71 ideas
| 11257 | The Pythagoreans were the first to offer definitions [Politis, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle praises the Pythagoreans for being the first to offer definitions. | |
| From: report of Vassilis Politis (Aristotle and the Metaphysics [2004]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a hugely important step in the development of Greek philosophy which is hardly ever mentioned. |
| 11235 | 'True of' is applicable to things, while 'true' is applicable to words [Politis] |
| Full Idea: It is crucial not to confuse 'true' with 'true of'. 'True of' is applicable to things, while 'true' is applicable to words. | |
| From: Vassilis Politis (Aristotle and the Metaphysics [2004], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple distinction which had never occurred to me, and which (being a thoroughgoing realist) I really like. |
| 11277 | Maybe 'What is being? is confusing because we can't ask what non-being is like [Politis] |
| Full Idea: We may be unfamiliar with the question 'What is being?' because there appear to be no contrastive questions of the form: how do beings differ from things that are not beings? | |
| From: Vassilis Politis (Aristotle and the Metaphysics [2004], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: We can, of course, contrast actual beings with possible beings, or imaginary beings, or even logically impossible beings, but in those cases 'being' strikes me as an entirely inappropriate word. |
| 11248 | Necessary truths can be two-way relational, where essential truths are one-way or intrinsic [Politis] |
| Full Idea: An essence is true in virtue of what the thing is in itself, but a necessary truth may be relational, as the consequence of the relation between two things and their essence. The necessary relation may be two-way, but the essential relation one-way. | |
| From: Vassilis Politis (Aristotle and the Metaphysics [2004], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: He is writing about Aristotle, but has in mind Kit Fine 1994 (qv). Politis cites Plato's answer to the Euthyphro Question as a good example. The necessity comes from the intrinsic nature of goodness/piety, not from the desire of the gods. |
| 4266 | Having beliefs involves recognition, expectation and surprise [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: With the concept of belief (e.g. in animals) comes recognition, expectation and surprise. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.15) | |
| A reaction: A good observation. It is always tempting to see mental faculties in isolation, but each one drags along other capacities with it. Looks a bit holistic. |
| 4265 | If an animal has beliefs, that implies not only that it can make mistakes, but that it can learn from them [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: To say that an animal has beliefs is to imply not just that it can make mistakes, but also that it can learn from them. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.15) | |
| A reaction: A bold claim which is hard to substantiate. Seems right, though. Why would they change a belief? It can't be a belief if it isn't changeable. That would be an instinct. |
| 4264 | Perception (which involves an assessment) is a higher state than sensation [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Perception is a higher state than sensation: it involves not just a response to the outer world, but also an assessment of it. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.14) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a simple but really important distinction, even though it wickedly uses the word 'higher', which Greeks like but post-Humeans struggle with. But we all know it is higher, don't we? |
| 20043 | Evolutionary explanations look to the past or the group, not to the individual [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In evolutionary explanations you may explain a population trait in terms of what it is for the sake of an individual, or explain it in terms of what it was for the sake of in earlier generations, but never in terms of what the trait is for the sake of. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 2 'Functions') | |
| A reaction: So my ears are for the sake of my ability to hear, but that does not explain why I have ears. Should we say there is 'impersonal teleology' here, but no 'personal teleology'? Interesting. |
| 20058 | Not all explanation is causal. We don't explain a painting's beauty, or the irrationality of root-2, that way [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Not all explanation is causal. Explaining the beauty of a painting is not explaining why something happened. or why a move in chess is illegal, or why the square root of two is not a rational number. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Argument') | |
| A reaction: It is surely plausible that the illegality of the chess move is caused (or 'determined', as I prefer to say) by the laws created for chess. The painting example seems right, though; what determined its configuration (think Pollock!) does not explain it. |
| 4271 | There is consciousness whenever behaviour must be explained in terms of mental activity [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: There is consciousness whenever behaviour must be explained in terms of mental activity. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.23) | |
| A reaction: Not a point that would trouble an eliminativist, as it sounds suspiciously circular or question-begging. |
| 4272 | Our concept of a person is derived from Roman law [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Our concept of a person is derived from Roman law. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.28) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I don't believe Roman legislators invented it, so where did it originate? Interesting that it is legalistic - a thing to which rights can accrue. Compare character, to which virtues accrue. |
