19 ideas
| 8349 | The best way to do ontology is to make sense of our normal talk [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: I do not know any better way of showing what there is than looking at the assumptions needed to make sense of our normal talk. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967], §4) | |
| A reaction: Davidson was a pupil of Quine. This I take to be the last flowering of twentieth century linguistic philosophy. The ontology we deduce from talk in a children's playground might be very bizarre, but we are unlikely to endorse it. 'Honest, it's true!' |
| 8348 | If we don't assume that events exist, we cannot make sense of our common talk [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The assumption, ontological and metaphysical, that there are events, is one without which we cannot make sense of much of our most common talk. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967], §4) | |
| A reaction: He considers events to be unanalysable basics. Explanation of normal talk also needs ghosts, premonitions, telepathy and Father Christmas. It is extremely hard to individuate events, unless they are subatomic, and rather numerous. |
| 8347 | Explanations typically relate statements, not events [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Explanations typically relate statements, not events. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967], §4) | |
| A reaction: An oddly linguistic way of putting our attempts to understand the world. Presumably the statements are supposed to be about the events (or whatever), and they are supposed to be true, so we are trying to relate features of the world. |
| 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. |
| 10371 | Distinguish causation, which is in the world, from explanations, which depend on descriptions [Davidson, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Davidson distinguishes between causation, an extensional relation that holds between coarse events, and explanation, which is an intensional relation that holds between the coarse events under a description. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.2 | |
| A reaction: I'm unclear why everything has to be so coarse, when reality and causal events seem to fine-grained, but the distinction strikes me as good. Explanations relate to human understanding and human interests. Cf. Anscombe's view. |
| 8403 | Either facts, or highly unspecific events, serve better as causes than concrete events [Field,H on Davidson] |
| Full Idea: It is best to avoid Davidson's view that only quite concrete events can serve as causes; we should either say that facts as well as events can serve as causes; or that the events can be highly unspecific, including 'omissions'. | |
| From: comment on Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967]) by Hartry Field - Causation in a Physical World 1 | |
| A reaction: Something NOT happening might be the main cause of an effect (drought), or an effect may mainly result from a situation rather than an event (famine). |
| 8346 | Full descriptions can demonstrate sufficiency of cause, but not necessity [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The fuller we make the description of a cause, the better our chances of demonstrating that it was sufficient (as described) to produce the effect, and the worse our chances of demonstrating that it was necessary. (For the effect, it is the opposite). | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967], §3) | |
| A reaction: If the fullness of description is relevant, this suggests that Davidson is focusing on human explanations, rather than on the ontology of causation. If the cause IS necessary, why wouldn't a better description make that clearer? |
| 4778 | A singular causal statement is true if it is held to fall under a law [Davidson, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: For Davidson, what makes singular causal statements true is the existence of some regularities or laws. All causal is nomological: c causes e iff there is a law that connects events like c with events like e. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.6 | |
| A reaction: I wonder if the cart is before the horse here. Scriven says this is just a claim that there are "phantom laws". It is the Humean view of causation, but surely the laws come after the causation, so can't be used to explain it? |
| 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. |