behave in this disgraceful fashion. This should be on the wall of every seminar on philosophy of mathematics. |
| 18500 | How could structures be mathematical truthmakers? Maths is just true, without truthmakers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I do not understand how structures could serve as truthmakers for mathematical truths, ...Mathematical truths are not true in virtue of any way the universe is. ...Mathematical truths hold, whatever ways the universe is. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.08) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea of enquiring about truthmakers for mathematical truths (and my view is more empirical than Heil's), but I think it may be a misunderstanding to think that structures are intended as truthmakers. Mathematics just IS structures? |
| 18539 | Our categories lack the neat arrangement needed for reduction [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Categories we use to describe and explain our universe do not line up in the neat way reductive schemes require. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 13.2) | |
| A reaction: He takes reduction to be largely a relation between our categories, rather than between entities, so he is bound to get this result. He may be right. |
| 18505 | Fundamental ontology aims at the preconditions for any true theory [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Fundamental ontology is in the business of telling us what the universe must be like if any theory is true. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Heil is good at stating simple ideas simply. This seems to be a bold claim, but I think I agree with it. |
| 18499 | Our quantifications only reveal the truths we accept; the ontology and truthmakers are another matter [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Looking at what you quantify over reveals, at most, truths to which you are committed. What the ontology is, what the truthmakers are for these truths, is another matter, one tackled, if at all, only in the pursuit of fundamental physics. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.08) | |
| A reaction: Exactly right. Nouns don't guarantee objects, verbs don't guarantee processes. If you want to know my ontological commitments, ask me about them! Don't infer them from the sentences I hold true, because they need interpreting. |
| 18512 | Ontology aims to give the fundamental categories of being [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The task of ontology is to spell out the fundamental categories of being. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the aspiration of 'pure' metaphysics, which I don't quite believe in. There is too much convention involved, on the one hand, and physics on the other. |
| 18508 | Most philosophers now (absurdly) believe that relations fully exist [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is a measure of how far we have fallen that so few philosophers nowadays see any difficulty at all in the idea that relations have full ontological standing. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: We have 'fallen' because medieval metaphysicians didn't believe it. Russell seems to have started, and the tendency to derive ontology from logic has secured the belief in relations. How else can you be allowed to write aRb? I agree with Heil. |
| 18532 | If causal relations are power manifestations, that makes them internal relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If causal relations are the manifesting of powers, then causal relations would appear to be a species of internal relation. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 07.4) | |
| A reaction: The point being that any relations formed are entirely dependent on the internal powers of the relata. Sounds right. There are also non-causal relations, of course. |
| 18510 | We need properties to explain how the world works [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When a tomato depresses a scale, it does so in virtue of its mass - how it is masswise - and not in virtue of its colour or shape. Were we barred from saying such things, we would be unable to formulate truths about the fundamental things. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: It doesn't follow that we have an ontological commitment to properties, but we certainly need to point out the obvious fact that things being one way rather than another makes a difference to what happens. |
| 18522 | Categorical properties were introduced by philosophers as actual properties, not if-then properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Categorical properties were introduced originally by philosophers bent on distinguishing properties possessed 'categorically', that is, actually, by objects from mere if-then, conditional properties, mere potentialities. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: He cites Ryle on dispositions in support. It is questionable whether it is a clear or useful distinction. Heil says the new distinction foreclosed the older more active view of properties. |
| 18513 | Emergent properties will need emergent substances to bear them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you are going to have emergent fundamental properties, you are going to need emergent fundamental substances as bearers of those properties. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.6) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the theory of emergent properties (which I take to be nonsense, in its hardcore form) says that the substance is unchanged, but the property is new. Or else the bundle gives collective birth to a new member. Search me. |
| 18540 | Predicates only match properties at the level of fundamentals [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Only when you get to fundamental physics, do predicates begin to line up with properties. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 13.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice thought. I assume the actual properties of daily reality only connect to our predicates in very sloppy ways. I suppose our fundamental predicates have to converge on the actual properties, because the fog clears. Sort of. |
