10 ideas
| 21354 | It may be that internal relations like proportion exist, because we directly perceive it [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers maintain that we literally perceive proportions and other internal relations. These relations must exist, otherwise we couldn't perceive them. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Mulligan 1991, and Hochberg 2013:232] This seems a rather good point. You can't perceive the differing heights of two people, yet fail to perceive that one is taller. You also perceive 'below', which is external. |
| 21353 | Internal relations are fixed by existences, or characters, or supervenience on characters [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Internal relations are determined either by the mere existence of the things they relate, or by their intrinsic characters, or they supervene on the intrinsic characters of the things they relate. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 3) | |
| A reaction: Suggesting that they 'supervene' doesn't explain anything (and supervenience never explains anything). I vote for the middle one - the intrinsic character. It has to be something about the existence, and not the mere fact of existence. |
| 21352 | 'Multigrade' relations are those lacking a fixed number of relata [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: A 'unigrade' relation R has a definite degree or adicity: R is binary, or ternary....or n-ary (for some unique n). By contrast a relation is 'multigrade' if it fails to be unigrade. Causation appears to be multigrade. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 1) | |
| A reaction: He also cites entailment, which may have any number of premises. |
| 2850 | How can emotivists explain someone who recognises morality but is indifferent to it? [Brink] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear how the emotivist can accommodate the amoralist - one who recognises moral requirements but is indifferent to them. | |
| From: David O. Brink (Emotivism [1995], p.224) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche recognised current morals, but was indifferent to them. It is hard to imagine, though, an amoralist who lacked all the feelings which imply morality. |
| 2848 | Two people might agree in their emotional moral attitude while disagreeing in their judgement [Brink] |
| Full Idea: Critics of emotivism claim that moral agreement need not track agreement in attitude; moralists with the same attitude can disagree in their views, and they can hold the same view while disagreeing in attitude. | |
| From: David O. Brink (Emotivism [1995], p.224) | |
| A reaction: Thus two racists can disagree about how racists should behave. Sounds like a good criticism. |
| 2851 | Emotivists find it hard to analyse assertions of moral principles, rather than actual judgements [Brink] |
| Full Idea: It is hard for the emotivist to give an analysis of the occurrence of moral ideas in unasserted contexts, such as "IF he did wrong, then he should be punished". | |
| From: David O. Brink (Emotivism [1995], p.224) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Frege-Geach Problem'. |
| 2853 | Emotivists claim to explain moral motivation by basing morality on non-cognitive attitudes [Brink] |
| Full Idea: By stressing the intimate connection between moral judgements and the agent's non-cognitive attitudes, emotivists claim to capture the motivational properties of moral judgement. | |
| From: David O. Brink (Emotivism [1995], p.223) | |
| A reaction: The same claim is made by contractarians, who start from our universal self-interest. Emotivists also nicely capture the motivation properties of immoral judgements. |
| 2852 | Emotivists tend to favour a redundancy theory of truth, making moral judgement meaningless [Brink] |
| Full Idea: If you want to recognise the truth of some moral judgements, perhaps to make room for the possibility of moral mistakes, then one may not be satisfied with the emotivists' tendency to appeal to the redundancy theory of truth. | |
| From: David O. Brink (Emotivism [1995], p.224) | |
| A reaction: Probably thinking of Simon Blackburn. People who adopt a redundancy view of truth for semantics are left floundering when discussing what is true in the rest of philosophy. |
| 2849 | Emotivism implies relativism about moral meanings, but critics say disagreements are about moral reference [Brink] |
| Full Idea: Emotivism suggests that different feelings lead to different individual meanings for moral terms, but critics say that meanings are the same, and disagreement is about the extension (range of reference) of the terms. | |
| From: David O. Brink (Emotivism [1995], p.224) | |
| A reaction: It's hard to see how 'ought to p' could have quite different meanings for an emotivist and (say) a theistic moralist. 'Ought' is an obvious and simple word. Good criticism. |
| 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'). |