62 ideas
| 5196 | Philosophy is a department of logic [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is a department of logic. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would invert that. Philosophy is concerned with human rationality, of which precise logic appears to be a rather limited subdivision. I see philosophy as the 'master' subject, not the 'servant' subject (as Locke had implied). |
| 5189 | Philosophers should abandon speculation, as philosophy is wholly critical [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: We can overthrow speculative philosophy, and see that the function of philosophy is wholly critical. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that we CAN speculate, which appeared to be rendered impossible by the verification principle. Personally I think speculation is central to philosophy, but Ayer should always stand as a warning against bogus truth-claims. |
| 7919 | Humeans rejected the a priori synthetic, and so rejected even Kantian metaphysics [Ayer, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Thinkers from Hume to the logical positivists took exception to Kant's view that some synthetic propositions could be known a priori, and so rejected the possibility of metaphysics as Kant conceived of it. | |
| From: report of A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: See Idea 7918 for Kant's epistemological view of metaphysics. This strikes me as a big misunderstanding by empiricists, even though they are quite right to insist on evidence and proof. Metaphysics is essential, but its excess is the worst nonsense. |
| 5195 | Critics say analysis can only show the parts, and not their distinctive configuration [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Critics say an analyst is obliged by his atomistic metaphysics to regard an object consisting of parts a, b, c and d in a distinctive configuration as being simply a+b+c+d, and thus giving an entirely false account of its nature. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Ayer refers the critics to gestatl psychology. Personally I prefer to talk about the ontology rather than the psychology. If we include (as Russell suggests) relations as part of the analysis, there seems to be no problem. |
| 5179 | Philosophy deals with the questions that scientists do not wish to handle [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: If there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is characteristic of the feeble-mindedness that British philosophy slipped into in the age of Wittgenstein, and for a while thereafter. Personally I regard scientists as servants, who are sent off on exploratory errands, and must report back. |
| 21032 | Speak truth only to those who deserve the truth [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The duty to tell the truth applies only to those who deserve the truth. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [from Benjamin Constant, in opposition to Kant] I prefer the idea that we should use people 'after our own honour and dignity' (Hamlet), which means speaking the truth even to Donald Trump (for those of you who remember 2018). But not always. |
| 21033 | Careful evasions of truth at least show respect for it [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: A carefully crafted evasion pays homage to truth-telling in a way that an outright lie does not. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: Nicely put. He refers to an incident in Kant's life. I think of the great equivocation controversy at the time of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. See the porter in Macbeth. All I ask is that people care about the truth. Many people don't. Why? |
| 4749 | We cannot analyse the concept of 'truth', because it is simply a mark that a sentence is asserted [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: When one says that "Queen Anne is dead" is true or false, these terms 'true' and 'false' connote nothing, but function in the sentence simply as marks of assertion and denial, so there is no sense in asking us to analyse the concept of 'truth'. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: "I am ill" may be true when you say it, and false when I say it. The word 'true' has a useful function in 'x is true if y'. "If that is true, Freddie, I will hit you". |
| 5202 | Maths and logic are true universally because they are analytic or tautological [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else; …in other words, they are analytic propositions, or tautologies. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is obviously a very appealing idea, but it doesn's explain WHY we have invented these particular tautologies (which seem surprisingly useful). The 'science of patterns' can be empirical and a priori and useful (but not tautological). |
| 6523 | Positivists regard ontology as either meaningless or stipulated [Ayer, by Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Positivists tend to be prejudiced against ontology, regarding very general questions about what sort of things exist either as meaningless, or as questions to be settled by stipulation. | |
| From: report of A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.4 | |
| A reaction: So much the worse for positivists, because they are missing all the fun. I consider one of the central activities of philosophy to be speculating about explanations. Ontology is at the heart of what explanation aims at. |
| 5183 | Only tautologies can be certain; other propositions can only be probable [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: No proposition, other than a tautology, can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear empiricist rejection of all attempts to assert necessary truths about nature. This also seems to be a rejection of empiricist foundationalism. A problem case seems to be introspective observations, which seem irrefutable and obvious. |
| 6525 | Logical positivists could never give the sense-data equivalent of 'there is a table next door' [Robinson,H on Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Logical positivist phenomenalism has few supporters these days; ..no one ever seemed clear what the sense-datum equivalent of 'there is a table in the next room' could be. | |
| From: comment on A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.4 | |
| A reaction: But do the critics know what they mean by 'there is a table in the next room'? Does it just mean 'I am hoping there is'? You can't refer to the table in the next room without sticking your ontological neck out - and that is 'best explanation'. |
