85 ideas
| 13466 | We are all post-Kantians, because he set the current agenda for philosophy [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: We are all post-Kantians, ...because Kant set an agenda for philosophy that we are still working through. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: Hart says that the main agenda is set by Kant's desire to defend the principle of sufficient reason against Hume's attack on causation. I would take it more generally to be the assessment of metaphysics, and of a priori knowledge. |
| 13477 | The problems are the monuments of philosophy [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The real monuments of philosophy are its problems. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he means '....rather than its solutions'. No other subject would be very happy with that sort of claim. Compare Idea 8243. A complaint against analytic philosophy is that it has achieved no consensus at all. |
| 8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes took his method from Galileo, of resolving any complex situation into its logically primitive, simple elements and then using the simple elements to show how the complex situation could be reconstructed. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Reverse engineering of reality. This idea, wherever it comes from, strikes me as the key to the advance of human understanding. No one has yet improved on it as a method, in science or philosophy. Reconstruction needs the mechanism. |
| 13515 | To study abstract problems, some knowledge of set theory is essential [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: By now, no education in abstract pursuits is adequate without some familiarity with sets. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: A heart-sinking observation for those who aspire to study metaphysics and modality. The question is, what will count as 'some' familiarity? Are only professional logicians now allowed to be proper philosophers? |
| 13469 | Tarski showed how we could have a correspondence theory of truth, without using 'facts' [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It is an ancient and honourable view that truth is correspondence to fact; Tarski showed us how to do without facts here. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is a very interesting spin on Tarski, who certainly seems to endorse the correspondence theory, even while apparently inventing a new 'semantic' theory of truth. It is controversial how far Tarski's theory really is a 'correspondence' theory. |
| 13504 | Truth for sentences is satisfaction of formulae; for sentences, either all sequences satisfy it (true) or none do [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: We explain truth for sentences in terms of satisfaction of formulae. The crux here is that for a sentence, either all sequences satisfy it or none do (with no middle ground). For formulae, some sequences may satisfy it and others not. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is the hardest part of Tarski's theory of truth to grasp. |
| 13503 | A first-order language has an infinity of T-sentences, which cannot add up to a definition of truth [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: In any first-order language, there are infinitely many T-sentences. Since definitions should be finite, the agglomeration of all the T-sentences is not a definition of truth. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: This may be a warning shot aimed at Davidson's extensive use of Tarski's formal account in his own views on meaning in natural language. |
| 13500 | Conditional Proof: infer a conditional, if the consequent can be deduced from the antecedent [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: A 'conditional proof' licenses inferences to a conditional from a deduction of its consequent from its antecedent. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: That is, a proof can be enshrined in an arrow. |
| 13502 | ∃y... is read as 'There exists an individual, call it y, such that...', and not 'There exists a y such that...' [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: When a quantifier is attached to a variable, as in '∃(y)....', then it should be read as 'There exists an individual, call it y, such that....'. One should not read it as 'There exists a y such that...', which would attach predicate to quantifier. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: The point is to make clear that in classical logic the predicates attach to the objects, and not to some formal component like a quantifier. |
| 13456 | Set theory articulates the concept of order (through relations) [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It is set theory, and more specifically the theory of relations, that articulates order. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010]) | |
| A reaction: It would seem that we mainly need set theory in order to talk accurately about order, and about infinity. The two come together in the study of the ordinal numbers. |
| 13497 | Nowadays ZFC and NBG are the set theories; types are dead, and NF is only useful for the whole universe [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The theory of types is a thing of the past. There is now nothing to choose between ZFC and NBG (Neumann-Bernays-Gödel). NF (Quine's) is a more specialized taste, but is a place to look if you want the universe. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) |
| 13443 | ∈ relates across layers, while ⊆ relates within layers [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: ∈ relates across layers (Plato is a member of his unit set and the set of people), while ⊆ relates within layers (the singleton of Plato is a subset of the set of people). This distinction only became clear in the 19th century. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: Getting these two clear may be the most important distinction needed to understand how set theory works. |
