8 ideas
| 2599 | Either intentionality causes things, or epiphenomenalism is true [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The avoidance of epiphenomenalism requires making it plausible that intentional properties can meet sufficient conditions for causal responsibility. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.154) | |
| A reaction: A wordy way of saying we either have epiphenomenalism, or the mind had better do something - and a good theory will show how. The biggest problem of the mind may not be Chalmer's Hard Question (qualia), but how thought-contents cause things. |
| 2597 | Contrary to the 'anomalous monist' view, there may well be intentional causal laws [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I argue that (contrary to the doctrine called "anomalous monism") there is no good reason to doubt that there are intentional causal laws. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.151) | |
| A reaction: I certainly can't see a good argument, in Davidson or anywhere else, to demonstrate their impossibility. Give the complexity of the brain, they would be like the 'laws' for weather or geology. |
| 2598 | Lots of physical properties are multiply realisable, so why shouldn't beliefs be? [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If one of your reasons for doubting that believing-that-P is a physical property is that believing is multiply realizable, then you have the same reason for doubting that being an airfoil (or a mountain) counts as a physical property. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.153) | |
| A reaction: This merely points out that functionalism is not incompatible with physicalism, which must be right. |
| 22375 | Moral judgements need more than the relevant facts, if the same facts lead to 'x is good' and 'x is bad' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It is suggested that anyone who has considered all the facts which could bear on his moral position has ipso facto produced a 'well founded' moral judgement, ...How 'x is good' can be well founded when 'x is bad' is equally well founded is hard to see. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.96) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a warning to particularists, if they hope that moral judgements just emerge from the facts. It doesn't rule out physicalist naturalism about morality, if the attitudes we bring to the facts have arisen out of further facts. |
| 22378 | We can't affirm a duty without saying why it matters if it is not performed [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I do not know what could be meant by saying it was someone's duty to do something unless there was an attempt to show why it mattered if this sort of thing was not done. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.105) | |
| A reaction: The Kantian idea assumes that duty is an absolute, and yet each duty rests on a particular maxim which is going to be universalised. So why should that maxim be universalised, and not some other? |
| 22377 | Whether someone is rude is judged by agreed criteria, so the facts dictate the value [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Whether a man is speaking of behaviour as rude or not rude, he must use the same criteria as anyone else. ...We have here an example of a non-evaluative premise from which an evaluative conclusion can be deduced. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.104) | |
| A reaction: We would now call 'rude' a 'thick' ethical concept (where 'good' is 'thin'). Her powerful point is, I take it, that evidence is always relevant to judgements of thick concepts, so there is no fact-value gap. 'Rude' has criteria, but 'good' may not. |
| 22376 | Facts and values are connected if we cannot choose what counts as evidence of rightness [Foot] |
| Full Idea: To show that facts and values are connected we must show that some things do and some things don't count in favour of a moral conclusion, and that no one can choose what counts as evidence for rightness or wrongness. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.99) | |
| A reaction: But what sort of facts might do the job? I can only think of right functioning and health as facts which seem to imply value. Pleasure and misery don't quite get there. |
| 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'). |