| 4267 | Conditioning may change behaviour without changing the mind [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Conditioning involves a change of behaviour, but not necessarily a change of mind. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.16) | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to doubt this. If I was conditioned in some way, I would expect my conscious state to change as well as my behaviour. |
| 4269 | An emotion is a motive which is also a feeling [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: An emotion is a motive which is also a feeling. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.17) | |
| A reaction: What is a motive without feeling? A universalised judgment, perhaps. Which comes first, the motivation or the feeling? |
| 4270 | Do we use reason to distinguish people from animals, or use that difference to define reason? [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The difficulty of defining reason suggests that while pretending to use it to define the difference between humans and animals, they are actually using that difference to define reason. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.19) | |
| A reaction: Too pessimistic. We are perfectly capable of saying there is no significant difference between us and an alien. We have obvious abilities, which we can partly specify. |
| 20035 | Philosophy of action studies the nature of agency, and of deliberate actions [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The philosophy of action is concerned with the nature of agency: what it is to be a full-blown agent, and what it is to realise one's agency in acting deliberately on things. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'Being') | |
| A reaction: 'Full-blown' invites the question of whether there could be a higher level of agency, beyond the capacity of human beings. Perhaps AI should design a theoretical machine that taps into those higher levels, if we can conceive of them. Meta-coherence! |
| 20084 | Agency is causal processes that are sensitive to justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: My conclusion is that wherever you can identify causal processes that are sensitive to the recommendations of systems of justification, there you have found agency. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9b 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: [the last paragraph of his book] Justification seems an awfully grand notion for a bee pollinating a flower, and I don't see human action as profoundly different. A reason might be a bad justification, but it might not even aspire to be a justification. |
| 20061 | Mental states and actions need to be separate, if one is to cause the other [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: If psychological states and action results cannot be identified independently of one another, then it does not make sense to describe one as causing the other. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: This summarises a widely cited unease about the causal theory of action. Any account in action theory will need to separate out some components and explain their interrelation. Otherwise actions are primitives, and we can walk away. |
| 20079 | Are actions bodily movements, or a sequence of intention-movement-result? [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Are actions identical with bodily movements? Or are they identical with sequences of things starting inside the agent's mind with their intentions, going through their body movements and finishing with the external results being achieved? | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'What is action') | |
| A reaction: If bodily movements are crucial, this presumably eliminates speech acts. Speech or writing may involve some movement, but the movement is almost irrelevant to the nature of the action. Telepathy would do equally well. |
| 20080 | If one action leads to another, does it cause it, or is it part of it? [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: When we do one action 'by' doing another, either the first action causes the process of the second, or the first action is part of the process of the second | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'What is by') | |
| A reaction: Stout says the second view is preferable, because pressing a switch does not cause my action of turning on the light (though it does cause the light to come on). |
| 20059 | I do actions, but not events, so actions are not events [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: I do not do an event; I do an action; so actions are not events. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Are actions') | |
| A reaction: Sounds conclusive, but it places a lot of weight on the concepts of 'I' and 'do', which leaves room for some discussion. This point is opposed to the causal theory of action, because causation concerns events. |
| 20081 | Bicycle riding is not just bodily movement - you also have to be on the bicycle [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: You do not ride a bicycle just by moving your body in a certain way. You have to be on the bicycle to move in the right sort of way | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'Are body') | |
| A reaction: My favourite philosophical ideas are simple and conclusive. He also observes that walking involves the ground being walked on. In complex actions 'feedback' with the environment is involved. |
| 20039 | The causal theory says that actions are intentional when intention (or belief-desire) causes the act [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The causal theory of action asserts that what characterises intentional action is the agent's intentions, or perhaps their beliefs and desires, causing their behaviour in the appropriate way. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'Outline') | |