| 18533 | In Fa, F may not be a property of a, but a determinable, satisfied by some determinate [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It may be that F applies truly to a because F is a determinable predicate satisfied by a's possession of a property answering to a determinate of that determinable predicate. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.01) | |
| A reaction: Heil aims to break the commitment of predicates to the existence of properties. The point is that there is no property 'coloured' to correspond to 'a is coloured'. Red might be the determinate that does the job. Nice. |
| 18511 | Properties have causal roles which sets can't possibly have [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Properties are central to the universe's causal order in a way that sets could not possibly be. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: The idea that properties actually are sets is just ridiculous. It may be that you can treat them as sets and get by quite well. The sets can be subsumed into descriptions of causal processes (or something). |
| 18523 | Are all properties powers, or are there also qualities, or do qualities have the powers? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers who embrace properties as powers hold that every property is a power (Bird), or that some properties are qualities and some are powers (Ellis; Molnar). The latter include powers which are 'grounded in' qualities (Mumford). | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 04.4) | |
| A reaction: I don't like Heil's emphasis on 'qualities', which seems to imply their phenomenal rather than their real aspect. I'm inclined to favour the all-powers view, but can't answer the question 'but what HAS these powers?' Stuff is intrinsically powerful. |
| 18524 | Properties are both qualitative and dispositional - they are powerful qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: In my account of properties they are at once qualitative and dispositional: properties are powerful qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: I have never managed to understand what Heil means by 'qualities'. Is he talking about the phenomenal aspects of powers? Does he mean categorical properties. I can't find an ontological space for his things to slot into. |
| 18498 | Abstract objects wouldn't be very popular without the implicit idea of truthmakers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It would be difficult to understand the popularity of 'abstract entities' - numbers, sets, propositions - in the absence of an implicit acknowledgement of the importance of truthmakers. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.07) | |
| A reaction: I love Idea 18496, because it leads us towards a better account of modality, but dislike this one because it reveals that the truthmaking idea has led us to a very poor theory. Truthmaking is a good question, but not much of an answer? |
| 18507 | Substances bear properties, so must be simple, and not consist of further substances [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Substances, as property bearers, must be simple; substances of necessity lack constituents that are themselves substances. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.3) | |
| A reaction: How can he think that this is a truth of pure metaphysics? A crowd has properties because we think of it as a simple substance, not because it actually is one. Can properties have properties? Are tree and leaf both substances? |
| 18515 | Spatial parts are just regions, but objects depend on and are made up of substantial parts [Heil] |
| Full Idea: An object is not made up of its spatial parts: spatial parts are regions of some object. ...Complex objects, wholes, are made up of, and so depend on, their substantial parts. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably objects also 'depend on' their spatial parts, so I am not convinced that we have a sharp distinction here. |
| 18516 | A 'gunky' universe would literally have no parts at all [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Blancmange 'gunky' universes are not just universes with an endless number of parts. Rather a blancmange universe is a universe with no simple parts, no parts themselves lacking parts. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Lewis seemed to think it was parts all the way down. Is gunk homogeneous stuff, or what is endlessly subdividable, or an infinite shrinking of parts? We demand clarity. |
| 18514 | Many wholes can survive replacement of their parts [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A whole - or some wholes - might be thought to survive gradual replacement of its parts, perhaps, but not their elimination. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: You can't casually replace the precious golden parts of a statue with cheap lead ones. It depends on whether the parts matter. Nevertheless this is a really important idea in metaphysics. It enables the s=Ship of Theseus to survive some change. |
| 18517 | Dunes depend on sand grains, but line segments depend on the whole line [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A sand dune depends on the individual grains of sand that make it up. In an important sense, however, a line's segments depend on the line rather than it on them. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: The illustrations are not clear cut. As you cut off segments of the line, you reduce its length. Heil is hoping for something neat here, but I don't think he has quite got. The difficulty of trying to do pure metaphysics! |