| 5170 | Material things are constructions from actual and possible occurrences of sense-contents [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The existence of a material thing is defined in terms of the actual and possible occurrence of the sense-contents which constitute it as a logical construction. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Obviously we need 'possible' experiences so that unperceived trees can still exist, but it is a can of worms. Is speculation about a possible world an account of possible experiences? Realists want to know WHY we think certain experiences are possible. |
| 5198 | We could verify 'a thing can't be in two places at once' by destroying one of the things [Ierubino on Ayer] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to challenge the proposition 'a material thing cannot be in two places at once' empirically; if you destroy one object, the other should also instantly be destroyed if they are a single thing. | |
| From: comment on A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) by Virgil Ierubino - works | |
| A reaction: This leaves us having to decide whether the proposition is metaphysically necessary, or is empirical, or is tautological. This idea inclines me towards the view that it is empirical. Imagine two 'separate' objects which responded identically to stimuli. |
| 2619 | Whether geometry can be applied to reality is an empirical question outside of geometry [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Whether a geometry can be applied to the actual physical world or not, is an empirical question which falls outside the scope of the geometry itself. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a key objection to rationalism by empiricists. You may say that geometry applies to your car, but your car may have been pulverised while you were talking. Why, though, did Einstein find non-Euclidean geometry so useful? |
| 5197 | By changing definitions we could make 'a thing can't be in two places at once' a contradiction [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that 'a material thing cannot be in two places at once' is not empirical at all, but linguistic; ..we could so alter our definitions that the proposition came to express a self-contradiction instead of a necessary truth. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems a striking anticipation of Quine's famous challenge to the analytic/synthetic distinction. |
| 5204 | To say that a proposition is true a priori is to say that it is a tautology [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: To say that a proposition is true a priori is to say that it is a tautology. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is Ayer's splendidly clearcut anti-rationalism. However, one might concede that one cannot know a priori about remote possible worlds (though I'm not so sure), but still claim a priori extrapolations from our current experiences. |
| 6524 | Positivists prefer sense-data to objects, because the vocabulary covers both illusions and perceptions [Ayer, by Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Positivists prefer the sense-datum vocabulary because it is more inclusive than physical object vocabulary; it can report after-images, hallucinations, illusions and bodily sensations, as well as veridical perceptions. | |
| From: report of A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.4 | |
| A reaction: The assumption of this is that illusions and perceptions are frequently indistinguishable, but that is just nonsense. Illusions usually appeal to one sense only, when you are ill, and in an unclear way. Sensible people know objects when they see them. |
| 5193 | Causal and representative theories of perception are wrong as they refer to unobservables [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The fact that all causal and representative theories of perception treat material things as if they were unobservable entities entitles us to rule them out a priori. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that we can accept a causal/representative account of perception if we think of it in terms of 'best explanation' rather than observables. Explanation requires speculation, which logical positivists can't cope with. |
| 5200 | The main claim of rationalism is that thought is an independent source of knowledge [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental tenet of rationalism is that thought is an independent source of knowledge. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably one should add that thought gives synthetic knowledge. Thought is also an experience, so empiricists will always acknowledge that we could have some knowledge (of thought) by thought alone. |
| 4729 | Empiricism lacked a decent account of the a priori, until Ayer said it was entirely analytic [O'Grady on Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Ayer's gives an account of the a priori (as analytic) that readily meshes with empiricism, and empiricism had long been lacking an adequate account of the a priori | |
| From: comment on A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Ayer's logical positivist view was based on Hume's 'relations of ideas', as opposed to 'matters of fact'. Personally I see no reason why some facts about reality shouldn't be self-evident to thought, just as others are self-evident to the senses. |
| 5180 | All propositions (especially 'metaphysics') must begin with the senses [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: One way to attack a metaphysician would be to enquire from what premises his propositions were deduced. Must he not begin, as other men do, with the evidence of his senses? | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This simple idea is the core of empiricism. This is a heavily criticised doctrine, but you must start somewhere. Hume and Russell agreed. Don't forget, though, that Descartes's first move is to reject the senses as untrustworthy. |
| 5169 | My empiricism logically distinguishes analytic and synthetic propositions, and metaphysical verbiage [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The empiricist doctrine to which we are committed is a logical doctrine concerning the distinction between analytic propositions, synthetic propositions, and metaphysical verbiage. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the tough logical positivist version of empiricism. The whole project stumbles on the relationship between a synthetic proposition and its verifying experiences. How close? What of wild speculations? The analytic part is interesting, though. |