| A reaction: The agent's intentions are either sui generis (see Bratman), or reducible to beliefs and desires (as in Hume). The classic problem for the causal theory is said to be 'deviant causal chains'. |
| 20047 | Deciding what to do usually involves consulting the world, not our own minds [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In the vast majority of actions you need to look outwards to work out what you should do. An exam invigilator should consult the clock to design when to end the exam, not her state of mind. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'The belief-') | |
| A reaction: Stout defends externalist intentions. I remain unconvinced. It is no good looking at a clock if you don't form a belief about what it says, and the belief is obviously closer than the clock to the action. Intellectual virtue requires checking the facts. |
| 20065 | Should we study intentions in their own right, or only as part of intentional action? [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Should we try to understand what it is to have an intention in terms of what it is to act intentionally, or should we try to understand what it is to have an intention independently of what it is to act intentionally? | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Acting') | |
| A reaction: Since you can have an intention to act, and yet fail to act, it seems possible to isolate intentions, but not to say a lot about them. Intention may be different prior to actions, and during actions. Early Davidson offered the derived view. |
| 20067 | You can have incompatible desires, but your intentions really ought to be consistent [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Intentions are unlike desires. You can simultaneously desire two things that you know are incompatible. But when you form intentions you are embarking on a course of action, and there is a much stronger requirement of consistency. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Relationship') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why anyone would identify intentions with desires. I would quite like to visit Japan, but have no current intention of doing so. I assume that the belief-plus-desire theory doesn't deny that an uninteresting intention is also needed. |
| 20078 | The normativity of intentions would be obvious if they were internal promises [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: One way to incorporate this [normative] feature of intentions would be to treat them like internal promises. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 8 'Intention') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. The concept of a promise is obviously closely linked to an intention. If you tell your companion exactly where you intend your golf ball to land, you can thereby be held accountable, in a manner resembling a promise (but not a promise). |
| 20044 | The rationalistic approach says actions are intentional when subject to justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The rationalistic approach to agency says that what characterises intentional action is that it is subject to justification. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 2 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: [Anscombe is the chief articulator of this view] This seems to incorporate action into an entirely intellectual and even moral framework. |
| 20036 | Intentional agency is seen in internal precursors of action, and in external reasons for the act [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: It is plausible that we find something characteristic of intentional agency when we look inward to the mental precursors of actions, and also when we look outward, to the sensitivity of action to what the environment gives us reasons to do. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'How') | |
| A reaction: This is Stout staking a claim for his partly externalist view of agency. I warm less and less to the various forms of externalism. How often does the environment 'give us reasons' to do things? How can we act, without internalising those reasons? |
| 20066 | Speech needs sustained intentions, but not prior intentions [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The intentional action of including the word 'big' in a sentence does not require a prior intention to say it. What is required is that you say it with the intention of saying it. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Relationship') | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but makes it a lot harder to say what an intention is, and to separate it out for inspection. You can't speak a good English sentence while withdrawing the intention involved. |
| 20073 | Bratman has to treat shared intentions as interrelated individual intentions [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Bratman has to construe what we think of as shared intentions as not literally involving shared intentions, but as involving interrelating of individual intentions. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: Stout rejects this, for an account based on adaptability of behaviour. To me, naturalism and sparse ontology favour Bratman (1984) . I like my idea that shared intentions are conditional individual intentions. If the group refuses, I drop the intention. |
| 20069 | A request to pass the salt shares an intention that the request be passed on [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: When one person says to another 'please pass the salt', and the other engages with this utterance and understands it, they share the intention that this request is passed from the first person to the second. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Shared') | |
| A reaction: Simple and intriguing. We form an intention, and then ask someone else to take over our intention. When the second person takes over the intention, I give up the intention to acquire the salt, because it is on its way. It's political. |