| 18502 | If basic physics has natures, then why not reality itself? That would then found the deepest necessities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If electrons and gravitational fields have definite natures, why not reality itself? And if reality has a nature, if this makes sense, then reality grounds the deepest necessities of all. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.09) | |
| A reaction: Nice speculation! Scientists and verificationists seem to cry 'foul!' when philosophers offer such wild speculations, but I say that's exactly what we pay them do. I'm not sure whether I understand reality having its own nature, though! |
| 18496 | If possible worlds are just fictions, they can't be truthmakers for modal judgements [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If the other possible worlds are merely useful fictions, we are left wondering what the truthmakers for all those modal judgements might be. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.07) | |
| A reaction: I suddenly see that this is the train of thought that led me to believe in real powers and dispositions, and which retrospectively led me to love the truthmaker idea. Even real Lewisian worlds don't seem adequate as truthmakers here. |
| 8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There is something extraordinary in the coexistence of empiricism and natural science in the same culture, for they represent radically different and incompatible ways of approaching the world. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: I would say that science is commitment to an ontology, and empiricism is a commitment to epistemology. It is a very nice point, given the usual assumption that science is an empirical activity. See Idea 7621. Strict empiricism distorts science. |
| 8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Just as unpredictability does not entail inexplicability, so predictability does not entail explicability. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: The second half is not quite as obvious as the first. The location of lightning strikes is an example of the first. He gives examples of the second, but they all seem to be very complex cases which might be explained, if only we knew enough. |
| 8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Social sciences have discovered no law-like generalisations whatsoever, ...and for the most part they adopt a very tolerant attitude to counter-examples. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is as much to do with a narrow and rigid view of what 'science' is supposed to be, as a failure of the social sciences. Have such sciences explained anything? I suspect that they have explained a lot, often after the facts. |
| 18525 | Mental abstraction does not make what is abstracted mind-dependent [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Talk of abstraction and 'partial consideration' (Locke) does not make what is abstracted mind-dependent. In abstracting, you attend to what is there to be considered. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 05.7) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. The point is to focus on aspects of reality. Does anyone seriously doubt that reality has 'aspects'? |
| 18504 | Only particulars exist, and generality is our mode of presentation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Existing things are particular, and generality is a feature of our ways of representing the universe. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: This is right, and expressed with beautiful simplicity. How could anyone disagree with this? But they do! |
| 21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], p.201), quoted by Michael J. Sandel - Justice: What's the right thing to do? 09 | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre is a great champion of the narrative view of the Self. Does this mean that if you had total amnesia, but retained other faculties, you could make no decisions? Can you start a new story whenever you like? |
| 18503 | You can think of tomatoes without grasping what they are [Heil] |
| Full Idea: You can entertain thoughts of things like tomatoes without a grasp of what they are. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.10) | |
| A reaction: Lowe seemed to think that you had to grasp the generic essence of a tomato before you could think about it, but I agree entirely with Heil. |
| 18537 | Linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Thinking - ordinary conscious thinking - is imagistic. This is so for 'linguistic' or 'sentential' thoughts as well as for patently non-linguistic thoughts. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 12.10) | |
| A reaction: This claim (that linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought) strikes me as an excellent insight. |
| 18538 | Non-conscious thought may be unlike conscious thought [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Non-conscious thought need not resemble conscious thought occurring out of sight. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 12.10) |
| 8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: AI machines have four types of unpredictability: they can't predict radical innovation or future maths proofs; they couldn't predict the outcome of their own decisions; their relations with other computers would be a game-theory tangle; and power failure. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This isn't an assertion that they lack 'free will', just a very accurate observation of how the super new machines would face exactly the same problems that we ourselves face. |
| 18536 | The subject-predicate form reflects reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I like to think that the subject-predicate form reflects a fundamental division in reality. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, he defends the idea that there are substances, and powerful qualities pertaining to those substances. I sympathise, but this slogan makes it too simple. |