| 5185 | It is further sense-experience which informs us of the mistakes that arise out of sense-experience [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: It is further sense-experience which informs us of the mistakes that arise out of sense-experience. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a wonderfull plain-spoken challenge to anyone who thinks they can demonstrate facts a priori about reality. 'I see this object in two places at once'? 'This object appears to be both red and green'? |
| 5199 | Empiricism, it is said, cannot account for our knowledge of necessary truths [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The objection which is commonly brought against empiricism is that it is impossible on empiricist principles to account for our knowledge of necessary truths. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This criticism goes back at least to Leibniz. Ayer's distinctive contribution to empiricism (with help) is to emphasise that we can only know necessities if they are tautologies. Hume always challenged our knowledge of natural necessities. |
| 5190 | The induction problem is to prove generalisations about the future based on the past [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The problem of induction is (roughly) finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalisations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to be the only problem. It seems self-evident (since Hume) that you cannot use deductive reasoning to prove that the future will be like the past. In fact, we should obviously be cautious, as things could easily change. |
| 5191 | We can't use the uniformity of nature to prove induction, as that would be circular [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: It is often said that we can justify induction by invoking the uniformity of nature, but that principle merely states (in a misleading fashion) the assumption that past experience is a reliable guide to the future. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: That is correct, but it seems to me that if you take the uniformity of nature as a provisional unproven axiom, then induction is an account of how rational creatures cope with the situation. If nature ceases to be uniform, our reason cannot cope. |
| 5177 | Other minds are 'metaphysical' objects, because I can never observe their experiences [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: On the view that we are discussing, I must regard other people as metaphysical objects; for it is assumed that their experiences are completely inaccessible to my observation. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: 'Metaphysical' is here a dirty word. This is the strictly empirical view of other minds, which pushes Ayer towards behaviourism on this subject. He should have asked about the 'best explanation' of the behaviour of others'. |
| 5178 | A conscious object is by definition one that behaves in a certain way, so behaviour proves consciousness [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: If I know that an object behaves in every way as a conscious being must, by definition, behave, then I know that it is really conscious. This is an analytical proposition. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This treats the Turing test as proof of consciousness, and is open to all the usual objections to behaviourism. To say behaviour IS consciousness is ridiculous. It just counts as evidence. Presumably Ayer would later have become a functionalist. |
| 5172 | If the self is meaningful, it must be constructed from sense-experiences [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The self, if it is not to be treated as a metaphysical entity, must be held to be a logical construction out of sense-experiences. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It is striking how people differ in their reports when they try to see the self by introspection. The self could be beyond sense-experience, and yet still be the best explanation of what we actually DO experience. It is a 'transcendental sensation'? |
| 5173 | Two experiences belong to one self if their contents belong with one body [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: For any two sense-experiences to belong to the sense-history of the same self it is necessary and sufficient that they should contain organic sense-contents which are elements of the same body. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This makes more sense if you are a realist about organic bodies, but less sense if (like Ayer) you define the body in terms of sense-experiences. It is a stab at what is now called 'animalism', but needs an account of brain transplant thought-experiments. |
| 5176 | Empiricists can define personal identity as bodily identity, which consists of sense-contents [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: We have solved Hume's problem by defining personal identity in terms of bodily identity, and bodily identity is to be defined in terms of the resemblance and continuity of sense-contents. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This is a phenomenalist account of personal identity, so it has no independent account of the body apart from the contents of the mind. Personally I think we must distinguish 'central' mental events from 'peripheral' ones. |
| 5171 | The supposed 'gulf' between mind and matter is based on the senseless concept of 'substances' [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The problems of bridging the 'gulf' between mind and matter, in knowledge or in action, are all fictitious problems arising out of the senseless metaphysical conception of mind and matter as 'substances'. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: He is presumably implying that there is only one 'substance', the stuff of physics, thus voting for Spinoza's dual aspect theory. There could still be a 'gulf', between incommensurable properties, or untranslatable levels of description. |
| 5181 | A sentence is factually significant to someone if they know how to verify its proposition [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: A sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: 'I can't verify it, but I know a bloke who can'? 'If only I could think of a way to verify x'? 'This is unverifiable, but it is the only remaining possibility'? 'X is unverifiable, but it would nice if it was true'? Etc. |