| 20070 | An individual cannot express the intention that a group do something like moving a piano [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: It is unnatural to describe an individual as intending that the group do something together. ...What could possibly express my intention that we move the piano upstairs? | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Shared') | |
| A reaction: Two possible answers: it makes sense if I have great authority within the group. 'I'm going to move the piano - you take that end'. Or, such expressions are implicitly conditional - 'I intend to move the piano (if you will also intend it)'. |
| 20071 | An intention is a goal to which behaviour is adapted, for an individual or for a group [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: An individual intention is a goal to which an individual's behaviour adapts. A shared intention is a goal to which a group of people's behaviour collectively adapts. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Shared') | |
| A reaction: This is part of Stout's externalist approach to actions. One would have thought that an intention was a state of mind, not a goal in the world. The individual's goal can be psychological, but a group's goal has to be an abstraction. |
| 20038 | If the action of walking is just an act of will, then movement of the legs seems irrelevant [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: If volitionism identifies the action with an act of will, this has the unpalatable consequence (for a Cartesian dualist) that walking does not happen in the material world. It would be the same act of walking if you had no legs, or no body at all. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'Volitionism') | |
| A reaction: Is this attacking a caricature version of volitionism? Descartes would hardly subscribe to the view that no legs are needed for walking. If my legs spasmodically move without an act of will, we typically deny that this is an action. |
| 20050 | Most philosophers see causation as by an event or state in the agent, rather than the whole agent [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Most philosophers are uneasy with understanding the causal aspect of actions in terms of an 'agent' making something happen. They prefer to think of some event in the agent, or state of the agent, making something happen. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 4 'The causal') | |
| A reaction: There is a bit of a regress if you ask what caused the event or state of affairs. It is tempting to stop the buck at the whole agent, or else carry the reduction on down to neurons, physics and the outside world. |
| 20052 | If you don't mention an agent, you aren't talking about action [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Once you lose the agent from an account of action it stops being an account of action at all. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 4 'Agent') | |
| A reaction: [he refers to Richard Taylor 1966] This could be correct without implying that agents offer a unique mode of causation. The concept of 'agent' is reducible. |
| 20077 | If you can judge one act as best, then do another, this supports an inward-looking view of agency [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Weakness of will is a threat to the outward-looking approach to agency. It seems you can hold one thing to be the thing to do, and at the same time do something else. Many regard this as a decisive reason to follow a more inward-looking approach. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 8 'Weakness') | |
| A reaction: It hadn't struck me before that weakness of will is a tool for developing an accurate account of what is involved in normal agency. Some facts that guide action are internal to the agent, such as greed for sugary cakes. |
| 20049 | Maybe your emotions arise from you motivations, rather than being their cause [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Instead of assuming that your motivation depends on your emotional state, we might say that your emotional state depends on how you are motivated to act. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'Emotions') | |
| A reaction: [He says this move is made by Kant, Thomas Nagel and McDowell] Stout favours the view that it is external facts which mainly give rise to actions, and presumably these facts are intrinsically motivating, prior to any emotions. I don't disagree. |
| 20046 | For an ascetic a powerful desire for something is a reason not to implement it [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: If wanting something most were the same as having the most powerful feelings about it, then as an ascetic (rejecting what you most powerfully desire), your wanting most to eat a bun would be your reason for not eating the bun. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'The belief-') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like reason overruling desire, but the asceticism can always be characterised as a meta-desire. |
| 20060 | Beliefs, desires and intentions are not events, so can't figure in causal relations [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Beliefs, desires and intentions are states of mind rather than events, but events are the only things that figure in causal relations. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Do beliefs') | |
| A reaction: This is exactly why we have the concept of 'the will' - because it is a mental state to which we attribute active causal powers. We then have to explain how this 'will' is related to the other mental states (which presume motivate or drive it?). |
| 20055 | A standard view says that the explanation of an action is showing its rational justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The idea running through the work of Aristotle, Kant, Anscombe and Davidson is that explanation of action involves justifying that action or making it rationally intelligible. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Psychological') | |