| 8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: This contains a self-evident paradox - that success would be failure. The proposal suits philosophers more than it would suit the folk. Less seeking and more getting on with it seems good, if the activity is a 'flourishing' one. |
| 8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: We possess simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have - very largely, if not entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 1) | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre's famous (or notorious) assault on modern ethics. We obviously can't prove him wrong by spouting moral talk. Are we actually more wicked than our ancestors? There is, I think, a relativism problem in the 20th centurty, but that is different. |
| 8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There are good reasons for distinguishing between expressions of personal preference and evaluative expressions, as the first depend on who utters them to whom, while the second are not dependent for reason-giving force on the context of utterance. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: The sceptics will simply say that in the second type of expression the speaker tries to adopt a tone of impersonal authority, but it is merely an unjustified attempt to elevate personal preferences. "Blue just IS the best colour". |
| 8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Moral judgements are linguistic survivals from the practices of classical theism which have lost the context provided by these practices. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: He is sort of right. Richard Taylor is less dramatic and more plausible on this (Ideas 5065, 5066, 5077). Big claims about 'duty' have become rather hollow, but the rights and wrongs of (e.g.) mistreating children don't seem to need theism. |
| 8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: A central thesis of this book is that the breakdown of the project (of 1630 to 1850) of an independent rational justification of morality provided the historical background against which the predicaments of our own culture can become intelligible. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: Possibly the most important question of our times is whether the Enlightenment failed. MacIntyre's claim is followed by an appeal for a return to Aristotelian/Thomist virtues. Continentals seem to have responded by sliding into relativism. |
| 8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: For the alternative view, see Kripke (Idea 4948). If Kripke is right about logic, I don't see why the same view should have some force in morality. At the bottom of all morality is an intuition that life is worth the struggle. How do you prove that? |
| 8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: It is only when man is thought of as an individual prior to and apart from all roles that 'man' ceases to be a functional concept. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the one key idea at the heart of the revival of virtue ethics in modern times. It pinpoints what may be the single biggest disaster in intellectual history - the isolation of the individual. Yet it led to freedom, rights, and lots of good things. |
| 8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: In reply to the question of what kinds of approval are expressed by the feelings or attitudes of moral judgments, every version of emotivism either remains silent, or becomes viciously circular by identifying it as moral approval. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be an underlying assumption that moral judgements are sharply separated from other judgements, of which I am not convinced. I approve of creating a beautiful mural for an old folks home free of charge, but it must be beautiful. |
| 8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Expression of feeling is not a function of the meaning of sentences, but of their use, as when a teacher shouts at a pupil "7 x 7 = 49!", where the expression of feeling or attitude has nothing whatsoever to do with its meaning. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This point is what underlies the Frege-Geach problem for emotivism, and is a very telling point. Apart from in metaethics, no one has ever put forward a theory of meaning that says it is just emotion. ...Unless it concerns speakers' intentions? |
| 8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Analytical moral philosophers resist emotivism because moral reasoning does occur, but there can be logical linkages between various moral judgements of a kind that emotivism could not allow for ('therefore' and 'if...then' express no moral feelings). | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Frege-Geach Problem', nicely expressed, and is the key reason why emotivism seems unacceptable - it is a theory about language, but it just doesn't explain moral discourse sufficiently. |
| 8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: To a large degree people now think, talk and act as if emotivism was true, no matter what their avowed theoretical standpoint may be. Emotivism has become embodied in our culture. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that it is moderately educated people who have swallowed emotivism, in the same way that they have swallowed relativism; it provides an excuse for neglectly the pursuit of beauty, goodness and truth, in favour of pleasure. |
| 18497 | Many reject 'moral realism' because they can't see any truthmakers for normative judgements [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is the difficulty in imagining what truthmakers for normative judgements might be that leads many philosophers to find 'moral realism' unappealing. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.07) | |
| A reaction: I like that a lot. My proposal for metaethics is that it should be built on the concept of a 'value-maker' |