| 13442 | Without the empty set we could not form a∩b without checking that a and b meet [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Without the empty set, disjoint sets would have no intersection, and we could not form a∩b without checking that a and b meet. This is an example of the utility of the empty set. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: A novice might plausibly ask why there should be an intersection for every pair of sets, if they have nothing in common except for containing this little puff of nothingness. But then what do novices know? |
| 13493 | In the modern view, foundation is the heart of the way to do set theory [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: In the second half of the twentieth century there emerged the opinion that foundation is the heart of the way to do set theory. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) | |
| A reaction: It is foundation which is the central axiom of the iterative conception of sets, where each level of sets is built on previous levels, and they are all 'well-founded'. |
| 13495 | Foundation Axiom: an nonempty set has a member disjoint from it [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The usual statement of Foundation is that any nonempty set has a member disjoint from it. This phrasing is ordinal-free and closer to the primitives of ZFC. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) |
| 13461 | We can choose from finite and evident sets, but not from infinite opaque ones [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: When a set is finite, we can prove it has a choice function (∀x x∈A → f(x)∈A), but we need an axiom when A is infinite and the members opaque. From infinite shoes we can pick a left one, but from socks we need the axiom of choice. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: The socks example in from Russell 1919:126. |
| 13462 | With the Axiom of Choice every set can be well-ordered [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It follows from the Axiom of Choice that every set can be well-ordered. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: For 'well-ordered' see Idea 13460. Every set can be ordered with a least member. |
| 13516 | If we accept that V=L, it seems to settle all the open questions of set theory [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It has been said (by Burt Dreben) that the only reason set theorists do not generally buy the view that V = L is that it would put them out of business by settling their open questions. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: Hart says V=L breaks with the interative conception of sets at level ω+1, which is countable is the constructible view, but has continuum many in the cumulative (iterative) hierarch. The constructible V=L view is anti-platonist. |
| 13441 | Naïve set theory has trouble with comprehension, the claim that every predicate has an extension [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: 'Comprehension' is the assumption that every predicate has an extension. Naïve set theory is the theory whose axioms are extensionality and comprehension, and comprehension is thought to be its naivety. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't, of course, mean that there couldn't be a more modest version of comprehension. The notorious difficulty come with the discovery of self-referring predicates which can't possibly have extensions. |
| 13494 | The iterative conception may not be necessary, and may have fixed points or infinitely descending chains [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: That the iterative sets suffice for most of ZFC does not show they are necessary, nor is it evident that the set of operations has no fixed points (as 0 is a fixed point for square-of), and no infinitely descending chains (like negative integers). | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) | |
| A reaction: People don't seem to worry that they aren't 'necessary', and further measures are possible to block infinitely descending chains. |
| 13457 | A 'partial ordering' is irreflexive and transitive; the sets are ordered, but not the subsets [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: We say that a binary relation R 'partially orders' a field A just in case R is irreflexive (so that nothing bears R to itself) and transitive. When the set is {a,b}, its subsets {a} and {b} are incomparable in a partial ordering. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) |
| 13458 | A partial ordering becomes 'total' if any two members of its field are comparable [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: A partial ordering is a 'total ordering' just in case any two members of its field are comparable, that is, either a is R to b, or b is R to a, or a is b. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 13457 for 'partial ordering'. The three conditions are known as the 'trichotomy' condition. |
| 13460 | 'Well-ordering' must have a least member, so it does the natural numbers but not the integers [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: A total order 'well-orders' its field just in case any nonempty subset B of its field has an R-least member, that is, there is a b in B such that for any a in B different from b, b bears R to a. So less-than well-orders natural numbers, but not integers. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: The natural numbers have a starting point, but the integers are infinite in both directions. In plain English, an order is 'well-ordered' if there is a starting point. |
| 13490 | Von Neumann defines α<β as α∈β [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: One of the glories of Von Neumann's theory of numbers is to define α < β to mean that α ∈ β. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) |
| 13481 | Maybe sets should be rethought in terms of the even more basic categories [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Some have claimed that sets should be rethought in terms of still more basic things, categories. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites F.William Lawvere 1966] It appears to the the context of foundations for mathematics that he has in mind. |
