87 ideas
| 19767 | Reason leads to prudent selfishness, which overrules natural compassion [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Reason is what engenders egocentrism ...turns man in upon himself ...and separates him from all that troubles him and afflicts him. Philosophy is what ...moves him to say at the sight of a suffering man 'Perish if you will; I am safe and sound'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to observe that fights in the marketplace are stopped by women, while the philosophers have all run away! This thinking leads to the sentimental movement, and then to romanticism. |
| 14227 | We could refer to tables as 'xs that are arranged tablewise' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: We could paraphrase 'some chairs are heavier than some tables' as 'there are xs that are arranged chairwise and there are ys that are arranged tablewise and the xs are heavier than the ys'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 11) | |
| A reaction: Liggins notes that this involves plural quantification. Being 'arranged tablewise' has become a rather notorious locution in modern ontology. We still have to retain identity, to pick out the xs. |
| 10662 | Mereology is 'nihilistic' (just atoms) or 'universal' (no restrictions on what is 'whole') [Inwagen, by Varzi] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen writes of 'mereological nihilism' (that only mereological atoms exist) and of 'mereological universalism' (adhering to the principle of Unrestricted Composition). | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], p.72-) by Achille Varzi - Mereology 4.3 | |
| A reaction: They both look mereologically nihilistic to me, in comparison with an account that builds on 'natural' wholes and their parts. You can only be 'unrestricted' if you view the 'wholes' in your vast ontology as pretty meaningless (as Lewis does, Idea 10660). |
| 17587 | The 'Law' of Excluded Middle needs all propositions to be definitely true or definitely false [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think the validity of the 'Law' of Excluded Middle depends on the assumption that every proposition is definitely true or definitely false. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this is confused. He cites vagueness as the problem, but that is a problem for Bivalence. If excluded middle is read as 'true or not-true', that leaves the meaning of 'not-true' open, and never mentions the bivalent 'false'. |
| 17558 | Variables are just like pronouns; syntactic explanations get muddled over dummy letters [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Explanations in terms of syntax do not satisfactorily distinguish true variables from dummy or schematic letters. Identifying variables with pronouns, however, provides a genuine explanation of what variables are. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: I like this because it shows that our ordinary thought and speech use variables all the time ('I've forgotten something - what was it?'). He says syntax is fine for maths, but not for ordinary understanding. |
| 17583 | There are no heaps [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Fortunately ....there are no heaps. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: This is the nihilist view of (inorganic) physical objects. If a wild view solves all sorts of problems, one should take it serious. It is why I take reductive physicalism about the mind seriously. (Well, it's true, actually) |
| 17578 | I reject talk of 'stuff', and treat it in terms of particles [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I have a great deal of difficulty with an ontology that includes 'stuffs' in addition to things. ...I prefer to replace talk of sameness of matter with talk of sameness of particles. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is wedded to the idea that reality is composed of 'simples' - even if physicists seem now to talk of 'fields' as much as they do about objects in the fields. Has philosophy yet caught up with Maxwell? |
| 17582 | Singular terms can be vague, because they can contain predicates, which can be vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Since singular terms can contain predicates, and since vague predicates are common, vague singular terms are common. For 'the tallest man that Sally knows' there are lots of men for whom it is unclear whether Sally knows them. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) |
| 17556 | Material objects are in space and time, move, have a surface and mass, and are made of some stuff [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A thing is a material object if it occupies space and endures through time and can move about in space (literally move, unlike a shadow or wave or reflection) and has a surface and has a mass and is made of a certain stuff or stuffs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: It is not at all clear what electrons (which must count for him as 'simples') are made of. |
| 8264 | Maybe table-shaped particles exist, but not tables [Inwagen, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen holds that although table-shaped collections of particles exist, tables do not. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Ch.13) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 2.3 | |
| A reaction: I find this idea appealing. See the ideas of Trenton Merricks. When you get down to micro-level, it is hard to individuate a table among the force fields, and hard to distinguish a table from a smashed or burnt table. An ontology without objects? |
| 17565 | Nihilism says composition between single things is impossible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Nihilism about objects says there is a Y such that the Xs compose it if and only if there is only one of the Xs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 08) | |
| A reaction: He says that Unger, the best known 'nihilist' about objects, believes a different version - claiming there are composites, but they never make up the ordinary objects we talk about. |
| 14228 | If there are no tables, but tables are things arranged tablewise, the denial of tables is a contradiction [Liggins on Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen says 'there are no tables', and 'there are tables' means 'there are some things arranged tablewise'. Presumably 'there are no tables' negates the latter claim, saying no things are arranged tablewise. But he should think that is false. | |
| From: comment on Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction 3 | |