| A reaction: Stout goes on to say that instead you could give the 'rationalisation' of the action, which is psychological facts which explain the action, without justifying it. The earlier view may seem a little optimistic and intellectualist. |
| 20056 | In order to be causal, an agent's reasons must be internalised as psychological states [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: It is widely accepted that to get involved in the causal process of acting an agent's reasons must be internalised as psychological states. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Psychological') | |
| A reaction: This doesn't say whether the 'psychological states' have to be fully conscious. That seems unlikely, given the speed with which we perform some sequences of actions, such as when driving a car, or playing a musical instrument. |
| 20053 | An action is only yours if you produce it, rather than some state or event within you [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: For action to be properly yours it must be you who is the causal originator of the action, rather than some state or event within you. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 4 'Agent') | |
| A reaction: [He invokes Chisholm 1966] The idea here is that we require not only 'agent causation', but that the concept of agent must include free will. It seems right we ought to know whether or not an action is 'mine'. Nothing too fancy is needed for this! |
| 20048 | There may be a justification relative to a person's view, and yet no absolute justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In a relativistic notion of justification, in a particular system, there is a reason for a vandal to smash public property, even though, using an absolute conception of justification, there is no reason for him to do so. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'The difference') | |
| A reaction: I suppose Kantians would say that the aim of morality is to make your personal (relative) justification coincide with what seems to be the absolute justification. |
| 20068 | Describing a death as a side-effect rather than a goal may just be good public relations [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The real signficance of the doctrine of double effect can be public relations. You can put a better spin on an action by describing a death as an unfortunate collateral consequence, rather than as a goal of the action | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Doctrine') | |
| A reaction: The problem is that it the principle is usually invoked in situations where it is not clear where some bad effect is intended, and it is very easy to lie in such situations. In football, we can never quite decide whether a dangerous tackle was intended. |
| 4284 | All moral life depends ultimately on piety, which is our recognition of our own dependence [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The three forms of moral life (respect for persons, the pursuit of virtue and natural sympathy) all depend, in the last analysis, on piety, which is the deep-down recognition of our frailty and dependence. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.56) | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre agrees. 'Piety' is an odd word, which attempts to link the point to religious teachings. 'Dependence' seems an adequate term. But can fully independent creatures dispense with morality? I think not. |
| 4273 | Kant's Moral Law is the rules rational beings would accept when trying to live by agreement [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: We can see the Kantian 'Moral Law' as consisting precisely in those rules which rational beings would accept, when attempting to live by agreement. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.30) | |
| A reaction: If this combines Kantian notions of duty with the obligations of contracts, it is the core of a very powerful moral theory. See the work of Tim Scanlon. Classic problems are still the weak, animals and free riders. |
| 4274 | The modern virtues are courage, prudence, wisdom, temperance, justice, charity and loyalty [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The antique virtues of courage, prudence, wisdom, temperance and justice, amplified by Christian charity and pagan loyalty, still form the core idea of human excellence. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I always think sense of humour has become a key modern virtue. Where did that come from? Maybe a sense of irony is a good thing. How about efficiency (which is Plato's idea of justice!)? |
| 4286 | Only just people will drop their own self-interests when faced with an impartial verdict [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Only just people will act on the impartial verdict when their own interests conflict with it. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.61) | |
| A reaction: The Kantian account of the virtues. Virtues are seen in the acceptance of a range of obvious human duties. Very helpful point if one is aiming for one unified theory of morality. |
| 4283 | Sympathy can undermine the moral order just as much as crime does [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: A person who lives by sympathy may undermine the moral order as effectively as the one who lives by crime. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.54) | |
| A reaction: A slightly chilling remark. Presumably one should not feel too much for suffering which is deserved. What about unavoidable suffering? It is certainly important to see that some suffering is morally good (e.g. grief or remorse). |
| 4290 | That which can only be done by a callous person, ought not to be done [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: That which can only be done by a callous person, ought not to be done. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.86) | |
