49 ideas
1630 | We can only see an alien language in terms of our own thought structures (e.g. physical/abstract) [Quine] |
Full Idea: We are prone to talk about physical and abstract objects. It is hard to know how else to talk, because we are bound to adapt any alien pattern to our own in the very process of understanding or translating the alien sentences. | |
From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.I,p.1) |
5747 | "No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia] |
Full Idea: Quine's well-known slogan "no entity without identity" means that no object should be admitted into our ontology unless its identity conditions, the conditions that say which object it is, have been settled. | |
From: report of Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960]) by Joseph Melia - Modality Ch.4 | |
A reaction: This invites science fiction scenarios, where we admit the existence of something before we have a clue what it is (whether it is physical, hallucination, divine..). Quine's slogan seems attractive but optimistic. How 'settled'? |
7925 | There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine] |
Full Idea: The lack of a proper identity concept for attributes (properties) is a lack that philosophers feel impelled to supply; for, what sense is there in saying there are attributes when there is no sense in saying when there is one attribute and when two? | |
From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], IV) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being a really crucial question. There is a mistaken tendency to take any possible linguistic predicate as implying a natural property. I sympathise with the sceptics here (see Ideas 4029, 3906, 3322). How to individuate properties? |
13387 | Our conceptual scheme becomes more powerful when we posit abstract objects [Quine] |
Full Idea: There is no denying the access of power that accrues to our conceptual scheme through the positing of abstract objects. | |
From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], §5) | |
A reaction: This seems right, both in its use of the word 'posit', and in its general pragmatic claim. So why? If they enable us to grapple with the world better, it must be because of their power of generalisation. They are nets thrown over chunks of reality. |
8277 | I prefer 'no object without identity' to Quine's 'no entity without identity' [Lowe on Quine] |
Full Idea: To adapt Quine's famous slogan ('no entity without identity'), I prefer to say 'no object without identity'. | |
From: comment on Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], p.52) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 7.1 | |
A reaction: Quine was trying to make us all more scientific, but Lowe is closer to common sense. The sky is an entity, most of us would say, but with very shaky identity-conditions. A wave of the sea is a good example. |
23101 | Intuitions don't prove things; they just receptivity to interpretations [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Appeal to intuitions cannot prove or disprove anything. They merely create receptivity to particular interpretations of particular cases. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 04.3) | |
A reaction: A nice point, but more is needed. A gun to the head can create receptivity. What distinguishes good from bad intuitions? Why are intuitions different from mere whims or hopes? |
3488 | Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle] |
Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V | |
A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can. |
5689 | Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker] |
Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396 | |
A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it. |
23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'. |
1631 | You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine] |
Full Idea: We could know the necessary and sufficient stimulatory conditions of every possible act of utterance, in a foreign language, and still not know how to determine what objects the speakers of that language believe in. | |
From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.III,p.11) | |
A reaction: I just don't believe this, because the same scepticism then creeps into discussions of native speakers of a single language, and all communcation is blighted - which is nonsense. |
1632 | Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine] |
Full Idea: Translation of our remote past or future discourse into the terms we now know could be about as tenuous and arbitrary a projection as translation of a heathen language was seen to be. | |
From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.V,p.25) | |
A reaction: Is he seriously saying that we can't understand Shakespeare, because holism implies that we would have to be Elizabethans? So scholarship is in vain? Is yesterday the 'past'? |
23086 | Liberals say we are only responsible for fully autonomous actions [Kekes] |
Full Idea: The liberal view is that people can be held responsible only for actions that are in their control: actions that reflect the agents' unforced choices, evaluations, and understanding of their significance - that is, autonomous actions. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 01.5) | |
A reaction: Kekes, who is a somewhat right wing anti-liberal, thinks people should be mainly held responsible for the consequences, unless they have a very good excuse. |
23100 | Collective responsibility conflicts with responsibility's requirement of authonomy [Kekes] |
Full Idea: The ascription of collective responsibility is inconsistent with …the belief that people should be held responsible for only their own autonomous actions. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 04) | |
A reaction: The autonomy would need to be displaced, from the decision to act to the decision of identify with the organisation. But if you invest in an evil group you are responsible for actions you never even knew occurred (never mind autonomy). |
23093 | Moral and causal responsibility are not clearly distinct [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Moral and causal responsibility cannot be distinguished as clearly as the liberal strategy requires. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.2) | |