| 8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Maybe we need to attend to the virtues first in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: I think MacIntyre's project is exactly right. Morality is about how humans should live their lives. A bunch of robots could implement a set of moral rules, or make contracts, or maximise one another's benefits. The idea of a human community comes first. |
| 7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
| Full Idea: MacIntyre argues that the concept of virtue is secondary to that of a role-figure, where the latter is always defined by some particular tradition and culture. | |
| From: report of Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981]) by Daniel Statman - Introduction to Virtue Ethics §3 | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre is much more of a relativist than Aristotle. There must be some attempt to deal with the problem of a rotten culture which throws up a corrupt role-model. We need a concept of a good culture and of individual flourishing. |
| 8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: This may be presenting character in an excessively moral way. Being lively, for example, is a very distinctive trait of character, but hardly moral. This tells us why philosophers are interested in character, but not why other people are. |
| 8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: If there is nothing to judgements of virtue and vice except the expression of feelings of approval and disapproval, there can be no criteria external to those feelings by appeal to which we may pass judgement upon them. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: The idea that there can be right and wrong feelings may be the key idea in virtue theory. See Idea 5217. A good person would be ashamed to have a bad feeling. Some emotional responses are intrinsically wicked, apart from actions. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Moore takes it that to call an action right is simply to say that of the available alternative actions it is the one which does or did as a matter of fact produce the most good. Moore is thus a utilitarian. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: Far be it from me to disagree with MacIntyre on this, but I would have thought that this made him a consequentialist, rather than a utilitarian. Moore doesn't remotely think that pure pleasure or happiness is the good. He's closer to Rashdall (Idea 6673). |
| 8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: His point is that the notion of 'rights' only arises out of a community. However, while you might criticise an individual for absurdly asserting all sorts of dubious rights, no one could criticise them if they asserted the right to defend their own life. |
| 18519 | If there were infinite electrons, they could vanish without affecting total mass-energy [Heil] |
| Full Idea: In a universe containing an infinite number of electrons would mass-energy be conserved? ...Electrons could come and go without affecting the total mass-energy. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very persuasive reason for doubting that the universe contains an infinite number of electrons. In fact I suspect that infinite numbers have no bearing on nature at all. (Actually, I suspect them of being fictions). |
| 18526 | We should focus on actual causings, rather than on laws and causal sequences [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I believe our understanding of causation would benefit from a shift of attention from causal sequences and laws, to instances of causation: 'causings'. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: His aim is to get away from generalities, and focus on the actual operation of powers which is involved. He likes the case of two playing cards propped against one another. I'm on his side. Laws come last in the story, and should not come first. |
| 18527 | Probabilistic causation is not a weak type of cause; it is just a probability of there being a cause [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The label 'probabilistic causation' is misleading. What you have is not a weakened or tentative kind of causing, but a probability of there being a cause. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: The idea of 'probabilistic causation' strikes me as an empty philosophers' concoction, so I agree with Heil. |
| 18520 | Electrons are treated as particles, but they lose their individuality in relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Although it is convenient to speak of electrons as particles or elementary substances, when they enter into relations they can 'lose their individuality. Then an electron becomes a kind of 'abstract particular', a way a given system is, a mode. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.7) | |
| A reaction: Heil rightly warns us against basing our metaphysics on disputed theories of quantum mechanics. |
| 18501 | Maybe the universe is fine-tuned because it had to be, despite plans by God or Nature? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the universe is fine-tuned as it is, not because things happened to fall out as they did during and immediately after the Big Bang, or because God so ordained it, but because God or the Big Bang had no choice. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.09) | |
| A reaction: You'd be hard put to so why it had to be fine-tuned, so this seems to be a nice speculation. Unverifiable but wholly meaningful. Maybe the stuff fine-tunes itself, by mutual interaction. Or it is the result of natural selection (Lee Smolin). |
| 8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Omniscience excludes the making of decisions. If God knows everything that will occur, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Aquinas on this] I find it very difficult to see how anyone could read the Bible (see Idea 8008) while keeping this point continually in mind, without seeing the whole book as a piece of blatant anthropomorphism. |