| A reaction: Liggins's nice paper shows that Van Inwagen is in a potential state of contradiction when he starts saying that there are no tables, but that there are things arranged tablewise, and that they amount to tables. Liggins offers him an escape. |
| 14468 | Actions by artefacts and natural bodies are disguised cooperations, so we don't need them [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: All the activities apparently carried out by shelves and stars and other artefacts and natural bodies can be understood as disguised cooperative activities. And, therefore, we are not forced to grant existence to any artefacts or natural bodies. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: In 'the crowd tore her to pieces' are we forced to accept the existence of a crowd? We can't say 'Jack tore her to pieces' and 'Jill tore her to pieces'. If a plural quantification is unavoidable, we have to accept the plurality. Perhaps. |
| 17571 | Every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The thesis about composition and parthood that I am advocating has far-reaching ontological consequences: that every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) | |
| A reaction: A 'simple' is a placeholder for anything considered to be a fundamental unit of existence (such as an electron or a quark). This amazingly sharp distinction strikes me as utterly implausible. There is too much in the middle ground. |
| 17562 | The statue and lump seem to share parts, but the statue is not part of the lump [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Those who believe that the statue is distinct from the lump should concede that whatever shares a part with the statue shares a part with the lump but deny that the statue is a part of the lump. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 05) | |
| A reaction: Standard mereology says if they share all their parts then they are the same thing, so it is hard to explain how they are 'distinct'. The distinction is only modal - that they could be separated (by squashing, or by part substitution). |
| 17574 | If you knead clay you make an infinite series of objects, but they are rearrangements, not creations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you can make a (random) gollyswoggle by accident by kneading clay, then you must be causing the generation and corruption of a series of objects of infinitesimal duration. ...We have not augmented the furniture of the world but only rearranged it. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen's final conclusion is a bit crazy, but I am in sympathy with his general scepticism about what sorts of things definitively constitute 'objects'. He overrates simples, and he overrates lives. |
| 17531 | I assume matter is particulate, made up of 'simples' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I assume in this book that matter is ultimately particulate. Every material being is composed of things that have no proper parts: 'elementary particles' or 'mereological atoms' or 'metaphysical simples'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Pref) | |
| A reaction: It may be that modern physics doesn't support this, if 'fields' is the best term for what is fundamental. Best to treat his book as hypothetical - IF there are just simples, proceed as follows. |
| 17560 | If contact causes composition, do two colliding balls briefly make one object? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, if I cause the cue ball to rebound from the eight ball, do I thereby create a short-lived object shaped like two slightly flattened spheres in contact? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 03) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 17561 | If bricks compose a house, that is at least one thing, but it might be many things [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, that tells us that the bricks of a house compose at least one thing; it does not tell us that they also compose at most one thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 04) |
| 17566 | I think parthood involves causation, and not just a reasonably stable spatial relationship [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I propose that parthood essentially involves causation. Too many philosophers have supposed that objects compose something when and only when they stand in some (more or less stable) spatial relationship to one another. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: I have to say that I like this, even though it comes from a thinker who is close to nihilism about ordinary non-living objects. He goes on to say that only a 'life' provides the right sort of causal relationship. |
| 14230 | We can deny whole objects but accept parts, by referring to them as plurals within things [Inwagen, by Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen's claim that nothing has parts causes incredulity. ..But the problem is not with endorsing the sentence 'Some things have parts'; it is with interpreting this sentence by means of singular resources rather than plural ones. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 7) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen notoriously denies the existence of normal physical objects. Liggins shows that modern formal plural quantification gives a better way of presenting his theory, by accepting tables and parts of tables as plurals of basic entities. |
| 17557 | Special Composition Question: when is a thing part of something? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The Special Composition Question asks, In what circumstances is a thing a (proper) part of something? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: [He qualifies this formulation as 'misleading'] It's a really nice basic question for the metaphysics of objects. |
| 17564 | The essence of a star includes the released binding energy which keeps it from collapse [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think it is part of the essence of a star that the radiation pressures that oppose the star's tendency to gravitational collapse has its source in the release of no-longer-needed nuclear binding energy when colliding nuclei fuse in the star's hot core. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: A perfect example of giving the essence of something as the bottom level of its explanation. This even comes from someone who doesn't really believe in stars! |
