Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Reasons for Actions and Desires', 'Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction'' and 'Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

7 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 2. Aims of Definition

10528	Definitions concern how we should speak, not how things are [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: Our concern in giving a definition is not to say how things are by to say how we wish to speak
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310)
	A reaction: This sounds like an acceptable piece of wisdom which arises out of analytical and linguistic philosophy. It puts a damper on the Socratic dream of using definition of reveal the nature of reality.

6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / d. Hume's Principle

10529	If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: Neo-Fregeans have thought that Hume's Principle, and the like, might be definitive of number and therefore not subject to the usual epistemological worries over its truth.
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310)
	A reaction: This seems to be the underlying dream of logicism - that arithmetic is actually brought into existence by definitions, rather than by truths derived from elsewhere. But we must be able to count physical objects, as well as just counting numbers.

10530	Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: The fundamental difficulty facing the neo-Fregean is to either adopt the predicative reading of Hume's Principle, defining numbers, but inadequate, or the impredicative reading, which is adequate, but not really a definition.
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.312)
	A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but the general drift is the difficulty of building a system which has been brought into existence just by definition.

18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 7. Abstracta by Equivalence

10527	An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: If an abstraction principle is going to be acceptable, then it should not 'inflate', i.e. it should not result in there being more abstracts than there are objects. By this mark Hume's Principle will be acceptable, but Frege's Law V will not.
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.307)
	A reaction: I take this to be motivated by my own intuition that abstract concepts had better be rooted in the world, or they are not worth the paper they are written on. The underlying idea this sort of abstraction is that it is 'shared' between objects.

20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / b. Intellectualism

22393	I don't understand the idea of a reason for acting, but it is probably the agent's interests or desires [Foot]
	Full Idea: I am sure I do not understand the idea of a reason for acting, and I wonder whether anyone else does either. I incline to the view that all such reasons depend either on the agent's interests (meaning here what is in his interest) or else on his desires.
	From: Philippa Foot (Reasons for Actions and Desires [1972], p.156 Post)
	A reaction: It seems common to assume that a reason for an action must be something rational, but it makes sense to say that the reason for someone's action was an irrational whim. Is the reason for an action just the cause of the action?

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / d. Good as virtue

5121	Basing ethics on flourishing makes it consequentialist, as actions are judged by contributing to it [Harman]
	Full Idea: Basing ethics on human flourishing tends towards utilitarianism or consequentialism; actions, character traits, laws, and so on are to be assessed with reference to their contributions to human flourishing.
	From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.2)
	A reaction: This raises the question of whether only virtue can contribute to flourishing, or whether a bit of vice might be helpful. This problem presumably pushed the Stoics to say that virtue itself is the good, rather than the resulting flourishing.

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / b. Eudaimonia

5120	What counts as 'flourishing' must be relative to various sets of values [Harman]
	Full Idea: If we base our ethics on human flourishing, one implication would seem to be moral relativism, since what counts as 'flourishing' seems inevitably relative to one or other set of values.
	From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.1)
	A reaction: This remark seems to make the relativist assumption that all value systems are equal. For Aristotle, flourishing is no more relative than health is. No one can assert that illness has an intrinsically high value in human life.