| 5184 | Factual propositions imply (in conjunction with a few other premises) possible experiences [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The mark of a genuinely factual proposition is that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those premises alone. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I.Berlin showed that any statement S could pass this test, because if you assert 'S' and 'If S then O', these two statements entail O, which could be some random observation. Verificationism kept meeting problems of this kind. |
| 5186 | Tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be false. Possibly the problem is that Ayer takes the whole proposition to be the unit of meaning, but actually meaninfulness only requires that we build up a claim about a possible world from semantic units. Blue bees live on square suns. |
| 5205 | Moral intuition is worthless if there is no criterion to decide between intuitions [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Unless it is possible to provide some criterion by which one may decide between conflicting intuitions, a mere appeal to intuition is worthless as a test of a proposition's validity. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: It is a bit much to expect a 'proof' of its 'validity'! If moral judgements are reflected in consequences, then reliable intuitions (i.e. wisdom) could be demonstrated by getting it right (for happiness, or flourishing). |
| 23725 | Ayer defends the emotivist version of expressivism [Ayer, by Smith,M] |
| Full Idea: Ayer defends emotivism, which is his own favoured form of expressivism. | |
| From: report of A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.6) by Michael Smith - The Moral Problem 2.1 | |
| A reaction: A helpful distinction of terminology. Expressivism is the broad theory, and emotivism is a sub-type, saying that it is emotions which are expressed. The alternative (such as Prescriptivism) is to express pro- and con- attitudes. |
| 5206 | To say an act is wrong makes no further statement about it, but merely expresses disapproval [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: In adding 'You acted wrongly in…' to 'you stole my money' I am not making any further statement about it; I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: A basic claim of emotivism. Perhaps an understandable response to (e.g.) Kantian claims that we have duties, but to no one in particular. Most people mean by moral criticism that there will be long-term bad consequences, or virtue is lacking. |
| 21036 | Not all deals are fair deals [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The mere fact that you and I make a deal is not enough to make it fair. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) |
| 21038 | Does consent create the obligation, or must there be some benefit? [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Legal thinkers have debated this question for a long time: can consent create an obligation on its own, or is some element of benefit or reliance required? | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: Clearly mere consent could be under some compulsion, either by the other party, or by some other forces. Keeping a deathbed promise usually brings no benefit, but is a matter of honour. Ah, honour! Can anyone remember what that is? |
| 21039 | Moral contracts involve both consent and reciprocity; making the deal, and keeping it [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Despite a tendency to read consent into moral claims, it is hard to make sense of our morality without acknowledging the independent weight of reciprocity. If my wife is unfaithful I have two different grounds of outrage: our promise, and my loyalty. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: The point is that Hobbes and co over-simplify what a contract is. Compare a contract with a promise. One must be two-sided, the other can be one-sided. |
| 21030 | The categorical imperative is not the Golden Rule, which concerns contingent desires [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The Golden Rule depends on contingent facts about how people like to be treated. The categorical imperative asks that we abstract from such contingencies and respect persons as rational beings, regardless of what they might want in particular situations. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: I think the Golden Rule is wrong for a different reason. It assumes that we all want similar things, which we don't. Focus on other people's needs, not yours. |
| 21031 | Man cannot dispose of himself, because he is not a thing to be owned [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Man cannot dispose over himself because he is not a thing; he is not his own property. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [Kant lecture note] This is an important qualification to persons as ends. If a person owned themselves, that would separate the person from what they owned. Sandel mentions selling your own organs. Kant is considering prostitution. Why is slavery wrong? |
| 21035 | Just visiting (and using roads) is hardly ratifying the Constitution [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see how just passing through town is morally akin to ratifying the Constitution. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: They say that philosophical ideas are never refuted, and no progress is made, but this sure put paid to John Locke. |
| 21037 | A ratified constitution may not be a just constitution [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The fact that a constitution is ratified by the people does not prove that its provisions are just. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: Yes indeed. And the fact that a majority won a referendum does not make their decision wise. Hence all constitutions must be open to evaluation. Gun laws in the US are the obvious example. |
| 21034 | A just constitution harmonises the different freedoms [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: As Kant sees it, a just constitution aims at harmonising each individual's freedom with that of everyone else. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [source?] Nice statement of the project. I increasingly see political philosophy as constitution design. I say philosophers have got fifty years to design an optimum constitution, and they should then down tools and promote it, in simple language. |
