Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals' and 'works'

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3 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 6. Idealisation
We know perfection when we see what is imperfect [Murdoch]
     Full Idea: We know of perfection as we look upon what is imperfect.
     From: Iris Murdoch (Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals [1992], 13)
     A reaction: This is in the context of a discussion of the ontological argument for God's existence, but I seize on it as a nice expression of the idealisation capacity of our minds. The alternative is that perfection is innate idea, since we aren't seeing it.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
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').
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 9. Counterfactual Claims
An event causes another just if the second event would not have happened without the first [Lewis, by Psillos]
     Full Idea: Lewis gives an account of causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals (roughly, an event c causes an event e iff if c had not happened then e would not have happened either).
     From: report of David Lewis (works [1973]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation Intro
     A reaction: This feels wrong to me. It is a version of Humean constant conjunction, but counterfactuals are too much a feature of our minds, and not sufficiently a feature of the world, to do this job. Tricky.