26 ideas
| 22396 | We take courage, temperance, wisdom and justice as moral, but Aristotle takes wisdom as intellectual [Foot] |
| Full Idea: For us there are four cardinal moral virtues: courage, temperance, wisdom and justice. But Aristotle and Aquinas call only three of these virtues moral virtues; practical wisdom (phronesis, prudentia) they class with the intellectual virtues. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], p.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'for us'. How many of us rank temperance as a supreme virtue? Aristotle ranks phronesis (which I think of as 'common sense') as the key enabler of the moral virtues, making it unlike the other intellectual virtues. |
| 22397 | Wisdom is open to all, and not just to the clever or well trained [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge that can be acquired only by someone who is clever or who has access to special training is not counted as part of wisdom. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], p.6) | |
| A reaction: Consider Pierre's peasant friend Platon Karatayev in 'War and Peace'. I assume 'special training' rules out anyone with a philosophy degree. |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 22402 | Most people think virtues can be displayed in bad actions [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Hardly anyone sees any difficulty in the thought that virtues may sometimes be displayed in bad actions. The courage of the villain can be spoken of as quite unproblematic. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], III) | |
| A reaction: She cites Peter Geach as a sole opponent of this view. The courage of the entire German army in WWII seems to fall into this category. The boldness of villains has to impress the virtuous but timid. |
| 23145 | Virtues are intended to correct design flaws in human beings [Foot, by Driver] |
| Full Idea: A popular view (expressed by Philippa Foot) is that the virtues work to 'correct' for the baser human impulses and motives. …Virtues are solutions to design flaws in human beings. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978]) by Julia Driver - The Virtues and Human Nature 1 | |
| A reaction: Quite a plausible thought. Not so much design flaws, though, as natural traits of character that suited hunter gatherers but not modern cosmopolitan capitalists. Driver disagrees. |
| 22401 | Actions can be in accordance with virtue, but without actually being virtuous [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Some actions are in accordance with virtue without requiring virtue for their performance, whereas others are both in accordance with virtue and such as to show possession of a virtue. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], p.13) | |
| A reaction: She cites the case of an honest trader, who is honest because of self-interest. She is disentangling Kant from his daft idea that only dutiful (and reluctant) actions are virtuous. Kant was only thinking of 'in accordance' cases. |
| 22398 | Virtues are corrective, to resist temptation or strengthen motivation [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The virtues are corrective, each one standing at a point at which there is some temptation to be resisted or deficiency of motivation to be made good. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], II) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple and accurate observation, which I don't remember meeting in Aristotle (...though she cites him as saying that virtues concern what is difficult for us). Justice and charity are given as examples of inadequate motivation. |
| 22403 | Temperance is not a virtue if it results from timidity or excessive puritanism [Foot] |
| Full Idea: In some people temperance is not a virtue, but is rather connected with timidity or with a grudging attitude to the acceptance of good things. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], III) | |
| A reaction: Timidity seems right. The grudging attitude may result from some larger doubts about pleasure, which could be plausible. |
| 22400 | Courage overcomes the fears which should be overcome, and doesn't overvalue personal safety [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The fears that count against a man's courage are those that we think he should overcome, and among them, in a special class, those that reflect the fact that he values his safety too much. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], II) | |
| A reaction: I think that sentence tells us more accurately what courage is than anything in Aristotle's discussion. Ask yourself which of your fears really ought to be overcome, and particularly beware of over-valuing your own safety. But stay safe if you can! |
| 22001 | The real will of the cooperative will replace the 'will of the people' [Marx] |
| Full Idea: Under collective property, the so called will of the people disappears in order to make way for the real will of the cooperative. | |
| From: Karl Marx (Grundrisse [1876], p.563), quoted by Peter Singer - Marx 10 | |
| A reaction: [from an 1874 note on Bakunin's 'Statism and Anarchy'] So how do you settle on the 'real' will of a cooperative? The travesty is when a ruling elite decide that, without consultation. An institution is needed. This is still a social contract. |