20 ideas
| 4869 | Experience does not teach us any essences of things [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Experience does not teach us any essences of things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to De Vries [1664], 1664?) | |
| A reaction: This, along with Leibniz's claim that experience cannot reveal necessities, may constitute a striking criticism of empiricism, but it invites the obvious reply 'so much the worse for essences'. An essence seems to be a theoretical concept, not a priori. |
| 21740 | I doubt whether ethics is part of philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I hardly think myself that ethics ought to be included in the domain of philosophy. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch.22) | |
| A reaction: He declines to give his reasons. The implication of the chapter is that ethics is essentially a social and political matter, so that individual ethical guidelines are unimportant. Maybe the woolliness of ethics was also an impediment. |
| 2705 | How can intuitionists distinguish universal convictions from local cultural ones? [Hare] |
| Full Idea: There are convictions which are common to most societies; but there are others which are not, and no way is given by intuitionists of telling which are the authoritative data. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.454) | |
| A reaction: It seems unfair on intuitionists to say they haven't given a way to evaluate such things, given that they have offered intuition. The issue is what exactly they mean by 'intuition'. |
| 2712 | You can't use intuitions to decide which intuitions you should cultivate [Hare] |
| Full Idea: If it comes to deciding what intuitions and dispositions to cultivate, we cannot rely on the intuitions themselves, as intuitionists do. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.461) | |
| A reaction: Makes intuitionists sound a bit dim. Surely Hume identifies dispositions (such as benevolence) which should be cultivated, because they self-evidently improve social life? |
| 21741 | 'You ought to do p' primarily has emotional content, expressing approval [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A sentence like 'You ought to do so-and-so' primarily has an emotional content. It means ' this is the act towards which I feel the emotion of approval'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand how I can say 'you ought to do p', and very clearly mean that the situation would be altogether better if p, only to be told by some philosopher that what I thought was a sensible judgement is actually an emotional outburst. |
| 2706 | Emotivists mistakenly think all disagreements are about facts, and so there are no moral reasons [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Emotivists concluded too hastily that because naturalism and intuitionism are false, you cannot reason about moral questions, because they assumed that the only questions you can reason about are factual ones. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: Personally I have a naturalistic view of ethics (based on successful functioning, as indicated by Aristotle), so not my prob. Why can't we reason about expressive emotions? We reason about art. |
| 2709 | Prescriptivism sees 'ought' statements as imperatives which are universalisable [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Universal prescriptivists hold that 'ought'-judgements are prescriptive like plain imperatives, but differ from them in being universalisable. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.457) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit tautological. Which comes first, the normativity or the universalisability? |
| 2704 | If morality is just a natural or intuitive description, that leads to relativism [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Non-descriptivists (e.g. prescriptivists) reject descriptivism in its naturalist or intuitionist form, because they are both destined to collapse into relativism. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.453) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear from this why prescriptism would not also turn out to be relativist, if it includes evaluations along with facts. |
| 2703 | Descriptivism say ethical meaning is just truth-conditions; prescriptivism adds an evaluation [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Ethical descriptivism is the view that ethical sentence-meaning is wholly determined by truth-conditions. …Prescriptivists think there is a further element of meaning, which expresses prescriptions or evaluations or attitudes which we assent to. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.452) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand either of these. If all meaning consists of truth-conditions, that will apply to ethics. If meaning includes evaluations, that will apply to non-ethics. |
| 2707 | If there can be contradictory prescriptions, then reasoning must be involved [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists claim that there are rules of reasoning which govern non-descriptive as well as descriptive speech acts. The standard example is possible logical inconsistency between contradictory prescriptions. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: The example doesn't seem very good. Inconsistency can appear in any area of thought, but that isn't enough to infer full 'rules of reasoning'. I could desire two incompatible crazy things. |
| 2708 | An 'ought' statement implies universal application [Hare] |
| Full Idea: In any 'ought' statement there is implicit a principle which says that the statement applies to all precisely similar situations. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.456) | |
| A reaction: No two situations can ever be 'precisely' similar. Indeed, 'precisely similar' may be an oxymoron (at least for situations). Kantians presumably like this idea. |
| 2711 | Prescriptivism implies a commitment, but descriptivism doesn't [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists hold that moral judgements commit the speaker to motivations and actions, but non-moral facts by themselves do not do this. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.459) | |
| A reaction: Surely hunger motivates to action? I suppose the key word is 'commit'. But lazy people are allowed to make moral judgements. |
| 21746 | Unlike hate, all desires can be satisfied by love [Russell] |
| Full Idea: If harmonious desires are what we should seek, love is better than hate, since, when two people love each other, both can be satisfied, whereas when they hate each other one at most can achieve the object of his desire. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful example of cool philosophical objectivity! Of course it is not true, because the fact that two people love one another doesn't not prevent them from having some incompatible desires, as every couple knows. |
| 21747 | Goodness is a combination of love and knowledge [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22) | |
| A reaction: Forty years later, Russell's famous filmed message to posteriority said exactly this. In decision making, get the facts; in relationships, show love and tolerance. I find both parts inspiring. |
| 21743 | In wartime, happiness is hating the enemy, because it gives the war a purpose [Russell] |
| Full Idea: During and immediately after the war [14-18], those who hated the Germans were happier than those who still regarded them as human beings, because they could feel that what was being done served a good purpose. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22) | |
| A reaction: A striking remark. There are lots of situations where hatred seems to increase happiness. Russell is roughly defending consequentialism. |
| 21742 | Originally virtue was obedience, to gods, government, or custom [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Historically, virtue consisted at first of obedience to authority, whether that of the gods, the government, or custom. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22) | |
| A reaction: Russell proceeds to demolish such a theory, which he finds it fairly easy to do. In Nietzsche's terms, he is only describing slave virtue. Each role in the world has its own virtues (and functions). Which gods are the most virtuous? |
| 2710 | Moral judgements must invoke some sort of principle [Hare] |
| Full Idea: To make moral judgements is implicitly to invoke some principle, however specific. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.458) |
| 21745 | Act so as to produce harmonious rather than discordant desires [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The supreme moral rule should be: Act so as to produce harmonious rather than discordant desires. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22) | |
| A reaction: Russell makes no reference to Kant, but this is obviously intended to rebut the more rationalist Kantian view of what is imperative. The use of 'harmonious' chimes in best with Plato's account of the soul in 'Republic'. |
| 21744 | Legally curbing people's desires is inferior to improving their desires [Russell] |
| Full Idea: To force a man to curb his desires, as we do by the criminal law, is not nearly so satisfactory as to cause him genuinely to feel the desires which promote socially harmonious conduct. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree, but improving the desires of selfish and even vicious people is a rather challenging task. |
| 22891 | We could be aware of time if senses briefly vibrated, extending their experience of movement [Russell, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: Russell suggested, in defence of an empiricist theory of time-awareness, that a sense organ goes on vibrating, like a piano string, for while after the stimulation. Thus we can see the movement of a second hand, seen in several places at once. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 2 'Realism' | |
| A reaction: Hm. If they were vibrating the last experience, they couldn't pick up the new one. When something fast happens the brain resonates fortissimo! If your eyes are moving it will be different neurons that get fired at each instant. |