| 21049 | Liberal freedom was a response to assigned destinies like caste and class [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Liberal freedom developed as an antidote to political theories that consigned persons to destinies fixed by caste or class, station or rank, custom, tradition or inherited status. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: Virtually all human beings before modern times found that they had been 'assigned destinies'. The huge exception is war, especially civil war, which must be a huge liberation for many people, despite the danger. |
| 21040 | Libertarians just want formal equality in a free market; the meritocratic view wants fair equality [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The libertarian view of distributive justice is a free market with formal equality of opportunity. The meritocratic view is a free market with fair equality of opportunity. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is what has to be done, by intervention, to make the market fair. There are two major rival views of equality here. Is the starting point fair, and is the race itself fair? |
| 21028 | We can approach justice through welfare, or freedom, or virtue [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: We have identified three ways of approaching the distribution of goods: welfare, freedom and virtue. ...and these are three ways of thinking about justice. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 01) | |
| A reaction: Virtue is Sandel's distinctively Aristotelian contribution to the problem. The best known instance of justice is punishment, which is a distribution of harms. |
| 21027 | Justice concerns how a society distributes what it prizes - wealth, rights, power and honours [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: To ask whether a society is just is to ask how we distribute the things we prize - income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honours. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 01) | |
| A reaction: There is, of course, the prior question of what things should be controlled by a society for distribution. But there is also justice in the promotional and pay structure of institutions within a society, including private institutions. |
| 21042 | Should we redress wrongs done by a previous generation? [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Can we ever have a moral responsibility to redress wrongs committed by a previous generation? | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: Just asking for a friend. It seems to depend on how close we feel to the previous generation. Regretting the crime committed by a beloved parent is one thing. Despising the crime committed by some right bastard who shares my nationality is another. |
| 21043 | Distributive justice concern deserts, as well as who gets what [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Debates about distributive justice are about not only who gets what but also what qualities are worthy of honour and reward. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: So the 'undeserving poor' get nuffink? Does just being a human being deserve anything? Obviously yes. That said, we can't deny the concept of 'appropriate reward'. |
| 21052 | Justice is about how we value things, and not just about distributions [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 10) | |
| A reaction: This is Sandel's distinctively Aristotelian contribution to the justice debate - with which I have great sympathy. And, as he argues, the values of things arise out of assessing their essential natures. |
| 21048 | Work is not fair if it is negotiated, even in a fair situation, but if it suits the nature of the worker [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: For the libertarian free exchange for labour is fair; for Rawls it requires fair background conditions; for Aristotle, for the work to be just it must be suited to the nature of the workers who perform it. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Aristotle's idea is powerful, and Sandel performs a great service in drawing attention to it. Imagine the key negotiation in an interview being whether this particular work suits your nature! |
| 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. |
| 21045 | Teleological thinking is essential for social and political issues [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to dispense with teleological reasoning in thinking about social institutions and political practices. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: I think teleological thinking is also indispensable in biology. You can't understand an ear or an eye if you don't know what it is FOR. If it relates to a mind, it is teleological. The eye of a dead person is for nothing. |
| 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. |
| 5208 | A person with non-empirical attributes is unintelligible. [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a person whose essential attributes are non-empirical is not an intelligible notion at all. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Non-empirical and non-causal are not quite the same thing. A being which never had any effects is a bizarre, and probably pointless, fantasy. A being which affected our world (through ideas, say) but is unobservable is a perfectly good theory. |
| 5187 | When we ascribe an attribute to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: When we ascribe an attribute to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is an unsurprising endorsement from logical positivism that Kant's claim that the ontological argument is probably tautological is correct. We could of course say "Imagine a non-existent being with dirty toenails". |
| 5207 | If theism is non-sensical, then so is atheism. [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: If the assertion that there is a god is non-sensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally non-sensical. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Ayer urgently needs the concept of 'best explanation'. If we observe only footprints, we infer creatures; if there are no footprints, lack of creatures looks like a good theory. The design argument is perfectly meaningful. |
| 5209 | The 'truths' expressed by theists are not literally significant [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be any transcendent truths of religion, for the sentences which the theist uses to express such 'truths' are not literally significant. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Ayer claims that only tautologies or empirically verifiable statements have literal significance. I say speculations, wild theories and fantasies are perfectly meaningful. Nevertheless, the words of many hymns and prayers look like empty rhetoric. |