14 ideas
| 8378 | Philosophers usually learn science from each other, not from science [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are too apt to take their views on science from each other, not from science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.178) | |
| A reaction: This wasn't true of Russell, but it is certainly true of me. I rely on philosophical researchers to find the interesting bits of science for me (like blindsight). Memo to myself: read more science. |
| 8375 | 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, saying it is true for all values of its argument [Russell] |
| Full Idea: 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, meaning that it is true for all possible values of its argument or arguments. Thus 'If x is a man, x is mortal' is necessary, because it is true for any possible value of x. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.175) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the intermediate definition of necessity, prior to modern talk of possible worlds. Since it is a predicate about functions, it is presumably a metalinguistic concept, like the semantic concept of truth. |
| 22465 | We see a moral distinction between doing and allowing to happen [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We have an intuition that there is a morally relevant distinction between what we do and what we allow to happen. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.88) | |
| A reaction: She says many deny this distinction, but she defends it. Presumably consequentialists deny the distinction. What is bad if I do it, but OK if I allow it to happen? Neglecting a victim to save others, she suggests. |
| 22466 | We see a moral distinction between our aims and their foreseen consequences [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We have an intuition that there is a moral distinction between what we aim at and what we foresee as a result of what we do. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.88) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 22465. This seems to be the classic doctrine of double effect. It is hard to defend the claim that we are only responsible for what we aim at. A wide assessment of consequences is a moral duty. Well-meaning fools are bad. |
| 22467 | Acts and omissions only matter if they concern doing something versus allowing it [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The difference between acts and omissions is irrelevant to any moral issue except in so far as it corresponds to the distinction between allowing something to happen and being the agent to whom the happening can be ascribed. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.89) | |
| A reaction: The list of anyone's omissions is presumably infinite, but what they 'allow' must be in some way within their power. But what of something I can't now prevent, only because I failed to do some relevant task yesterday? |
| 6017 | Nomos is king [Pindar] |
| Full Idea: Nomos is king. | |
| From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed. |
| 22470 | A good moral system benefits its participants, and so demands reciprocity [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It has been suggested that one criterion for a good moral system is that it should be possible to demand reciprocity from every individual because of the good the system renders to him. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.104) | |
| A reaction: Money seems to have this feature, that we mostly conform to the rules for its use, because we value the whole system. Foot accepts this, but says there are also other criteria, such as leaving freedom to live well (ie. not too puritanical). |
| 22468 | Virtues can have aims, but good states of affairs are not among them [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Some virtues do give us aims, but nothing from within morality suggests the kind of good state of affairs which it would seem always to be our duty to promote. And why indeed should there be any such thing? | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.101) | |
| A reaction: Isn't successful human functioning, such as heath, always to be desired? If honour is a worthy aim, doesn't that make being rightly honoured a desirable state of affairs? She is attacking consequentialism, but I'm not convinced here. |
| 22469 | Some virtues imply rules, and others concern attachment [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Virtues such as justice consist mainly in adherence to rules of conduct, while those such as benevolence we might call virtues of attachment. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.101) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about 'attachment'. We should be benevolent towards people to whom we are not particularly attached. Courage doesn't fall into either group. |
| 4396 | The law of causality is a source of confusion, and should be dropped from philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.173) | |
| A reaction: A bold proposal which should be taken seriously. However, if we drop it from scientific explanation, we may well find ourselves permanently stuck with it in 'folk' explanation. What is the alternative? |
| 8376 | If causes are contiguous with events, only the last bit is relevant, or the event's timing is baffling [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A cause is an event lasting for a finite time, but if cause and effect are contiguous then the earlier part of a changing cause can be altered without altering the effect, and a static cause will exist placidly for some time and then explode into effect. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.177) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] He concludes that they can't be contiguous (and eventually rejects cause entirely). This kind of problem is the sort of thing that only bothers philosophers - the question of how anything can happen at all. Why change? |
| 8380 | Striking a match causes its igniting, even if it sometimes doesn't work [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A may be the cause of B even if there actually are cases of B not following A. Striking a match will be the cause of its igniting, in spite of the fact that some matches are damp and fail to ignite. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.185) | |
| A reaction: An important point, although defenders of the constant conjunction view can cope with it. There is a further regularity between dampness of matches and their failure to strike. |
| 8379 | In causal laws, 'events' must recur, so they have to be universals, not particulars [Russell] |
| Full Idea: An 'event' (in a statement of the 'law of causation') is intended to be something that is likely to recur, since otherwise the law becomes trivial. It follows that an 'event' is not some particular, but a universal of which there may be many instances. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.179) | |
| A reaction: I am very struck by this. It may be a key insight into understanding what a law of nature actually is. It doesn't follow that we must be realists about universals, but the process of abstraction from particulars is at the heart of generalisation. |
| 8381 | The constancy of scientific laws rests on differential equations, not on cause and effect [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the sameness of causes and effects that the constancy of scientific law consists, but in sameness of relations. And even 'sameness of relations' is too simple a phrase; 'sameness of differential equations' is the only correct phrase. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.186) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a commitment to the regularity view, since there is nothing more to natural law than that the variables keeping obeying the equations. It also seems to be a very instrumentalist view. |