| 17575 | The persistence of artifacts always covertly involves intelligent beings [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Statements that are apparently about the persistence of artifacts make covert reference to the dispositions of intelligent beings to maintain certain arrangements of matter. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: If you build a self-sustaining windmill that pumps water, that seems to have an identity of its own, apart from the intentions of whoever makes it and repairs it. The function of an artefact is not just the function we want it to have. |
| 17577 | When an electron 'leaps' to another orbit, is the new one the same electron? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Is the 'new' electron in the lower orbit the one that was in the higher orbit? Physics, as far as I can tell, has nothing to say about this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that physicists would say that philosophers are worrying about such questions because they haven't grasped the new conceptual scheme that emerged in 1926. The poor mutts insist on hanging on to 'objects'. |
| 17589 | If you reject transitivity of vague identity, there is no Ship of Theseus problem [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you have rejected the Principle of the Transitivity of (vague) Identity, it is hard to see how the problem of the Ship of Theseus could arise. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this may well be the best solution to the whole problem |
| 17588 | We should talk of the transitivity of 'identity', and of 'definite identity' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: In some contexts, the principle of 'the transitivity of identity' should be called 'the transitivity of definite identity'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: He is making room for a person to retain identity despite having changed. Applause from me. |
| 17572 | Actuality proves possibility, but that doesn't explain how it is possible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A proof of actuality is a proof of possibility, but that does not invariably explain the possibility whose existence it demonstrates, for we may know that a certain thing is actual (and hence possible) but have no explanation of how it could be possible. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because my project is to see all of philosophy in terms of explanation rather than of description. |
| 17579 | Counterparts reduce counterfactual identity to problems about similarity relations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Counterpart Theory essentially reduces all problems about counterfactual identity to problems about choosing appropriate similarity relations. That is, Counterpart Theory essentially eliminates problems of counterfactual identity as such. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) |
| 17590 | A merely possible object clearly isn't there, so that is a defective notion [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a merely possible object is an even more defective notion than the notion of a borderline object; after all, a merely possible object is an object that definitely isn't there. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 17591 | Merely possible objects must be consistent properties, or haecceities [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Talk of merely possible objects may be redeemed in either maximally consistent sets of properties or in haecceities. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 19757 | No one would bother to reason, and try to know things, without a desire for enjoyment [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: We seek to know only because we desire to find enjoyment; and it is impossible to conceive why someon who had neither desires nor fears would go to the bother reasoning. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be an echo of Hume's pessimism about the autonomy of reason. This downgrading of reason is a striking feature of the Enlightenment, which presumably culminates in the romantic movement. |
| 19760 | General ideas are purely intellectual; imagining them is immediately particular [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Every general idea is purely intellectual. The least involvement of the imagination thereupon makes the idea particular. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This thought is in Berkeley, who seemed to think that general ideas were impossible, because imagination was always required. Rousseau is certainly an improvement on that. |
| 19759 | Only words can introduce general ideas into the mind [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: General ideas can be introduced into the mind only with the aid of words. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Hm. How did humanity manage to invent general words. Do animals not have general thoughts, e.g. about food, shelter, predators? Roussea goes on to deny that monkeys see nuts as a 'type' of fruit. |
| 19758 | Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If men needed speech in order to learn to think, they had a still greater need for knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speaking. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: I take language to be a consequence of the emergence of meta-thought in humanity, so I thoroughly endorse Rousseau's view. The idea that rationality, and even consciousness, are mainly facilitated by language strikes me as quite wrong. |
| 19773 | Without love, what use is beauty? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Where there is no love, what use is beauty? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau seems to be thinking of sexual attractiveness, but the aphorism seems to have universal application. |
| 19769 | Rational morality is OK for brainy people, but ordinary life can't rely on that [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Although it might be appropriate for Socrates and minds of his stature to acquire virtue through reason, the human race would long ago have ceased to exist, if its preservation had depended solely on the reasonings of its members. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: He takes our natural compassion to be the basis of morality. Hume combines that with a natural social prudence. Apes live successfully together in groups, without a Socrates. See MacIntyre on the failure of reasoned morality. |
| 19752 | If we should not mistreat humans, it is mainly because of sentience, not rationality [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If I am obliged not to do any harm to my fellow man, it is less because he is a rational being than because he is a sentient being. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: How should sentience and rationality be weighted here? Kant demands instrinsic respect for beings on the grounds of their rationality. What could ever justify doing needless harm to anything? An open goal for virtue theory here. |