A reaction: I take assessment to be a two-stage operation. It is usually easy to assign causal responsibility. Moral responsibiity is quite different. Our negligence can make us morally responsible for an event we didn’t cause. |
23096 | Morality should aim to prevent all evil actions, not just autonomous ones [Kekes] |
Full Idea: If one main task of morality is to prevent evil, then morality must be concerned with all evil-producing actions, not just autonomous ones. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.3) | |
A reaction: Hm. Is placing a railing next to a flight of steps a moral action? Possibly. |
23087 | Much human evil is not autonomous, so moral responsibility need not be autonomous [Kekes] |
Full Idea: If much evil is due to nonautonomous actions, then liberals cannot be right in idenitfying the domain of moral responsibility with the domain of autonomy. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 02.1) | |
A reaction: One might evade this anti-liberal thought by making responsibility directly proportional to degree of autonomy. Then the only counterexample would be genuine immorality that is entirely non-autonomous, but is there such a thing? |
23098 | Effects show the existence of moral responsibility, and mental states show the degree [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Psychological states are relevant to the degree of an agent's moral responsibility, while the effects of their actions are relevant to whether the agents are liable to moral responsibility. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.5) | |
A reaction: He has previously offered a problem case for this, where someone's social role makes them fully responsible whatever their mental state. I still think his distinction is helpful. 1) Whose fault is it, then 2) How far are they to blame? Normal practice. |
23089 | Evil people may not be autonomously aware, if they misjudge the situation [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Agents who perform evil nonautonomously do not know what they are doing, because they have made a mistake in understanding or evaluating their own conduct. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 02.4) | |
A reaction: So while liberals say that true evil must be autonomous, Kekes says it may result from factual or evaluative error, for which people are also responsible. |
23094 | Ought implies can means moral responsibility needs autonomy [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Ought implies can translates into the claim that only autonomous agents are morally responsible. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.3) | |
A reaction: Since Kekes identifies autonomy as the key to liberalism, he sees this also as a basic liberal claim (which he rejects). I ought to ring my mother, but my phone is broken (so I ought not to ring my mother?).. |
23095 | Why should moral responsibility depend on autonomy, rather than social role or experience? [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Why should moral responsibility be made to depend on autonomy, rather than on intelligence, education, social role, experience, or whatever? | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.3) | |
A reaction: Social role seems a particularly good one to cite. 'I didn't really understand what I was doing.' 'But it's your job to understand!' |
22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II | |
A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process. |
23090 | Liberals assume people are naturally free, equal, rational, and morally good [Kekes] |
Full Idea: The view of human nature at the core of the liberal faith is that human beings are by their nature free, equal, rational, and morally good. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 02.5) | |
A reaction: These four claims are quite distinct, and should be evaluated separately. I think I'm something of a liberal, but I don't really accept any of them. Hm. I just want all people to have these attributes. |
23117 | Love should be partial, and discriminate in favour of its object [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Love is personal and partial. It is not love if it does not discriminate in favor of its object. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 09.4) | |
A reaction: I agree with that, mainly on the grounds that this is the natural form of human love. Generalised love of mankind seems like a distortion, even if it is well-meaning. |
23119 | Sentimental love distorts its object [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Love is sentimental if it exaggerates the virtues and minimises the vices of its object. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 09.5) | |
A reaction: Not sure about this. It implies that we should retain a streak of cold evaluative objectivity, even about the people we love most. There is difference between knowing a person's qualities, and the importance we attach to those qualities. Forgive vices! |
23088 | Evil is not deviation from the good, any more than good is a deviation from evil [Kekes] |
Full Idea: There is no more reason to think of evil as deviation from the good than there is to think of the good as deviation from evil. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 02.2) | |
A reaction: This is a political moderate right winger defending the concept of evil as a basic and inescapable component of existence, in contrast to liberals who tend to deny 'pure evil'. |
23097 | What matters for morality is the effects of action, not the psychological causes [Kekes] |
Full Idea: What is crucial to morality are the good and evil effects of human actions, not their psychological causes. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.4) | |
A reaction: The context is his attack on the liberal idea that morality only concerns the actions of autonomous agents. Kekes says he is not a full consequentialist. He just urges that consequences be given greater weight. Even Kant must care about that. |
23099 | It is said that if an agent is not autonomous then their evil actions don't reflect on their character [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Liberals deny the reflexivity of evil, …to prevent the evil consequences of an agent's morally deplorable actions from redounding to their detriment. Evil actions are allowed to reflect on their agents only if the agents cause them autonomously. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.5) | |
