Combining Texts

All the ideas for '75: Is 'Live Unknown' a Wise Precept?', 'The Roots of Reference' and 'The Language of Morals'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience

16050	The goodness of a picture supervenes on the picture; duplicates must be equally good [Hare]
	Full Idea: Characteristic of value-words is that they name 'supervenient' properties. If we are discussing whether a picture is a good picture, ..and there is another picture that is a replica of it, we cannot say 'they are alike, but one is good and the other not'.
	From: Richard M. Hare (The Language of Morals [1952], 5.2)
	A reaction: [compressed] Horgan says this is the passage which introduced 'supervenience' into contemporary discussions. I think the best simple word for it is that the goodness of the picture 'tracks' its physical characteristics. It also depend on them.

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived

14296	Dispositions are physical states of mechanism; when known, these replace the old disposition term [Quine]
	Full Idea: Each disposition, in my view, is a physical state or mechanism. ...In some cases nowadays we understand the physical details and set them forth explicitly in terms of the arrangement and interaction of small bodies. This replaces the old disposition.
	From: Willard Quine (The Roots of Reference [1990], p.11), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Dispositions 01.3
	A reaction: A challenge to the dispositions and powers view of nature, one which rests on the 'categorical' structural properties, rather than the 'hypothetical' dispositions. But can we define a mechanism without mentioning its powers?

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 2. Psuche

5959	Some philosophers say the soul is light [Plutarch]
	Full Idea: Some philosophers hold that the soul is in its essence light.
	From: Plutarch (75: Is 'Live Unknown' a Wise Precept? [c.85], §6)
	A reaction: A nice idea, to rival the stoic view that the soul is fire. It is understandable to propose that the soul is some sort of lightweight and fast moving matter. How else could thought be achieved physically? Nowadays, parallel processing is our only model.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / i. Prescriptivism

2855	In primary evaluative words like 'ought' prescription is constant but description can vary [Hare, by Hooker,B]
	Full Idea: Hare says words are secondarily evaluative (e.g. 'soft-hearted') if prescriptive meaning varies but description is constant; primarily evaluative words ('good', 'right', 'ought') are the opposite, with the descriptive content varying.
	From: report of Richard M. Hare (The Language of Morals [1952]) by Brad W. Hooker - Prescriptivism p.640
	A reaction: I would have thought that the prescriptive meaning of the evaluative word could at least vary in strength. You really, really ought to do that.