24 ideas
8495 | The distinction between particulars and universals is a mistake made because of language [Ramsey] |
Full Idea: The whole theory of particulars and universals is due to mistaking for a fundamental characteristic of reality what is merely a characteristic of language. | |
From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.13) | |
A reaction: [Fraser MacBride has pursued this idea] It is rather difficult to deny the existence of particulars, in the sense of actual objects, so this appears to make Ramsey a straightforward nominalist, of some sort or other. |
8493 | We could make universals collections of particulars, or particulars collections of their qualities [Ramsey] |
Full Idea: The two obvious methods of abolishing the distinction between particulars and universals are by holding either that universals are collections of particulars, or that particulars are collections of their qualities. | |
From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.8) | |
A reaction: Ramsey proposes an error theory, arising out of language. Quine seems to offer another attempt, making objects and predication unanalysable and basic. Abstract reference seems to make the strongest claim to separate out the universals. |
8494 | Obviously 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates has wisdom' express the same fact [Ramsey] |
Full Idea: It seems to me as clear as anything can be in philosophy that the two sentences 'Socrates is wise' and 'wisdom is a characteristic of Socrates' assert the same fact and express the same proposition. | |
From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.12) | |
A reaction: Could be challenged. One says Socrates is just the way he is, the other says he is attached to an abstract entity greater than himself. The squabble over universals has become a squabble over logical form. Finding logical form needs metaphysics! |
21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans. |
21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: There is still some hope for something like identity theory for sensations. But almost no one believes that strict identity theory will work for more complex mental states. Strict identity is stronger than type neurophysicalism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: It is so hard to express the problem. What needs to be explained? How can one bunch of neurons represent many different things? It's not like computing. That just transfers the data to brains, where the puzzling stuff happens. |
21233 | The beautiful is whatever it is intrinsically good to admire [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: The beautiful should be defined as that of which the admiring contemplation is good in itself. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], p.210), quoted by Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man | |
A reaction: To work, this definition must exclude anything else which it is intrinsically good to admire. Good deeds obviously qualify for that, so good deeds must be intrinsically beautiful (which would be agreed by ancient Greeks). We can't ask WHY it is good! |
8039 | Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable, but doesn't understand what a definition is [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable by relying on a bad dictionary definition of 'definition'. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.2 | |
A reaction: An interesting remark, with no further explanation offered. If Moore has this problem, then Plato had it too (see Idea 3032). I would have thought that any definition MacIntyre could offer would either be naturalistic, or tautological. |
11056 | The naturalistic fallacy claims that natural qualties can define 'good' [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: The naturalistic fallacy ..consists in the contention that good means nothing but some simple or complex notion, that can be defined in terms of natural qualities. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §044) | |
A reaction: Presumably aimed at those who think morality is pleasure and pain. We could hardly attribute morality to non-human qualities. I connect morality to human deliberative functions. |
22151 | The Open Question argument leads to anti-realism and the fact-value distinction [Boulter on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore's Open Question argument led, however unintentionally, to the rise of anti-realism in meta-ethics (which leads to distinguishing values from facts). | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: I presume that Moore proves that the Good is not natural, and after that no one knows what it is, so it seems to be arbitrary or non-existent (rather than the platonic fact that Moore had hoped for). I vote for naturalistic ethics. |
8033 | Moore cannot show why something being good gives us a reason for action [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore's account leaves it entirely unexplained and inexplicable why something's being good should ever furnish us with a reason for action. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
A reaction: The same objection can be raised to Plato's Form of the Good, but Plato's answer seems to be that the Good is partly a rational entity, and partly that the Good just has a natural magnetism that makes it quasi-religious. |
8032 | Can learning to recognise a good friend help us to recognise a good watch? [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: How could having learned to recognize a good friend help us to recognize a good watch? Yet is Moore is right, the same simple property is present in both cases? | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
A reaction: It begins to look as if what they have in common is just that they both make you feel good. However, I like the Aristotelian idea that they both function succesfully, one as a timekeeper, the other as a citizen or companion. |