A reaction: A central question of morality is essentialising character. That is, when does an eater of carrots become a carrot-eater? When does a performer of wicked deeds become a wicked person? Never, say many liberals. Wrong, says Kekes. |
23118 | Awareness of others' suffering doesn't create an obligation to help [Kekes] |
Full Idea: It is a mistaken assumption that knowledge of the sufferings of others creates an obligation to help them. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 09.4) | |
A reaction: A nice question is when that knowledge does become an obligation. The obvious criteria are proximity to the suffering, and capacity to relieve it. But then a wealthy person couldn't walk down the street without such obigations. Hm. |
23109 | The veil of ignorance is only needed because people have bad motivations [Kekes] |
Full Idea: If the darker aspects of human motivation did not exist, there would be no need for Rawls to place his people behind the veil of ignorance. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 07.2) | |
A reaction: All the critics observe that Rawls's blind choosers are nothing like as simple as the mere specks of rationality he seems to imagine. The usual objection is that they are already liberals, but this objection says they are already benevolent. |
23114 | The chief function of the state is to arbitrate between contending visions of the good life [Kekes] |
Full Idea: The chief function of the state is seen to be to maintain what is referred to as the dialogue or conversation among the contending visions of how life should be lived. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 08.4) | |
A reaction: This is Kekes's defence of 'pluralism'. It is not liberal, because liberal freedom, autonomy and equality is only one of the competing visions of the good life. Almost every state suppresses some such visions. |
23116 | Citizenship is easier than parenthood [Kekes] |
Full Idea: It is much easier to be a good citizen than it is to be a good parent. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 09.4) | |
A reaction: A nice observation. It is shocking how many people are bad citizens, given the limited demands. I think philosophers have some responsibility for beliefs and values which people bring to their citizenship. Parents need communal support. |
23103 | Power is meant to be confined to representatives, and subsequent delegation [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Universal adult suffrage and representative government are intended to give everyone equal initial political power, and assure that delegation is the only legitimate means to acquiring greater power. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 05.1) | |
A reaction: The delegation bit is where it all goes wrong. Once you've packed your representative off to the capital, you lose nearly all control over what sort of delegation happens next. It is hard to trust representatives voters have barely met. |
23107 | Prosperity is a higher social virtue than justice [Kekes] |
Full Idea: If social institutions were to have a first virtue, …prosperity would be a much stronger candidate that justice. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 06.3) | |
A reaction: Kekes occasionally pays lip service to ecological issues, but this shows he is not serious. Endless economic growth will kill our planet, so it should never be our prime virtue. Also the impplication that you can't be too prosperous is plainly false. |
23081 | Liberal basics are pluralism, freedom, rights, equality, and distributive justice - for autonomy [Kekes] |
Full Idea: The basic liberal values are pluralism, freedom, rights, equality, and distributive justice. What makes them basically valuable is that they enable individuals to live autonomously. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 01.2) | |
A reaction: Helpful. Kekes identifies respect for autonomy as the single value which unites all liberal doctrines (and he traces it back to Kant). |
23085 | The key liberal values are explained by the one core value, which is autonomy [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Liberals regard pluralism, freedom, rights, equality and distributive justice as basic …but this particular group of values is explained by the true core of liberalism, the inner citadel for whose protection all the liberal battles are waged: autonomy. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 01.5) | |
A reaction: Given that children, soldiers, monks and nuns, and people in old folks homes have very limited autonomy, it is reasonable to query whether it really is so important. I like autonomy if I have external power over my life; not so good when in hospital. |
23092 | Agents have little control over the capacities needed for liberal autonomy [Kekes] |
Full Idea: It is important [for liberals] to realise that agents have no control over their possession of the capacities and opportunities on which their autonomy depends. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.2) | |
A reaction: It can be replied to Kekes that they also have little control over the capacities upon which his prized 'desert' depends. It may be an axiom of all modern political thought that people have less control than we imagine. |
23102 | Liberals are egalitarians, but in varying degrees [Kekes] |
Full Idea: All liberals are egalitarians, though they may be more or less so. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 05.1) | |
A reaction: In the broadest view, this may be the one thing which distinguishes generalised liberals from the rest. To reject it needs a basis for the rejection, and every basis for its flat rejection is anathema to liberals. |
23084 | Are egalitarians too coercive, or not egalitarian enough, or lax over morality? [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Egalitarian liberalism is criticised by classical [freedom] liberals for its coercive redistribution, by socialist liberals for not being egalitarian enough, and by conservative liberals for abandoning moral standards in the guise of neutrality. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 01.4) | |
