45 ideas
| 8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: It was in the seventeenth and eighteenth century that morality came generally to be understood as offering a solution to the problems posed by human egoism and that the content of morality came to be largely equated with altruism. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: It was the elevation of altruism that caused Nietzsche's rebellion. The sixteenth century certainly looks striking cynical to modern eyes. The development was an attempt to secularise Jesus. Altruism has a paradox: it needs victims. |
| 8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Twentieth century social life turns out in key part to be the concrete and dramatic re-enactment of eighteenth-century philosophy. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This suggest a two hundred year lag between the philosophy and its impact on the culture. One might note the Victorian insistence on 'duty' (e.g. in George Eliot), alongside Mill's view that the Kantian account of it didn't work (Idea 3768). |
| 8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The failure, in the Enlightenment, of philosophy to provide what religion could no longer furnish was an important cause of philosophy losing its central cultural role and becoming a marginal, narrowly academic subject. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: A strange way of presenting the situation. Philosophy has never aspired to furnish beliefs for the masses. Plato offered them myths. The refutation of religion was difficult and complex. There is no returning from there to a new folk simplicity. |
| 3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Once we move beyond investigating correlations between observables the question of what does or should guide our choice between alternative explanatory accounts becomes problematic. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IX.2) |
| 3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.3) |
| 3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We are only justified in regarding scientific practice as the very paradigm of rationality if we can justify the claim that scientific change is rationally explicable. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.2) |
| 3854 | Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: For positivists it was taken that while theory change meant change in the meaning of theoretical terms, the meaning of observational terms was invariant under theory change. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |
| 3855 | Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: The critics of positivism attacked the conception of a dichotomy between theory and observation. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |
| 8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Arguments in philosophy rarely take the form of proofs; and the most successful arguments on topics central to philosophy never do. (The ideal of proof is a relatively barren one in philosophy). | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: He seems proud of this, but he must settle for something which is less than proof, which has to be vindicated to the mathematicians and scientists. I agree, though. Plato is the model, and the best philosophy builds a broad persuasive picture. |
| 3869 | More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: If a theory is a better approximation to the truth, then it is likely that it will have greater predictive power. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VIII.8) |
| 3861 | Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We cannot explicate a useful notion of verisimilitude in terms of the number of truths and the number of falsehoods generated by a theory, because they are infinite. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.4) |
| 3867 | De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: A necessary truth is 'de re' if its necessity arises from the way the world is. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.6) |
| 3872 | We must assess the truth of beliefs in identifying them [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We cannot determine what someone's beliefs are independently of assessing to some extent the truth or falsity of the beliefs. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.4) |
| 8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There is something extraordinary in the coexistence of empiricism and natural science in the same culture, for they represent radically different and incompatible ways of approaching the world. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: I would say that science is commitment to an ontology, and empiricism is a commitment to epistemology. It is a very nice point, given the usual assumption that science is an empirical activity. See Idea 7621. Strict empiricism distorts science. |
| 3857 | Defeat relativism by emphasising truth and reference, not meaning [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: The challenge of incommensurability can be met once it is realised that in comparing theories the notions of truth and reference are more important than that of meaning. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.6) |
| 3858 | A full understanding of 'yellow' involves some theory [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: A full grasp of the concept '…is yellow' involves coming to accept as true bits of theory; that is, generalisations involving the term 'yellow'. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.2) |
| 8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Just as unpredictability does not entail inexplicability, so predictability does not entail explicability. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: The second half is not quite as obvious as the first. The location of lightning strikes is an example of the first. He gives examples of the second, but they all seem to be very complex cases which might be explained, if only we knew enough. |
| 3862 | All theories contain anomalies, and so are falsified! [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: According to Feyerabend all theories are born falsified, because no theory has ever been totally free of anomalies. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3863 | The anomaly of Uranus didn't destroy Newton's mechanics - it led to Neptune's discovery [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: When scientists observed the motion of Uranus, they did not give up on Newtonian mechanics. Instead they posited the existence of Neptune. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3864 | Anomalies are judged against rival theories, and support for the current theory [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Whether to reject an anomaly has to be decided on the basis of the availability of a rival theory, and on the basis of the positive evidence for the theory in question. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3865 | Why should it matter whether or not a theory is scientific? [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Why should it be so important to distinguish between theories that are scientific and those that are not? | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IV.3) |
| 8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Social sciences have discovered no law-like generalisations whatsoever, ...and for the most part they adopt a very tolerant attitude to counter-examples. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is as much to do with a narrow and rigid view of what 'science' is supposed to be, as a failure of the social sciences. Have such sciences explained anything? I suspect that they have explained a lot, often after the facts. |
| 3866 | If theories are really incommensurable, we could believe them all [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: If theories are genuinely incommensurable why should I be faced with the problem of choosing between them? Why not believe them all? | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.1) |
| 21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], p.201), quoted by Michael J. Sandel - Justice: What's the right thing to do? 09 | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre is a great champion of the narrative view of the Self. Does this mean that if you had total amnesia, but retained other faculties, you could make no decisions? Can you start a new story whenever you like? |
| 8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: AI machines have four types of unpredictability: they can't predict radical innovation or future maths proofs; they couldn't predict the outcome of their own decisions; their relations with other computers would be a game-theory tangle; and power failure. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This isn't an assertion that they lack 'free will', just a very accurate observation of how the super new machines would face exactly the same problems that we ourselves face. |