| A reaction: The problem cases all arise in wartime. Ideally we want to show sympathy even when being necessarily ruthless, but in practice we send the callous ones to do the horrible deed. |
| 4285 | As soon as we drop self-interest and judge impartially, we find ourselves agreeing about conflicts [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: As soon as we set our own interests aside and look on human relations with the eye of the impartial judge, we find ourselves agreeing over the rights and wrongs of any conflict. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.59) | |
| A reaction: A nice, and fairly plausible, defence of Kantian ethics. Maybe the UN should actually settle all disputes, instead of just peace-keeping. The idea merely describes the function of the law, and especially an independent judiciary. |
| 4287 | Utilitarianism merely guides us (by means of sympathy) when the moral law is silent [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarian thinking does not replace or compete with the moral law, but guides us when the moral law is silent and only sympathy speaks. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.63) | |
| A reaction: If the moral law is silent, it is not quite clear why we should follow sympathy rather than contempt. There is the well-known danger here of the moral law turning out to lack content. |
| 4282 | Morality is not a sort of calculation, it is what sets the limits to when calculation is appropriate [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It is nearer the truth to see morality as setting the limits to practical reasoning, rather than being a species of it. Moral principles tell us precisely that we must go no further along the path of calculation. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.52) | |
| A reaction: Well said. If you are assessing whether an act of vicious brutality is required, you have probably already gone morally astray. It is not hard, though, to think of counterexamples, especially in wartime. |
| 4281 | Utilitarianism says we can't blame Stalin yet, but such a theory is a sick joke [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Stalin and Hitler justified their actions in utilitarian terms, ..and no one can accuse them, for who knows what the long-term effects of their actions might be? But a morality which can't pass final judgement on Hitler or Stalin is a kind of sick joke. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.52) | |
| A reaction: A powerful argument against simplistic consequentialism. We can judge an action at any time, even beforehand, and that must be part of morality, which can't just observe the unfolding consequences. |
| 4280 | Utilitarianism is wrong precisely because it can't distinguish animals from people [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It was precisely the inability of utilitarianism to explain the distinction between animals and people which led to its rejection. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.50) | |
| A reaction: A nice turning of the tables, rejecting the utilitarian pride in incorporating animals into their theory where others (like Kant) reject them. Yet in one respect (suffering) they are inescapably very like us. |
| 4296 | Brutal animal sports are banned because they harm the personality of the watcher [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Dog-fights and bear-baiting are naturally forbidden by law, because they threaten the personality of those who attend them. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.107) | |
| A reaction: Hm. If this is so, it is mainly because it takes place in a closed pen, where we can get a close look at the brutality and blood. It could be said to be more honest than hunting with gun or hounds. 'Go on eyes, look your worst'. |
| 4288 | Many breeds of animals have needs which our own ancestors planted in them [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Many breeds of animals have needs which our own ancestors planted in them. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.75) | |
| A reaction: He is talking about race horses and St Bernards. This doesn't avoid the moral dilemma, because we could race horses die out if we thought we had created a bad life for them. |
| 4293 | Introducing a natural means of controlling animal population may not be very compassionate [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to believe that those who would introduce wolves as a means of controlling the deer population have much sympathy for deer. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.91) | |
| A reaction: Good point. If we assume that culling is required at all, then the decisive human actions which shock us on television may be nicer than the natural deaths that occur during the night. |
| 4295 | We favour our own animals over foreign ones because we see them as fellow citizens [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: We don't give help to British animals (through the RSPCA) rather than foreign animals because of their nearness or needs, but because of our sense of them as fellow citizens. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.104) | |
| A reaction: A bit strong. It may, in fact, be because we look after them the way we look after the rest of our property. Even Kantians can be sentimental sometimes. |
| 4268 | Animals command our sympathy and moral concern initially because of their intentionality [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that the concept of intentionality introduces the first genuine claim of animals upon our sympathies and our moral concern. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.16) | |
| A reaction: Good. If one's approach to morality is Humean (via sympathy) this seems right. Utilitarianism bases animal rights on qualia (pleasures and pains). |