11050 | Moore's combination of antinaturalism with strong supervenience on the natural is incoherent [Hanna on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore incoherently combines his antinaturalism with the thesis that intrinsic-value properties are logically strongly supervenient on (or explanatorily reducible to) natural facts. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic Ch.1 | |
A reaction: I take this to be Moore fighting shy of the strongly Platonist view of values which his arguments all seemed to imply. |
23726 | Despite Moore's caution, non-naturalists incline towards intuitionism [Moore,GE, by Smith,M] |
Full Idea: Although Moore was reluctant to adopt it, the epistemology the non-naturalists tended to favour was intuitionism. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Michael Smith - The Moral Problem 2.2 | |
A reaction: Moore was presumably reluctant because intuitionism had been heavily criticised in the past for its inability to settle moral disputes. But if you insist that goodness is outside nature, what other means of knowing it is available? Reason? |
21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of 'good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism') | |
A reaction: I take normativity not be the mere labelling of certain things as 'good', but as a way of responding to that fact, with some sort of motivation. |
18676 | We should ask what we would judge to be good if it existed in absolute isolation [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: It is necessary to consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves, in absolute isolation, we should yet judge their existence to be good. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §112) | |
A reaction: This is known as the 'isolation test'. The test has an instant appeal, but looks a bit odd after a little thought. The value of most things drains out of them if they are totally isolated. The MS of the Goldberg Variations floating in outer space? |
21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Two explanations came forward in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Altruism is either 1) person-based reciprocal altruism, or 2) gene-based kin altruism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Darwin') | |
A reaction: Flanagan obviously thinks there is also 'genuine psychological atruism'. Presumably we don't explain mathematics or music or the desire to travel as either contracts or genetics, so we have other explanations available. |
11057 | It is always an open question whether anything that is natural is good [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Good does not, by definition, mean anything that is natural; and it is therefore always an open question whether anything that is natural is good. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §027) | |
A reaction: This is the best known modern argument for Platonist idealised ethics. But maybe there is no end to questioning anywhere, so each theory invites a further question, and nothing is ever fully explained? Next stop - pragmatism. |
5925 | The three main values are good, right and beauty [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
Full Idea: Moore describes rightness and beauty as the two main value-attributes, apart from goodness. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §IV | |
A reaction: This was a last-throw of the Platonic ideal, before we plunged into the value-free world of Darwin and the physicists. It is hard to agree with Moore, but also hard to disagree. Why do many people despise or ignore these values? |
5902 | For Moore, 'right' is what produces good [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
Full Idea: Moore claims that 'right' means 'productive of the greatest possible good'. | |
From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
A reaction: Ross is at pains to keep 'right' and 'good' as quite distinct notions. Some actions are right but very unpleasant, and seem to produce no real good at all. |
5903 | 'Right' means 'cause of good result' (hence 'useful'), so the end does justify the means [Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: 'Right' does and can mean nothing but 'cause of a good result', and is thus identical with 'useful', whence it follows that the end always will justify the means. | |
From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §089) | |
A reaction: Of course, Moore does not identify utility with pleasure, as his notion of what is good concerns fairly Platonic ideals. Would Stalin's murders have been right if Russia were now the happiest nation on Earth? |
21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative') | |
A reaction: Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing. |
5907 | Relationships imply duties to people, not merely the obligation to benefit them [Ross on Moore,GE] |
Full Idea: Moore's 'Ideal Utilitarianism' seems to unduly simplify our relations to our fellows. My neighbours are merely possible beneficiaries by my action. But they also stand to me as promiser, creditor, husband, friend, which entails prima facie duties. | |
From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §II | |
A reaction: Perhaps it is better to say that we have obligations to benefit particular people, because of our obligations, and that we are confined to particular benefits which meet those obligations - not just any old benefit to any old person. |
21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding') | |
A reaction: I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated. |
21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Buddhism rejected the idea of a creator God, and the unchanging self [atman]. They accept the appearance-reality distinction, reward for virtue [karma], suffering defining our predicament, and that liberation [nirvana] is possible through wisdom. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Buddhism') | |
A reaction: [Compressed] Flanagan is an analytic philosopher and a practising Buddhist. Looking at a happiness map today which shows Europeans largely happy, and Africans largely miserable, I can see why they thought suffering was basic. |