| 19768 | The better Golden Rule is 'do good for yourself without harming others' [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Instead of the sublime maxim of reasoned justice 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', pity inspires a less perfect but perhaps more useful one: 'Do what is good for you with as little harm as possible to others'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: His revised maxim is like J.S. Mill's formula for liberalism. The first maxim seems more contractarian, the second more utilitarian. |
| 19766 | The fact that we weep (e.g. in theatres) shows that we are naturally compassionate [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Every day one sees in our theatres someone affected and weeping at the ills of some unfortunate person ...Nature, in giving men tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest hearts. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Lovely. Of course, tears in infants are for their own misfortunes, but adults more commonly weep over the sufferings of others. But we somewhat laugh at people who easily cry over dramas about suffering. |
| 19756 | Humans are less distinguished from other animals by understanding, than by being free agents [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is not so much understanding which causes the specific distinction of man from all other animals as it is his being a free agent. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how deep Rousseau takes 'free' to go. Having little enthusiasm for free will, I would say that we are distinguished by the complexity of our decision making. But I attribute that to meta-thought, the mark of humanity. |
| 19755 | Most human ills are self-inflicted; the simple, solitary, regular natural life is good [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Most of our ills are of our own making, and we could have avoided nearly all of them by preserving the simple, regular and solitary lifestyle prescribed to us by nature. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: It is important that he is not really disagreeing with Hobbes's pessimistic view of natural life as 'nasty'. Rousseau attributes that to a later stage, when people are ineptly beginning to emerge from the state of nature. I'm an optimist here. |
| 19762 | Is language a pre-requisite for society, or might it emerge afterwards? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Which was more necessary: an already formed society for the invention of languages, or an already invented language for the establishment of society? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau declines to attempt an answer. Ants and bees seem to do well, but have some means of communication. Ape colonies are quite sophisticated. |
| 19763 | I doubt whether a savage person ever complains of life, or considers suicide [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: I ask if anyone has ever heard tell of a savage who was living in liberty ever dreaming of complaining about his life and of killing himself. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau's state of nature is much too remote from any current tribal life for this to be tested. It is a nice speculation. Do apes ever attempt suicide? |
| 19765 | Savages avoid evil because they are calm, and never think of it (not because they know goodness) [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: We could say that savages are not evil because they do not know what is good; for it is neither enlightenment nor legal restraint, but the calm of the passions and the ignorance of vice which prevents them from doing evil. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Suggests one of my favourite ideas (Idea 519). While his hopes for savages and the state of nature may be optimistic, the idea that you won't do evil if it never crosses your mind (and it won't if you are a calm person) is very powerful. |
| 19779 | Primitive man was very gentle [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This summarises Rousseau's view of the earliest stage of mankind, when there was little rivalry, and little motivation or opportunity for viciousness. |
| 19771 | Savage men quietly pursue desires, without the havoc of modern frenzied imagination [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Imagination, which wreaks so much havoc among us, does not speak to savage hearts; each man peacefully awaits the impetus of nature, gives himself over to it without choice, and with more pleasure than frenzy; then all desire is snuffed out. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to identify imagination as a source of trouble. The idea that the savage lacks imagination seems implausible. Better to say that modern imagination has been poisoned by competition. |
| 19778 | Leisure led to envy, inequality, vice and revenge, which we now see in savages [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: People developed leisure pursuits, and wanted esteem, which was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. Vanity, contempt, shame and envy were born, and acts of revenge. This is the stage of savage people we know of. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] This is important in understanding Rousseau, because his happier 'state of nature' is prior to what is described here, which is the violent warlike state which impressed Hobbes. |
| 19751 | Our two starting principles are concern for self-interest, and compassion for others [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: One principle prior to reason makes us ardently interested in our well-being and self-preservation; the other inspires a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow man, perish or suffer. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is strikingly like Hume's nascent utilitarianism. These two principles are the key to Rousseau's vision of the state of nature, from which the union around a general will leads to the formation of a state. Note that animals get included here. |
| 19774 | A savage can steal fruit or a home, but there is no means of achieving obedience [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: A savage man could well lay hold of the fruit another has gathered, the cave that served as his shelter. But how will he ever succeed in making himself obeyed? What can be the chain of dependence among men who possess nothing? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: You'd certainly need language to express an enduring threat, like excluding someone from all of the local caves. You need to be able to say 'I'll be back', which animals can't say. Huge muscular men must have dominated in some way. |