| 13506 | The universal quantifier can't really mean 'all', because there is no universal set [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: All the main set theories deny that there is a set of which everything is a member. No interpretation has a domain with everything in it. So the universal quantifier never gets to mean everything all at once; 'all' does not mean all. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: Could you have an 'uncompleted' universal set, in the spirit of uncompleted infinities? In ordinary English we can talk about 'absolutely everything' - we just can't define a set of everything. Must we 'define' our domain? |
| 13512 | Modern model theory begins with the proof of Los's Conjecture in 1962 [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The beginning of modern model theory was when Morley proved Los's Conjecture in 1962 - that a complete theory in a countable language categorical in one uncountable cardinal is categorical in all. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 9) |
| 13505 | Model theory studies how set theory can model sets of sentences [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Modern model theory investigates which set theoretic structures are models for which collections of sentences. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: So first you must choose your set theory (see Idea 13497). Then you presumably look at how to formalise sentences, and then look at the really tricky ones, many of which will involve various degrees of infinity. |
| 13511 | Model theory is mostly confined to first-order theories [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: There is no developed methematics of models for second-order theories, so for the most part, model theory is about models for first-order theories. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 9) |
| 13513 | Models are ways the world might be from a first-order point of view [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Models are ways the world might be from a first-order point of view. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 9) |
| 13496 | First-order logic is 'compact': consequences of a set are consequences of a finite subset [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: First-order logic is 'compact', which means that any logical consequence of a set (finite or infinite) of first-order sentences is a logical consequence of a finite subset of those sentences. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) |
| 13484 | Berry's Paradox: we succeed in referring to a number, with a term which says we can't do that [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Berry's Paradox: by the least number principle 'the least number denoted by no description of fewer than 79 letters' exists, but we just referred to it using a description of 77 letters. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) | |
| A reaction: I struggle with this. If I refer to 'an object to which no human being could possibly refer', have I just referred to something? Graham Priest likes this sort of idea. |
| 13482 | The Burali-Forti paradox is a crisis for Cantor's ordinals [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The Burali-Forti Paradox was a crisis for Cantor's theory of ordinal numbers. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) |
| 13507 | The machinery used to solve the Liar can be rejigged to produce a new Liar [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: In effect, the machinery introduced to solve the liar can always be rejigged to yield another version the liar. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hans Herzberger 1980-81] The machinery is Tarski's device of only talking about sentences of a language by using a 'metalanguage'. |
| 13459 | The less-than relation < well-orders, and partially orders, and totally orders the ordinal numbers [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: We can show (using the axiom of choice) that the less-than relation, <, well-orders the ordinals, ...and that it partially orders the ordinals, ...and that it totally orders the ordinals. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) |
| 13491 | The axiom of infinity with separation gives a least limit ordinal ω [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The axiom of infinity with separation yields a least limit ordinal, which is called ω. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) |
| 13463 | There are at least as many infinite cardinals as transfinite ordinals (because they will map) [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Since we can map the transfinite ordinals one-one into the infinite cardinals, there are at least as many infinite cardinals as transfinite ordinals. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) |
| 13492 | Von Neumann's ordinals generalise into the transfinite better, because Zermelo's ω is a singleton [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It is easier to generalize von Neumann's finite ordinals into the transfinite. All Zermelo's nonzero finite ordinals are singletons, but if ω were a singleton it is hard to see how if could fail to be the successor of its member and so not a limit. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) |
| 13446 | 19th century arithmetization of analysis isolated the real numbers from geometry [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The real numbers were not isolated from geometry until the arithmetization of analysis during the nineteenth century. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 1) |
| 13509 | We can establish truths about infinite numbers by means of induction [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical induction is a way to establish truths about the infinity of natural numbers by a finite proof. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 5) | |
| A reaction: If there are truths about infinities, it is very tempting to infer that the infinities must therefore 'exist'. A nice, and large, question in philosophy is whether there can be truths without corresponding implications of existence. |
| 13474 | Euclid has a unique parallel, spherical geometry has none, and saddle geometry has several [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: There is a familiar comparison between Euclid (unique parallel) and 'spherical' geometry (no parallel) and 'saddle' geometry (several parallels). | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) |
