17 ideas
| 8378 | Philosophers usually learn science from each other, not from science [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are too apt to take their views on science from each other, not from science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.178) | |
| A reaction: This wasn't true of Russell, but it is certainly true of me. I rely on philosophical researchers to find the interesting bits of science for me (like blindsight). Memo to myself: read more science. |
| 8375 | 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, saying it is true for all values of its argument [Russell] |
| Full Idea: 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, meaning that it is true for all possible values of its argument or arguments. Thus 'If x is a man, x is mortal' is necessary, because it is true for any possible value of x. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.175) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the intermediate definition of necessity, prior to modern talk of possible worlds. Since it is a predicate about functions, it is presumably a metalinguistic concept, like the semantic concept of truth. |
| 5901 | Is 'productive of happiness' the definition of 'right', or the cause of it? [Ross on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Bentham has not made up his mind whether he thinks that 'right' means 'productive of the general happiness', or that being productive of the general happiness is what makes acts right (and he would have thought the difference unimportant). | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
| A reaction: The issue is whether rightness exists as a concept separate from happiness. I take it Bentham would vote for the first reading, as he has no interest in what is right, apart from increasing happiness. |
| 5934 | Of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure, only intensity and duration matter [Ross on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Most of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure refer to further pleasures, or are irrelevant to the pleasure; we are left with intensity and duration as the characteristics on which depend the value of a pleasure qua pleasure, and there is nothing to add. | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §VI | |
| A reaction: I agree. When Bentham produces his list he seems to be trying to add a bogus enrichment to what is really a rather crude and basic notion of the aim of life. Your simple hedonist appears to only desire high intensity and long duration. |
| 3777 | Pleasure and pain control all human desires and duties [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.1) | |
| A reaction: Ridiculous. Both halves are false. We pursue things for other reasons, and to deny this makes his idea a tautology. Deep ecology has nothing to do with human pleasure or pain. |
| 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'). |
| 3554 | Bentham thinks happiness is feeling good, but why use morality to achieve that? [Annas on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to fall into Bentham's mindless assumption that happiness must be a specific state of feeling good about something, but it is mysterious why anyone would think morality a good strategy for achieving this. | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.7 |
| 3781 | The value of pleasures and pains is their force [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It behoves the legislator to understand the force of pleasures and pains, which is their value. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], IV.1) |
| 3778 | The community's interest is a sum of individual interests [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: The interest of the community is the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.4) |
| 20280 | Large mature animals are more rational than babies. But all that really matters is - can they suffer? [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational animal than an infant of a day, or even a month, old. But suppose they be otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], XVIII 1 n), quoted by Peter Singer - Practical Ethics 03 | |
| A reaction: This is certainly an inspiring, and even shocking question, which never seems to have been so directly asked before in the entire history of European thought. Awesome. |
| 3779 | Unnatural, when it means anything, means infrequent [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.14 n8.9) |
| 4396 | The law of causality is a source of confusion, and should be dropped from philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.173) | |
| A reaction: A bold proposal which should be taken seriously. However, if we drop it from scientific explanation, we may well find ourselves permanently stuck with it in 'folk' explanation. What is the alternative? |
| 8376 | If causes are contiguous with events, only the last bit is relevant, or the event's timing is baffling [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A cause is an event lasting for a finite time, but if cause and effect are contiguous then the earlier part of a changing cause can be altered without altering the effect, and a static cause will exist placidly for some time and then explode into effect. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.177) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] He concludes that they can't be contiguous (and eventually rejects cause entirely). This kind of problem is the sort of thing that only bothers philosophers - the question of how anything can happen at all. Why change? |
| 8380 | Striking a match causes its igniting, even if it sometimes doesn't work [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A may be the cause of B even if there actually are cases of B not following A. Striking a match will be the cause of its igniting, in spite of the fact that some matches are damp and fail to ignite. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.185) | |
| A reaction: An important point, although defenders of the constant conjunction view can cope with it. There is a further regularity between dampness of matches and their failure to strike. |
| 8379 | In causal laws, 'events' must recur, so they have to be universals, not particulars [Russell] |
| Full Idea: An 'event' (in a statement of the 'law of causation') is intended to be something that is likely to recur, since otherwise the law becomes trivial. It follows that an 'event' is not some particular, but a universal of which there may be many instances. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.179) | |
| A reaction: I am very struck by this. It may be a key insight into understanding what a law of nature actually is. It doesn't follow that we must be realists about universals, but the process of abstraction from particulars is at the heart of generalisation. |
| 8381 | The constancy of scientific laws rests on differential equations, not on cause and effect [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the sameness of causes and effects that the constancy of scientific law consists, but in sameness of relations. And even 'sameness of relations' is too simple a phrase; 'sameness of differential equations' is the only correct phrase. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.186) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a commitment to the regularity view, since there is nothing more to natural law than that the variables keeping obeying the equations. It also seems to be a very instrumentalist view. |
| 3780 | We must judge a thing morally to know if it conforms to God's will [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary to know first whether a thing is right in order to know from thence whether it be conformable to the will of God. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.18) |