| 3871 | Explaining an action is showing that it is rational [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: To explain an action as an action is to show that it is rational. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.2) |
| 8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: This contains a self-evident paradox - that success would be failure. The proposal suits philosophers more than it would suit the folk. Less seeking and more getting on with it seems good, if the activity is a 'flourishing' one. |
| 8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: We possess simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have - very largely, if not entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 1) | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre's famous (or notorious) assault on modern ethics. We obviously can't prove him wrong by spouting moral talk. Are we actually more wicked than our ancestors? There is, I think, a relativism problem in the 20th centurty, but that is different. |
| 8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There are good reasons for distinguishing between expressions of personal preference and evaluative expressions, as the first depend on who utters them to whom, while the second are not dependent for reason-giving force on the context of utterance. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: The sceptics will simply say that in the second type of expression the speaker tries to adopt a tone of impersonal authority, but it is merely an unjustified attempt to elevate personal preferences. "Blue just IS the best colour". |
| 8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Moral judgements are linguistic survivals from the practices of classical theism which have lost the context provided by these practices. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: He is sort of right. Richard Taylor is less dramatic and more plausible on this (Ideas 5065, 5066, 5077). Big claims about 'duty' have become rather hollow, but the rights and wrongs of (e.g.) mistreating children don't seem to need theism. |
| 8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: A central thesis of this book is that the breakdown of the project (of 1630 to 1850) of an independent rational justification of morality provided the historical background against which the predicaments of our own culture can become intelligible. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: Possibly the most important question of our times is whether the Enlightenment failed. MacIntyre's claim is followed by an appeal for a return to Aristotelian/Thomist virtues. Continentals seem to have responded by sliding into relativism. |
| 8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: For the alternative view, see Kripke (Idea 4948). If Kripke is right about logic, I don't see why the same view should have some force in morality. At the bottom of all morality is an intuition that life is worth the struggle. How do you prove that? |
| 8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: It is only when man is thought of as an individual prior to and apart from all roles that 'man' ceases to be a functional concept. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the one key idea at the heart of the revival of virtue ethics in modern times. It pinpoints what may be the single biggest disaster in intellectual history - the isolation of the individual. Yet it led to freedom, rights, and lots of good things. |
| 8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: In reply to the question of what kinds of approval are expressed by the feelings or attitudes of moral judgments, every version of emotivism either remains silent, or becomes viciously circular by identifying it as moral approval. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be an underlying assumption that moral judgements are sharply separated from other judgements, of which I am not convinced. I approve of creating a beautiful mural for an old folks home free of charge, but it must be beautiful. |
| 8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Expression of feeling is not a function of the meaning of sentences, but of their use, as when a teacher shouts at a pupil "7 x 7 = 49!", where the expression of feeling or attitude has nothing whatsoever to do with its meaning. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This point is what underlies the Frege-Geach problem for emotivism, and is a very telling point. Apart from in metaethics, no one has ever put forward a theory of meaning that says it is just emotion. ...Unless it concerns speakers' intentions? |
| 8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Analytical moral philosophers resist emotivism because moral reasoning does occur, but there can be logical linkages between various moral judgements of a kind that emotivism could not allow for ('therefore' and 'if...then' express no moral feelings). | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Frege-Geach Problem', nicely expressed, and is the key reason why emotivism seems unacceptable - it is a theory about language, but it just doesn't explain moral discourse sufficiently. |
| 8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: To a large degree people now think, talk and act as if emotivism was true, no matter what their avowed theoretical standpoint may be. Emotivism has become embodied in our culture. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that it is moderately educated people who have swallowed emotivism, in the same way that they have swallowed relativism; it provides an excuse for neglectly the pursuit of beauty, goodness and truth, in favour of pleasure. |
| 8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Maybe we need to attend to the virtues first in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: I think MacIntyre's project is exactly right. Morality is about how humans should live their lives. A bunch of robots could implement a set of moral rules, or make contracts, or maximise one another's benefits. The idea of a human community comes first. |
| 7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
| Full Idea: MacIntyre argues that the concept of virtue is secondary to that of a role-figure, where the latter is always defined by some particular tradition and culture. | |
| From: report of Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981]) by Daniel Statman - Introduction to Virtue Ethics §3 | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre is much more of a relativist than Aristotle. There must be some attempt to deal with the problem of a rotten culture which throws up a corrupt role-model. We need a concept of a good culture and of individual flourishing. |
| 8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: This may be presenting character in an excessively moral way. Being lively, for example, is a very distinctive trait of character, but hardly moral. This tells us why philosophers are interested in character, but not why other people are. |
| 8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: If there is nothing to judgements of virtue and vice except the expression of feelings of approval and disapproval, there can be no criteria external to those feelings by appeal to which we may pass judgement upon them. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: The idea that there can be right and wrong feelings may be the key idea in virtue theory. See Idea 5217. A good person would be ashamed to have a bad feeling. Some emotional responses are intrinsically wicked, apart from actions. |
| 8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Moore takes it that to call an action right is simply to say that of the available alternative actions it is the one which does or did as a matter of fact produce the most good. Moore is thus a utilitarian. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: Far be it from me to disagree with MacIntyre on this, but I would have thought that this made him a consequentialist, rather than a utilitarian. Moore doesn't remotely think that pure pleasure or happiness is the good. He's closer to Rashdall (Idea 6673). |
| 8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: His point is that the notion of 'rights' only arises out of a community. However, while you might criticise an individual for absurdly asserting all sorts of dubious rights, no one could criticise them if they asserted the right to defend their own life. |
| 15877 | The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2 | |
| A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts. |
| 8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Omniscience excludes the making of decisions. If God knows everything that will occur, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Aquinas on this] I find it very difficult to see how anyone could read the Bible (see Idea 8008) while keeping this point continually in mind, without seeing the whole book as a piece of blatant anthropomorphism. |