| 4291 | Letting your dog kill wild rats, and keeping rats for your dog to kill, are very different [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: There is a difference between the person who allows his terrier to kill wild rats, and the person who keeps tame rats for his terrier to kill. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.87) | |
| A reaction: There are areas in the middle, where I encourage pheasants to breed 'wild' on my land. The purchase of a Rottweiller also tests the moral boundaries here. |
| 4263 | Many of the stranger forms of life (e.g. worms) interest us only as a species, not as individuals [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Most of the stranger forms of life (worms, fleas, locusts etc.) are not really suitors for our moral concern, and interest us primarily as species, and only rarely as individuals. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.13) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but that seems to reflect on us, rather than cutting nature at the joints. As soon as you look closely, you recognise an individual rather than a member of a species. |
| 4276 | An animal has individuality if it is nameable, and advanced animals can respond to their name [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: An animal has acquired individuality if the gift of a proper name seems appropriate, the high point being reached with animals such as dogs which actually respond to their own name. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.39) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, even though it is rather chauvinistic. I might name the fleas in my circus, but regard a whole section of the human race as indistinguishable and not worth naming. |
| 4277 | I may avoid stepping on a spider or flower, but fellow-feeling makes me protect a rabbit [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: I instinctively recoil from stepping on a spider or a forget-me-knot in my path, but neither of these responses expresses the fellow-feeling that forbids me to step on a rabbit or a mouse. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.41) | |
| A reaction: It is fellow-feeling that makes us prefer mammals to reptiles. It seems wrong to build a moral system purely on empathy, because psychopaths don't even empathise with nice human beings. Externalism in morality. |
| 4278 | Lucky animals are eaten by large predators, the less lucky starve, and worst is death by small predators [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Lucky animals die in the jaws of a large predator; predators themselves are less lucky, when they die of lingering starvation; least fortunate are those killed by smaller creatures, such as maggots and bacteria. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.43) | |
| A reaction: A nice insight, even if it does slide into claiming that we are simply large predators, and that therefore fox-hunting is a virtue… |
| 4279 | We can easily remove the risk of suffering from an animal's life, but we shouldn't do it [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to remove the risk of suffering from an animal's life, but the result is not a life which an animal should lead. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.44) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear where the "should" derives from here. You can't save them all, and large interventions would destroy the ecosystem. But should we never, say, put a victim out of its misery? |
| 4289 | Sheep and cattle live comfortable lives, and die an enviably easy death [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Sheep and beef cattle live a quiet and comfortable life among their companions, and are despatched in ways which human beings, if they are rational, must surely envy. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.81) | |
| A reaction: No rational person could envy a premature death, and we don't wait for cattle to be old before eating them. A quick death is little consolation for being murdered, and many people would prefer a slower death (without agony, of course). |
| 4292 | Concern for one animal may harm the species, if the individual is part of a bigger problem [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Too much concern for individual animals may in fact harm the species, by promoting diseased or degenerate members, or preventing population control. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.87) | |
| A reaction: Okay till we reach human beings, where this principle won't go away, even if further principles about personhood, rationality and deep sympathy enter the picture. We can't be utilitarian about animals, and something else about humans. |
| 4294 | Animals are outside the community of rights, but we still have duties towards them [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Animals exist outside the web of reciprocal rights and obligations, created by dialogue, but because they have no rights it does not mean that we have no duties towards them. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Animal Rights and Wrongs [1996], p.97) | |
| A reaction: The modern Kantian view of animals, though Kant struggled to show why we might have any duties to animals. Is mere compassion enough to produce a duty, or is it a luxurious indulgence of our nature? |
| 20083 | Aristotelian causation involves potentiality inputs into processes (rather than a pair of events) [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In the Aristotelian approach to causation (unlike the Humean approach, involving separate events), A might cause B by being an input into some process (realisation of potentiality) that results in B. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'Trying') | |
| A reaction: Stout relies quite heavily on this view for his account of human action. I like processes, so am sympathetic to this view. If there are two separate events, it is not surprising that Hume could find nothing to bridge the gap between them. |