| 13471 | Mathematics makes existence claims, but philosophers usually say those are never analytic [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that no existence proposition is analytic is one of the few constants in philosophical consciences, but there are many existence claims in mathematics, such as the infinity of primes, five regular solids, and certain undecidable propositions. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) |
| 13488 | Mass words do not have plurals, or numerical adjectives, or use 'fewer' [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Jespersen calls a noun a mass word when it has no plural, does not take numerical adjectives, and does not take 'fewer'. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 3) | |
| A reaction: Jespersen was a great linguistics expert. |
| 7559 | Every part of the universe is body, and non-body is not part of it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The world is corporeal, that is to say, body...and every part of the universe is body, and that which is not body is no part of the universe. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], IV.46) | |
| A reaction: [Hobbes concedes existence to visible spirits, but not invisible ones]. This is the kind of remark which got Hobbes hated. It is also the sort of thing that makes him the best candidate for the 'first modern man'. |
| 13480 | Fregean self-evidence is an intrinsic property of basic truths, rules and definitions [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The conception of Frege is that self-evidence is an intrinsic property of the basic truths, rules, and thoughts expressed by definitions. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], p.350) | |
| A reaction: The problem is always that what appears to be self-evident may turn out to be wrong. Presumably the effort of arriving at a definition ought to clarify and support the self-evident ingredient. |
| 13476 | The failure of key assumptions in geometry, mereology and set theory throw doubt on the a priori [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: In the case of the parallels postulate, Euclid's fifth axiom (the whole is greater than the part), and comprehension, saying was believing for a while, but what was said was false. This should make a shrewd philosopher sceptical about a priori knowledge. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: Euclid's fifth is challenged by infinite numbers, and comprehension is challenged by Russell's paradox. I can't see a defender of the a priori being greatly worried about these cases. No one ever said we would be right - in doing arithmetic, for example. |
| 2356 | Appearance and reality can be separated by mirrors and echoes [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If colours or sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by glasses, and in echoes by reflection, we see they are; where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.01) |
| 2357 | Dreams must be false because they seem absurd, but dreams don't see waking as absurd [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that, being awake, I know I dream not, though when I dream I think myself awake. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.02) |
| 2358 | Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If a man should talk to me of a 'free-will', or any 'free' but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say that he were in an error, but that his words were without a meaning, that is to say, absurd. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.05) |
| 6214 | Liberty and necessity are consistent, as when water freely flows, by necessity [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Liberty and necessity are consistent: as in the water, that hath not only liberty, but a necessity of descending by the channel. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], II.Ch.XI) | |
| A reaction: Hume asserts something similar (Idea 2223), but they both miss the point, which is that libertarians about water would have to believe it didn't need to follow gravity, but could refuse to flow. Freedom of will and freedom of action are quite different. |
| 23987 | The 'simple passions' are appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief [Hobbes, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: For Hobbes the 'simple passions' were appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], I.6) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: This is the standard approach to emotions of Hobbes's time. Modern thinkers probably reject the idea that passions can be simple or basic. Rightly, I think. |
| 13475 | The Fregean concept of GREEN is a function assigning true to green things, and false to the rest [Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: A Fregean concept is a function that assigns to each object a truth value. So instead of the colour green, the concept GREEN assigns truth to each green thing, but falsity to anything else. | |
| From: William D. Hart (The Evolution of Logic [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: This would seem to immediately hit the renate/cordate problem, if there was a world in which all and only the green things happened to be square. How could Frege then distinguish the green from the square? Compare Idea 8245. |
| 2362 | The will is just the last appetite before action [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In deliberation, the last appetite or aversion immediately adhering to the action, or to the omission thereof, is that we call the Will. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: I share his caution about 'the will', but his observation strikes me as inaccurate. When I drink, my 'will' is not my thirst. I take the will to be a feature of my reason. I gave my thirst permission to indulge itself. The will is practical reason? |
| 2363 | Reason is usually general, but deliberation is of particulars [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Reasoning is in general words, but deliberation for the most part is of particulars. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) |