A reaction: Income tax is 'coercive' distribution, but it is done with general consent in most liberal democracies. An interesting line between the needs of the state and the needs of its most needy citizens. |
23079 | Liberal justice ignores desert, which is the essence of justice [Kekes] |
Full Idea: The liberal conception of justice …excludes the essence of justice: desert. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], Pref) | |
A reaction: Certainly our normal concept of justice includes such thoughts as 'serves him right'. The trouble with the Kekes view is his society is continually morally judging people, and most people's grounds for that are fairly irrational. It's why we have courts. |
23091 | Why do liberals not see a much wider range of values as basic? [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Why are prosperity, order, civility, peace, a healthy environment, security, happiness, and law-abidingness not as important as those thought of by liberals as basic? | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 02.5) | |
A reaction: This presumes that liberals only see a narrow core of values as basic to the structure of the society. Presumably every society should be well disposed towards the nice features listed here. Would their absence wreck the society? |
23112 | Liberals ignore contingency, and think people are good and equal, and institutions cause evil [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Liberals comfortably believe that autonomy minimises contingency, that humans are disposed to the good, that wickedness is due to remediable institutions, and that humans are morally equal because of their autonomy. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 07.4) | |
A reaction: In a nutshell, Kekes thinks liberals are naďve. That institutions cause evil sounds more Marxist than liberal. When individuals become evil, it is reasonable for us to think that this need not have been the case. |
23082 | Liberal distribution cares more about recipients than donors [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Liberal distribution cares more about the rights of the recipients than the rights of the donors. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 01.2) | |
A reaction: Even if you are very left wing indeed, this is an important point. A society dominated by a powerful Robin Hood (steal from the rich, for the poor) is quite likely to end in civil war. But should society allow huge individual wealths to accumulate? |
23106 | To rectify the undeserved equality, we should give men longer and women shorter lives [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Redistribution ought to aim to equalise the life expectancy of men and women, by making men have longer and women shorter lives. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 05.4) | |
A reaction: This is a nice satirical counterexample to the Rawlsian claim that 'undeserved inequalities should somehow be compensated for' [Rawls 1971: 100]. See also Kurt Vonnegut's story 'Harrison Bergeron'. |
23121 | It is just a fact that some people are morally better than others [Kekes] |
Full Idea: It is an obviolus fact that some people are morally better than others and that some are morally worse. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 10.4) | |
A reaction: This could be conceded, without then asserting that the moral ones are superior, or more deserving. That is a social strategy, rather than a fact. We can challenge the criteria for 'morally better', but we can't deny a rankng once it is agreed. |
23105 | It is not deplorable that billionaires have more than millionaires [Kekes] |
Full Idea: It is certainly not intuitively deplorable that billionaires have more money than millionaires. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 05.3) | |
A reaction: Nice point. His claim is that sufficiency is the important feature, and equality is largely irrelevant. The reality, though, is that the billionaires, unlike the millionaires, could solve the insufficiency problem. |
23120 | The problem is basic insufficiency of resources, not their inequality [Kekes] |
Full Idea: If everyone has sufficient resources, it is not objectionable that some have more than others. What is objectionable is that some do not have enough. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 10.3) | |
A reaction: Reasonable, but there seems to be sharp disagreement between the haves and the have-nots over what counts as 'enough'. In an affluent country, does enough include a car, restaurant dining, and foreign holidays? Or just food and shelter? |
23108 | Justice combines consistency and desert; treat likes alike, judging likeness by desert [Kekes] |
Full Idea: Justice is a combination of consistency and desert. Like cases should be treated alike, and likenesses should be evaluated according to desert. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 06.3) | |
A reaction: [compressed] He needs to add that at least the desert should be relevant to the events being assessed. Should people not get a fair trial if they are branded as generally 'undeserving'? Hence the case must be judged before the desert is identified. |
23083 | Liberal welfare focuses on need rather than desert [Kekes] |
Full Idea: In welfare legislation, liberals concentrate on what people need rather than on what they deserve. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 01,2) | |
A reaction: He makes assessing what people 'deserve' sound easy. Do drowning people deserve to be rescued? Do billionaires deserve their wealth (which is not the same as 'did they acquire it legally')? What do rude people deserve? |
23113 | Sexual morality doesn't require monogamy, but it needs a group of sensible regulations [Kekes] |
Full Idea: A moral tradition need not be committed to monogamy, but it must regulate sexual conduct to prevent inbreeding, protect the sexually immature, prohibit some forms of coercion, and assign responsibility for raising children. | |
From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 08.1) | |
A reaction: Wise words, I would say. The sexual liberation which arose with the contraceptive pill rather swamped thoughts of this type. These are just sensible responses to the facts of life. |