| 19772 | In a state of nature people are much more equal; it is society which increases inequalities [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There must be much less difference between one man and another in the state of nature than in that of society, and natural inequality must increase in the human species through inequality occasioned by social institutions. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This is the main idea of his essay - the answer to the question set by the essay prize. Slavery is common in fairly basic societies, but that is at a much more advanced stage than Rousseau is thinking of. It's hard to disagree with him. |
| 19789 | It is against nature for children to rule old men, fools to rule the wise, and the rich to hog resources [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is obviously contrary to the law of nature, however it is defined, for a child to command an old man, for an imbecile to lead a wise man, and for a handful of people to gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitude lack necessities. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if gregarious animals ever starve to death during a time of plenty, because of social exclusion? I bet this idea was quoted widely in 1780s Paris. The massive inequality is not just nasty, but 'contrary to the law of nature'. |
| 19787 | People accept the right to be commanded, because they themselves wish to command [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Citizens allow themselves to be oppressed only insofar as they are driven by blind ambition; ...they consent to wear chains in order to be able to give them in turn to others. It is difficult to reduce to obedience someone who does not wish to command. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: Beautiful. This produces what I call the 'military model of management', where people love tree diagrams showing chains of command, and their place in the hierarchy. Life becomes 'either give orders, or obey'. I like democratic teams. |
| 19780 | We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Evidence confirms that the savage state is the youth of the world, and all subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an attack on the new rising philosophy of liberalism, and a plea for communitarianism. We should judge humanity as a whole, and not just look at some individual lives which seem to be going well. |
| 19747 | Revolutionaries usually confuse liberty with total freedom, and end up with heavier chains [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If people try to shake off a yoke, they put more distance between themselves and liberty, because in mistaking for liberty an unbridled licence which is its opposite, their revolutions usually deliver them over to seducers who make their chains heavier. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: This 'Animal Farm' thought was presumably ignored in 1789 and 1917. There must be basic rules for revolutionaries, of which priorities they must never drop from sight, and which priorities are dangerous and misleading. |
| 19748 | Plebiscites are bad, because they exclude the leaders from crucial decisions [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: I would not approve of plebiscites like those of the Romans where the state's leaders and those most interested in its preservation were excluded from the deliberations on which its safety often depended. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: I wish David Cameron had read this before 2016. This is exactly what happened with the Brexit referendum, where the people voted for an action entirely opposed to the preference of the majority of their elected representatives. Chaos ensued. |
| 19749 | In a direct democracy, only the leaders should be able to propose new laws [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In order to stop ...the dangerous innovations that finally ruined Athens, no one would have the power to propose new laws according to his fancy; this right belongs exclusively to the magistrates. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle says (somewhere!) that control of the agenda for meetings is the key issue in democracies. I assume any citizen can propose a law, but only a magistrate can put it on the agenda. Maybe a separate 'citizen's committee' could filter suggestions. |
| 19775 | People must be made dependent before they can be enslaved [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to enslave a man without having first put him in the position of being incapable of doing without another. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Ah yes. The key to running a slave plantation is not the threat of violence, but control of the shelter and food supply. |
| 19784 | Enslaved peoples often boast of their condition, calling it a state of 'peace' [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Enslaved peoples do nothing but boast of the peace and tranquillity they enjoy in their chains and they give the name 'peace' to the most miserable slavery. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be a sad truth that enslaved peoples are less upset about their condition than outside observers are, especially in modern times, where slavery is usually deemed unacceptable. Slavery might be the best you can hope for. |
| 19785 | If the child of a slave woman is born a slave, then a man is not born a man [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The jurists who have gravely pronounced that the child of a slave woman is born a slave, have decided, in other words, that a man is not born a man. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: The hidden premise of this enthymeme is that man is born free. A key issue of liberalism is the status of children. Are the children of religious believers automatically members of that sect? Can I be born a West Ham supporter? |
| 19746 | Like rich food, liberty can ruin people who are too weak to cope with it [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Liberty is like those solid foods or full-bodied wines appropriate for strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited to them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau vision of a successful society involves robustly self-sufficient citizens (as in the American ideal), rather than people who are free, but easily led into dependence (in a 'nanny state'). |