| 2360 | 'Good' is just what we desire, and 'Evil' what we hate [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth 'Good'; and the object of his hate or aversion 'Evil'. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: This meets the Frege-Geach Problem - that we can have these feelings while reading ancient history, but we can't possibly 'desire' any of that. This is better on evil than on good. |
| 2368 | Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The desires and other passions of man are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) | |
| A reaction: That is a pretty flat rejection of natural law, as you might expect from an empiricist. So prior to the first law-making, no one ever did anything wrong? Hm. |
| 2359 | Desire and love are the same, but in the desire the object is absent, and in love it is present [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Desire and love are the same thing, save that by desire we always signify the absence of the object, by love most commonly the presence of the same. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: Implausible reductivism from Hobbes. Plenty of counterexamples to this. You work it out! |
| 2370 | All voluntary acts aim at some good for the doer [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) | |
| A reaction: Nonsense. You can only describe sacrificial acts for loved ones, such as children, in this way if this proposal is a tautology. Hobbes cannot know the truth of this claim. |
| 8015 | Hobbes wants a contract to found morality, but shared values are needed to make a contract [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes makes two incompatible demands of the original contract: he wishes it to be the foundation of all shared and common standards and rules; but he also wishes it to be a contract, which needs prior shared and common standards. | |
| From: comment on Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], Pt 1) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: At the very least, the participants in a contract must be committed to keeping it even when it is not convenient. But a common purpose seems to be needed too, which makes the contract itself intrinsically valuable. Similar objections to Kant. |
| 2371 | A contract is a mutual transfer of rights [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The mutual transferring of right is that which men call 'contract'. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 2372 | The person who performs first in a contract is said to 'merit' the return, and is owed it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He that performeth first in the case of a contract, is said to 'merit' that which he is to receive by the performance of the other, and he hath it as due. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 5337 | For Hobbes the Golden Rule concerns not doing things, whereas Jesus encourages active love [Hobbes, by Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes put the Golden Rule as 'do NOT do to others what you would NOT want done to yourself'. Jesus's formulation encouraged active love. Most Westerners conceive their moral duty as not to do harm, rather than actively doing good. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Owen Flanagan - The Problem of the Soul p.20n | |
| A reaction: This idea probably runs very deep into western culture, where most people feel that they are being very morally good when they are sitting at home and not actually annoying anyone. Utilitarianism also offers a challenge to such complacency. |
| 2374 | In the violent state of nature, the merest suspicion is enough to justify breaking a contract [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If a covenant is made with neither party performing presently, but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature (which is war between men) upon reasonable suspicion, it is void. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 8016 | Fear of sanctions is the only motive for acceptance of authority that Hobbes can think of [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes has such a limited view of human motives that he cannot provide any other explanation for the acceptance of authority than the fear of sanctions.. | |
| From: comment on Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], Pt 1) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: There are two alternative views - the conservative view that people naturally welcome and even need authority, because they need to be led; or the Aristotelian view that people are naturally communal, and authority is part of community life. |
| 2375 | Suspicion will not destroy a contract, if there is a common power to enforce it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If there be a common power set over both parties in a contract, with right and force sufficient to compel performance, a contract does not become void as soon as the parties are suspicious. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 2377 | No one who admitted to not keeping contracts could ever be accepted as a citizen [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He therefore that breaketh his covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received into any society. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2379 | If there is a good reason for breaking a contract, the same reason should have stopped the making of it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If any fault of man be sufficient to discharge our covenant made, the same ought in reason to have been sufficient to have hindered the making of it. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2373 | The first performer in a contract is handing himself over to an enemy [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He which performeth first in a contract, does but betray himself to his enemy. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 2382 | Someone who keeps all his contracts when others are breaking them is making himself a prey to others [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He that should be modest and tractable, and perform all the promises, in such time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2383 | Virtues are a means to peaceful, sociable and comfortable living [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The writers of moral philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues and vices, yet not seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the means of peaceable, sociable and comfortable living. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2376 | Injustice is the failure to keep a contract, and justice is the constant will to give what is owed [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The definition of 'injustice' is no other than the not performance of covenant….. and 'justice' is the constant will of giving to every man his own. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2367 | In time of war the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In a time of war…. there is continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) |
