13 ideas
| 13437 | A CAR and its major PART can become identical, yet seem to have different properties [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: At t1 there is a whole CAR, and a PART of it, which is everything except the right front wheel. At t2 the wheel is removed, leaving just PART, so that CAR is now PART. But PART was a proper part of CAR, and CAR had the front wheel. Different properties! | |
| From: André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998], 1.II) | |
| A reaction: [compressed summary] The problem is generated by appealing to Leibniz's Law. My immediate reaction is that this is the sort of trouble you get into if you include such temporal truths about things as 'properties'. |
| 16233 | Gallois hoped to clarify identity through time, but seems to make talk of it impossible [Hawley on Gallois] |
| Full Idea: A problem for Gallois is that he leaves us no way to talk about questions of genuine identity through time, and thus undercuts one motivation for his own position. | |
| From: comment on André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.8 | |
| A reaction: Gallois seems to need a second theory of identity to support his Occasional Identity theory. Two things need an identity each, before we can say that the two identities coincide. (Time to read Gallois!) |
| 14755 | Gallois is committed to identity with respect to times, and denial of simple identity [Gallois, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Gallois's core claim is that the identity relation holds with respect to times, ...and he must claim that there is no such thing as the relation of identity simpliciter. | |
| From: report of André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.5 | |
| A reaction: Gallois is essentially responding to the statue and clay problem, but it seems a bit drastic to entirely change our concept of two things being identical, such as Hesperus and Phosphorus. 'Identity' seems to have several meanings; let's sort them out. |
| 16231 | Occasional Identity: two objects can be identical at one time, and different at others [Gallois, by Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Gallois' Occasional Identity Thesis is that objects can be identical at one time without being identical at all times. | |
| From: report of André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.4 | |
| A reaction: The analogy is presumably with two crossing roads being identical at one place but not at others. It is a major misunderstanding to infer from Special Relativity that time is just like space. |
| 6968 | Some people think there are ethical facts, but of a 'queer' sort [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: If someone wishes to say that ethical statements are statements of fact, only it is a queer sort of fact, he is welcome to do so. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.233) | |
| A reaction: The word 'queer' was picked up by Mackie and developed into his error theory, that moral facts are a misunderstanding. Personally I think that moral facts might be teleological facts, but that is rather hard to demonstrate. |
| 6972 | A right attitude is just an attitude one is prepared to stand by [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Asking whether the attitude that one has adopted is the right attitude comes down to asking whether one is prepared to stand by it. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.244) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that someone who persisted in being ruthlessly selfish might nevertheless distinguish their behaviour from the grudging concession that the 'right' thing to do might be quite different. |
| 6973 | Moral theories are all meta-ethical, and are neutral as regards actual conduct [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: All moral theories, intuitionist, naturalistic, objectivist, emotive, and the rest, in so far as they are philosophical theories, are neutral as regards actual conduct; they belong to the field of meta-ethics, not ethics proper. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949]) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, Ayer doesn't seem willing to accept 'ethics proper' as being 'philosophical'. Given the modern rise of applied ethics, it seems suprising to say that even normative ethics is not philosophical. Utilitarianism seems not to be philosophical. |
| 6974 | Moral judgements cannot be the logical consequence of a moral philosophy [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: A moral philosopher will have his moral standards and will sometimes make moral judgements, but these moral judgements cannot be a logical consequence of his philosophy. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.247) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an assertion of the is-ought distinction. Personally this strikes me as totally false. Ayer needs to think more deeply about moral philosophy! |
| 6971 | I would describe intuitions of good as feelings of approval [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: I suspect that the experiences which some philosophers want to describe as intuitions, or a quasi-sensory apprehensions, of good are not significantly different from those that I want to describe as feelings of approval. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.239) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard ground for rejecting intuitionism, along with the point that even if intuitions are not just feelings of approval, it seems impossible to tell the difference. |
| 6969 | Approval of historical or fictional murders gives us leave to imitate them [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: In saying that Brutus or Raskolnikov acted rightly, I am giving myself and others leave to imitate them should similar circumstances arise. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.237) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a reply to the Frege-Geach Problem, of why we have emotional attitudes to crimes that mean nothing to us. Such crimes, however, involve our virtues, and don't depend on awaiting 'similar circumstances'. |
| 6970 | Moral judgements are not expressions, but are elements in a behaviour pattern [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: To say, as I once did, that moral judgements are merely expressive of certain feelings is an oversimplification; ..moral attitudes consist in certain patterns of behaviour, and the expression of a judgement is an element in the pattern. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.238) | |
| A reaction: This seems to switch from emotivism to what Frank Jackson calls 'moral functionalism', where morality is what gets us from certain emotional responses to willed actions. This strikes me, like most functional explanations, as wrong. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |