14 ideas
7388 | McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines [Dennett on McGinn] |
Full Idea: McGinn invites his readers to join him in surrender: It's just impossible to imagine how software could make a conscious robot. Don't even try, he says. Other philosophical experiments (involving China) "work" by dissuading readers from imagining. | |
From: comment on Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1 | |
A reaction: I agree with Dennett. If you don't try to imagine how robots might do it, you are also denied the right to try to imagine how brains might manage it. Admittedly this is hard, but good imagination needs study, effort, discussion, time, information... |
3185 | Multiple realisability rules out hidden essences and experts as the source of water- and gold-concepts [McGinn] |
Full Idea: The multiple realisability emphasised by functionalists rules out the hidden essences (and the 'deferential' move in semantics) that one finds in the cases, for example, of "water" and "gold" emphasised by Kripke and Putnam. | |
From: Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991], p.132) | |
A reaction: Presumably if they are 'hidden', then the people to whom we 'defer' for our concepts can't actually know about the essences we are supposed to be discussing. You can mean essences without knowing them. Cf. Loch Ness Monster. |
21075 | The state of nature always involves the threat of war [Kant] |
Full Idea: The state of nature is a state of war. For even if it does not involve active hostilities, it involves a constant threat of their breaking out. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 2) | |
A reaction: Kant is siding with Hobbes against Rousseau, despite Rousseau's claim that Hobbes's pessimism concerns a more advanced situation that the true (and peaceful) state of nature. |
20569 | Kant made the social contract international and cosmopolitan [Kant, by Oksala] |
Full Idea: Kant developed the social contract theory into an international and cosmopolitan idea. | |
From: report of Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.6 | |
A reaction: That is, the contract both operates between states, and rises above them. I found this idea rather thrilling when I first met it (listening to Onora O'Neill). But then I remain a child of the Englightenment. |
21079 | The a priori general will of a people shows what is right [Kant] |
Full Idea: It is precisely the general will as it is given a priori, within a single people or in the mutual relationships of various peoples, which alone determines what is right among men. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], App 1) | |
A reaction: The clearest quotation for showing Kant's debt to Rousseau. Why should Rousseau bother to have a real assembly of the people, if the General Will can be worked out a priori? Indeed, the a priori version must be deemed superior to any meeting. |
21077 | Each nation should, from self-interest, join an international security constitution [Kant] |
Full Idea: Each nation, for the sake of its own security, can and ought to demand of the others that they should enter along with it into a constitution, similar to the civil one, within which the rights of each could be secured. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 2.2nd) | |
A reaction: Not sure how close the United Nations takes us to this. You have to admire Kant for this one. |
21078 | A constitution must always be improved when necessary [Kant] |
Full Idea: Changes for the better are necessary, in order that the constitution may constantly approach the optimum end prescribed by laws of right. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], App 1) | |
A reaction: This should be a clause in every constitution. It is crazy to feel trapped by a misjudgement or outdated view of your ancestors. |
21076 | Equality is where you cannot impose a legal obligation you yourself wouldn't endure [Kant] |
Full Idea: Rightful equality within a state is a relationship among citizens where no-one can put anyone else under a legal obligation without submitting simultaneously to a law which requires that he can be put under the same kind of obligation by the other person. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 2.1st n) | |
A reaction: This appears only to be legal equality, rather than political or economic or social equality. |
20570 | There is now a growing universal community, and violations of rights are felt everywhere [Kant] |
Full Idea: The peoples of the earth have entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 'Third') | |
A reaction: I hope slavery was at the forefront of his mind when he wrote that. It is only in very recent times (since about 1960?) that major violations of rights are felt to matter to the whole human race. A long way to go, though. |
20571 | There are political and inter-national rights, but also universal cosmopolitan rights [Kant] |
Full Idea: The idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastic and overstrained; it is a necessary complement to the unwritten code of political and international right, transforming it into a universal right of humanity. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 'Third') | |
A reaction: The interesting thought is that there are no 'natural rights', but there can be universal rights insofar as there exists a universal community. See the UN Declaration of Human Rights c.1948. |
21073 | Hiring soldiers is to use them as instruments, ignoring their personal rights [Kant] |
Full Idea: The hiring of men to kill or be killed seems to mean using them as mere machines and insturments in the hands of someone else (the state), which cannot easily be reconciled with the rights of man in one's own person. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 1.3) | |
A reaction: Kant was not a pacificist, though this makes him sound like one. Some men go off to war with enthusiasm, and then regret it. Exploitation of rational beings may be the worst sin in Kant's Enlightenment world. |
21074 | Some trust in the enemy is needed during wartime, or peace would be impossible [Kant] |
Full Idea: It must remain possible, even in wartime, to have some sort of trust in the attitude of the enemy, otherwise peace could not be concluded and the hostilities would turn into a war of extermination. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 1.6) | |
A reaction: Consider the 'unconditional surrender' approach to the Nazis in 1944, and the peace of May 1945, made with very different Germans. How do you make peace with an enemy you cannot trust? |
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. |