| 19786 | Three stages of the state produce inequalities of wealth, power, and enslavement [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Stage one gives law and property (producing inequalities of rich and poor), stage two gives a magistracy (producing weak and strong), and stage three is legitimate power becoming arbitrary (producing master and slave). | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This is the final answer to the prize essay question (with Idea 19772). What a beautiful analysis - and he didn't even win the prize this time! |
| 19788 | The pleasure of wealth and power is largely seeing others deprived of them [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If one sees a handful of powerful and rich men at the height of greatness and fortune while the mob grovels in obscurity and misery, it is because the former prize the things they enjoy only to the extent that the others are deprived of them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an accurate picture of ancien régime France, and it still applies to modern plutocrats. The pleasure of a nice house is not that it is very good, but that it is better than other houses. Inequality gives a lot of pleasure! |
| 19777 | Persuading other people that some land was 'owned' was the beginning of society [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say 'this is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful riposte to Locke, who thought political legitimacy was based on property! Locke is way too simplistic about whether someone has a true right to their property. Highy dubious claims become ossified after a generation or two. |
| 19782 | What else could property arise from, but the labour people add to it? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to conceive of the idea of property arising from anything but manual labour, for it is not clear what man can add, beyond his own labour, in order to appropriate things he has not made. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: A thorough endorsement of Locke's labour theory of value. It is not clear to me why you have to 'add' something in order to achieve ownership. Don't you own firewood just by picking it up? Golfers give ownership of a lost ball to the first one to see it. |
| 19781 | Land cultivation led to a general right of ownership, administered justly [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: From the cultivation of land, there necessarily followed the division of land; and from property once recognised, the first rules of justice. For in order to render everyone what is his, it is necessary that everyone can have something. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This looks rather obviously correct. You don't plant crops if you are not protected in your right to reap what you have sown, and you would expect to re-sow from the proceeds. Other people will want you to do this. |
| 19754 | If we have a natural right to property, what exactly does 'belonging to' mean? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Others have spoken of the natural right that everyone has to preserve what belongs to him, without explaining what they mean by 'belonging'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Locke. What Marxists will challenge is the legitimacy of property ownership, granted by patronage, enclosure, exploitation and conquest. These start as injustices, but that fades after a few generations. Locke has a labour-theory. |
| 19750 | Writers just propose natural law as the likely useful agreements among people [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Writers begin by seeking the rules on which, for the common utility, it would be appropriate for men to agree among themselves; they then give the name of 'natural law' to these rules, with no other proof than their presumed good results. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: The arguments for natural law strike me as quite good, but pinning down its content looks incredibly elusive, and at the mercy of cultural influences. |
| 19770 | Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: More primitive men regarded the acts of violence that could befall them as an easily redressed evil and not as an offence that must be punished; they did not even dream of vengeance, except as a knee-jerk response. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This may be Rousseau at his most optimistic, trying to deny a rather more aggressive streak in people, seen in children's playgrounds. |
| 19783 | A state of war remains after a conquest, if the losers don't accept the winners [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The conqueror and conquered peoples always remain in a state of war with one another, unless the nation, returned to full liberty, were to choose voluntarily its conqueror as leader. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: Tricky if part of the conquered nation accepts the conqueror, and the other part doesn't, as in France in 1940. In a permanent conquest the state of war seems to fade away, as in England in 1066. |
| 19753 | Both men and animals are sentient, which should give the latter the right not to be mistreated [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Since being sentient is common to both animals and men, that should at least give the former the right not to be needlessly mistreated by the latter. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is why utilitarianism led to the founding of the RSPCA in Britain. There is a disturbing picture of people smashing up animals for fun, if they can only persuade themselves that the animals are not sentient. I've heard fishermen claim that. |
| 19761 | Men started with too few particular names, but later had too few natural kind names [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Men at first unduly multiplied the names of individual things, owing to their failure to know the genera and species, but later made too few genera and species, owing to their failure to have considered beings in all their differences. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: The fact that two leopards differ is not a good enough reason to assign them to two different general terms. Adjectives can do all the necessary modification. The single general term acknowledges something important. |
| 17563 | The strong force pulls, but also pushes apart if nucleons get too close together [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The strong force doesn't always pull nucleons together, but pushes them apart if they get too close. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: Philosophers tend to learn their physics from other philosophers. But that's because philosophers are brilliant at picking out the interesting parts of physics, and skipping the boring stuff. |