| 19764 | Hobbes attributed to savages the passions which arise in a law-bound society [Hobbes, by Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes had wrongly injected into the savage man's concern for self-preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions which are the product of society and which have made laws necessary. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Part I | |
| A reaction: Hobbes's famous remark concerns a state of war, which is quite a sophisticated state of conflict between well formed social groups. Rousseau's savage is fairly solitary, so won't be involved in war. |
| 20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: While Hobbes had held that the people were the final source of political authority, he had argued that in entering the social contract they gave up their sovereignty by transferring all power to an absolute ruler. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Later the idea of 'inalienable' rights crept in. If you volunteer for exploitation or slavery, that still doesn't justify them. Sadism is presumably not justified by masochism. |
| 2366 | There is not enough difference between people for one to claim more benefit than another [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) |
| 20485 | Hobbes says people are roughly equal; Locke says there is no right to impose inequality [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes's principle of equality was a claim about the mental and physical capabilities of all people. For Locke it is a moral claim about rights: no person has a natural right to subordinate any other. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 1 'Locke' | |
| A reaction: There are obvious questions to ask about the claim that people are naturally equal. For the second one, does the lion have a natural right to subordinate the gazelle? Who cares! I'm inclined to be consequentialist about equality. |
| 2369 | If we seek peace and defend ourselves, we must compromise on our rights [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: From the first law of nature (that we seek peace, but also defend ourselves) comes the second: that a man be willing to lay down his rights to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 20484 | We should obey the laws of nature, provided other people are also obeying them [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes's position is that we have a duty to obey the Laws of Nature when others around us are known (or can reasonably be expected) to be obeying them too, and so our compliance will not be exploited. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 1 'Hobbes' | |
| A reaction: In particular, we should keep contracts. Hobbes doesn't seem fully committed to keeping facts and values separate. |
| 7573 | The legal positivism of Hobbes said law is just formal or procedural [Hobbes, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes was one of the first to propose the view known as 'legal positivism' - that the criterion for deciding whether a rule is a genuine law is entirely formal or procedural | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: This was opposed to the tradition of natural law, deriving from Aquinas. It is part of a picture of values draining out of the world as science comes to dominate. The is/ought distinction is its culmination. Power replaces virtue, and Thrasymachus wins. |
| 2380 | Punishment should only be for reform or deterrence [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: We are forbidden to inflict punishment with any other design than for correction of the offender, or direction of others. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2361 | If fear of unknown powers is legal it is religion, if it is illegal it is superstition [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, is superstition. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) |
| 2364 | Causation is only observation of similar events following each other, with nothing visible in between [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In knowing the meaning of 'causing', men can only observe and remember what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time, without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent event any dependence or connexion at all. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.12) |
| 651 | Eurytus showed that numbers underlie things by making pictures of creatures out of pebbles [Eurytus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Eurytus assigned numbers to things by taking some pebbles and using them to create likeness of the shapes of living things, such as a man or a horse. | |
| From: report of Eurytus (fragments/reports [c.400 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1092b | |
| A reaction: Pythagorean. Digitising reality. |
| 2365 | Religion is built on ignorance and misinterpretation of what is unknown or frightening [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In these four things - opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of religion. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.12) |
| 2378 | Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge of man's estate after death, and its rewards, is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings that they knew it supernaturally, or they knew those, that knew those, that knew others, that knew it supernaturally. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |