20 ideas
| 19730 | Epistemic virtues: love of knowledge, courage, caution, autonomy, practical wisdom... [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: Virtue theorists may focus on the particular habits or virtues of successful cognizers, such as love of knowledge, firmness, courage and caution, humility, autonomy, generosity, and practical wisdom. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], III) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Roberts and Wood 2007] It is interesting that most of these virtues do not merely concern cognition. How about diligence, self-criticism, flexibility...? |
| 19731 | If epistemic virtues are faculties or powers, that doesn't explain propositional knowledge [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: Conceiving of the virtues in terms of faculties or powers doesn't help at all with the problem of accounting for propositional knowledge. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], IV B) | |
| A reaction: It always looks as if epistemic virtues are a little peripheral to the main business of knowledge, which is getting beliefs to be correct and well-founded. Given that epistemic saints make occasional mistakes, talk of virtues can't be enough. |
| 19732 | The value of good means of attaining truth are swamped by the value of the truth itself [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: The Swamping Problem is that the value of truth swamps the value of additional features of true beliefs which are only instrumentally related to them. True belief is no more valuable if one adds a feature valuable for getting one to the truth. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], IV B) | |
| A reaction: His targets here are reliabilism and epistemic virtues. Kvanvig's implication is that the key to understanding the nature of knowledge is to pinpoint why we value it so much. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 22717 | Self-interest can fairly divide a cake; first person cuts, second person chooses [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: To fairly divide a cake between two children, the first divides it and the second chooses. …Even division is best, as it anticipates the second child will take the largest piece. Fairness is enforced by the children's self-interests. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 03 'Cake') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is introduced as the basic principle of game theory. There is an online video of two cats sharing a dish of milk; each one drinks a bit, then pushes the dish to the other one. I'm sure two children could manage that. |
| 22718 | Formal game theory is about maximising or minimising numbers in tables [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: At the most abstract level, game theory is about tables with numbers in them - numbers that entities are are efficiently acting to maximise or minimise. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 03 'Curve') | |
| A reaction: A brilliant idea. The question is the extent to which real life conforms to the numberical tables. The assumption that everyone is entirely self-seeking is blatantly false. Numbers like money have diminishing marginal utility. |
| 22719 | The minimax theorem says a perfect game of opposed people always has a rational solution [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: The minimax theorem says that there is always a rational solution to a precisely defined conflict between two people whose interests are completely opposite. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 03 'Minimax') | |
| A reaction: This is Von Neumann's founding theorem of game theory. It concerns maximising minimums, and minimising maximums. Crucially, I would say that it virtually never occurs that two people have completely opposite interests. There is a common good. |
| 22720 | Two prisoners get the best result by being loyal, not by selfish betrayal [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: Prisoners A and B can support or betray one another. If both support, they each get 1 year in prison. If one betrays, the betrayer gets 0 and the betrayed gets 3. If they both betray they get 2 each. The common good is to support each other. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 06 'Tucker's') | |
| A reaction: [by Albert Tucker, highly compressed] The classic Prisoner's Dilemma. It is artificial, but demonstrates that selfish behaviour gets a bad result (total of four years imprisonment), but the common good gets only two years. Every child should study this! |
| 22721 | The tragedy in prisoner's dilemma is when two 'nice' players misread each other [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: The tragedy is when two 'nice' players defect because they misread the other's intentions. The puzzle of the prisoner's dilemma is how such good intentions pave the road to hell. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 11 'Howard's') | |
| A reaction: I really wish these simple ideas were better known. They more or less encapsulate the tragedy of the human race, with its inability to prioritise the common good. |
| 22722 | TIT FOR TAT says cooperate at first, then do what the other player does [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: The successful TIT FOR TAT strategy (for the iterated prisoner's dilemma) says cooperate on the first round, then do whatever the other player did in the previous round. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 12 'TIT') | |
| A reaction: There are also the tougher TWO TITS FOR A TAT, and the more forgiving TIT FOR TWO TATS. The one-for-one seems to be the main winner, and is commonly seen in animal life (apparently). I recommend this to school teachers. |
| 22723 | Do unto others as you would have them do unto you - or else! [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: TIT FOR TAT threatens 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you - or else!'. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 12 'TIT') | |
| A reaction: Essentially human happiness arises if we are all nice, but also stand up firmly for ourselves. 'Doormats' (nice all the time) get exploited. TIT FOR TAT is weak, because it doesn't exploit people who don't respond at all. |
| 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) |