| 17559 | Is one atom a piece of gold, or is a sizable group of atoms required? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A physicist once told me that of course a gold atom was a piece of gold, and a physical chemist has assured me that the smallest possible piece of gold would have to be composed of sixteen or seventeen atoms. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: The issue is at what point all the properties that we normally begin to associate with gold begin to appear. One water molecule can hardly have a degree of viscosity or liquidity. |
| 17584 | Some events are only borderline cases of lives [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are events of which it is neither definitely true nor definitely false that those events are lives. I do not see how we can deny this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Very frustrating, since this is my main objection to Van Inwagen's distinction between unified lives and mere collections of simples. Some boundaries are real enough, despite their vagueness, and others indicate that there is no real distinction. |
| 17576 | If God were to 'reassemble' my atoms of ten years ago, the result would certainly not be me [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If God were to 'reassemble' the atoms that composed me ten years ago, the resulting organism would certainly not be me. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: What is obvious to Van Inwagen is not obvious to me. He thinks lives are special. Such examples just leave us bewildered about what counts as 'the same', because our concept of sameness wasn't designed to deal with such cases. |
| 17585 | Life is vague at both ends, but could it be totally vague? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Individual human lives are infected with vagueness at both ends. ...But could there be a 'borderline life'? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen says (p.239) that there may be wholly vague lives, though it would suit his case better if there were not. |
| 17570 | The chemical reactions in a human life involve about sixteen elements [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are sixteen or so chemical elements involved in those chemical reactions that collectively constitute the life of a human being. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17581 | Being part of an organism's life is a matter of degree, and vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Being caught up in the life of an organism is, like being rich or being tall, a matter of degree, and is in that sense a vague condition. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is trying to cover himself, given that he makes a sharp distinction between living organisms, which are unified objects, and everything else, which isn't. There may be a vague centre to a 'life', as well as vague boundaries. |
| 17586 | At the lower level, life trails off into mere molecular interaction [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The lives of the lower links of the Great Chain of Being trail off into vague, temporary episodes of molecular interaction. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: His case involves conceding all sorts of vagueness to life, but asserting the utter distinctness of the full blown cases of more elaborate life. I don't really concede the distinction. |
| 17567 | A flame is like a life, but not nearly so well individuated [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A flame, though it is a self-maintaining event, does not seem to be nearly so well individuated as a life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: This is to counter the standard problem that if you attempt to define 'life', fire turns out to tick nearly all the same boxes. The concept of 'individuated' often strikes me as unsatisfactory. How does a bonfire fail to be individuated? |
| 17568 | A tumour may spread a sort of life, but it is not a life, or an organism [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A tumour is not an organism (or a parasite) and there is no self-regulating event that is its life. It does not fill one space, but is a locus within which a certain sort of thing is happening: the spreading of a certain sort of (mass-term) life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17569 | Unlike waves, lives are 'jealous'; it is almost impossible for them to overlap [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A wave is not a 'jealous' event. Lives, however, are jealous. It cannot be that the activities of the Xs constitute at one and the same time two lives. Only in certain special cases can two lives overlap. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17580 | One's mental and other life is centred on the brain, unlike any other part of the body [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: One's life - not simply one's mental life - is centered in the activity of the simples that virtually compose one's brain in a way in which it is not centered in the activity of any of the other simples that compose one. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 15) | |
| A reaction: This justifies the common view that 'one follows one's brain'. I take that to mean that my brain embodies my essence. I would read 'centered on' as 'explains'. |
| 19776 | Small uninterrupted causes can have big effects [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Negligible causes may have surprising power when they act without interruption. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully simple observation that is a key idea of the theory of evolution. If life was created 6,000 years ago, evolution is impossible. If it appeared 500,000,000 years ago, how could evolution NOT occur? Little changes must occur. |
| 17573 | There is no reason to think that mere existence is a valuable thing [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to suppose - whatever Saint Anselm and Descartes may have thought - that mere existence is a valuable thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the simplest and most powerful objections to the Ontological Argument. God's existence may be of great value, but the existence of Hitler wasn't. |
| 16711 | Heretics should be eradicated like wolves [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Heretics are wolves …and therefore ought to be eradicated. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Sentences [1264], IV.13.2.3sc), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |