21 ideas
| 11211 | If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II) | |
| A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts. |
| 11210 | Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000]) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge. |
| 11212 | The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III) | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value. |
| 11214 | We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role). |
| 21233 | The beautiful is whatever it is intrinsically good to admire [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: The beautiful should be defined as that of which the admiring contemplation is good in itself. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], p.210), quoted by Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man | |
| A reaction: To work, this definition must exclude anything else which it is intrinsically good to admire. Good deeds obviously qualify for that, so good deeds must be intrinsically beautiful (which would be agreed by ancient Greeks). We can't ask WHY it is good! |
| 8039 | Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable, but doesn't understand what a definition is [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore tries to show that 'good' is indefinable by relying on a bad dictionary definition of 'definition'. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: An interesting remark, with no further explanation offered. If Moore has this problem, then Plato had it too (see Idea 3032). I would have thought that any definition MacIntyre could offer would either be naturalistic, or tautological. |
| 22151 | The Open Question argument leads to anti-realism and the fact-value distinction [Boulter on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore's Open Question argument led, however unintentionally, to the rise of anti-realism in meta-ethics (which leads to distinguishing values from facts). | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: I presume that Moore proves that the Good is not natural, and after that no one knows what it is, so it seems to be arbitrary or non-existent (rather than the platonic fact that Moore had hoped for). I vote for naturalistic ethics. |
| 11056 | The naturalistic fallacy claims that natural qualties can define 'good' [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: The naturalistic fallacy ..consists in the contention that good means nothing but some simple or complex notion, that can be defined in terms of natural qualities. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §044) | |
| A reaction: Presumably aimed at those who think morality is pleasure and pain. We could hardly attribute morality to non-human qualities. I connect morality to human deliberative functions. |
| 8033 | Moore cannot show why something being good gives us a reason for action [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore's account leaves it entirely unexplained and inexplicable why something's being good should ever furnish us with a reason for action. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: The same objection can be raised to Plato's Form of the Good, but Plato's answer seems to be that the Good is partly a rational entity, and partly that the Good just has a natural magnetism that makes it quasi-religious. |
| 8032 | Can learning to recognise a good friend help us to recognise a good watch? [MacIntyre on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: How could having learned to recognize a good friend help us to recognize a good watch? Yet is Moore is right, the same simple property is present in both cases? | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: It begins to look as if what they have in common is just that they both make you feel good. However, I like the Aristotelian idea that they both function succesfully, one as a timekeeper, the other as a citizen or companion. |
| 11050 | Moore's combination of antinaturalism with strong supervenience on the natural is incoherent [Hanna on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore incoherently combines his antinaturalism with the thesis that intrinsic-value properties are logically strongly supervenient on (or explanatorily reducible to) natural facts. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: I take this to be Moore fighting shy of the strongly Platonist view of values which his arguments all seemed to imply. |
| 23726 | Despite Moore's caution, non-naturalists incline towards intuitionism [Moore,GE, by Smith,M] |
| Full Idea: Although Moore was reluctant to adopt it, the epistemology the non-naturalists tended to favour was intuitionism. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by Michael Smith - The Moral Problem 2.2 | |
| A reaction: Moore was presumably reluctant because intuitionism had been heavily criticised in the past for its inability to settle moral disputes. But if you insist that goodness is outside nature, what other means of knowing it is available? Reason? |
| 18676 | We should ask what we would judge to be good if it existed in absolute isolation [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary to consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves, in absolute isolation, we should yet judge their existence to be good. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §112) | |
| A reaction: This is known as the 'isolation test'. The test has an instant appeal, but looks a bit odd after a little thought. The value of most things drains out of them if they are totally isolated. The MS of the Goldberg Variations floating in outer space? |
| 11057 | It is always an open question whether anything that is natural is good [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Good does not, by definition, mean anything that is natural; and it is therefore always an open question whether anything that is natural is good. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §027) | |
| A reaction: This is the best known modern argument for Platonist idealised ethics. But maybe there is no end to questioning anywhere, so each theory invites a further question, and nothing is ever fully explained? Next stop - pragmatism. |
| 5925 | The three main values are good, right and beauty [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
| Full Idea: Moore describes rightness and beauty as the two main value-attributes, apart from goodness. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §IV | |
| A reaction: This was a last-throw of the Platonic ideal, before we plunged into the value-free world of Darwin and the physicists. It is hard to agree with Moore, but also hard to disagree. Why do many people despise or ignore these values? |
| 5902 | For Moore, 'right' is what produces good [Moore,GE, by Ross] |
| Full Idea: Moore claims that 'right' means 'productive of the greatest possible good'. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
| A reaction: Ross is at pains to keep 'right' and 'good' as quite distinct notions. Some actions are right but very unpleasant, and seem to produce no real good at all. |
| 5903 | 'Right' means 'cause of good result' (hence 'useful'), so the end does justify the means [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: 'Right' does and can mean nothing but 'cause of a good result', and is thus identical with 'useful', whence it follows that the end always will justify the means. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903], §089) | |
| A reaction: Of course, Moore does not identify utility with pleasure, as his notion of what is good concerns fairly Platonic ideals. Would Stalin's murders have been right if Russia were now the happiest nation on Earth? |
| 5907 | Relationships imply duties to people, not merely the obligation to benefit them [Ross on Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: Moore's 'Ideal Utilitarianism' seems to unduly simplify our relations to our fellows. My neighbours are merely possible beneficiaries by my action. But they also stand to me as promiser, creditor, husband, friend, which entails prima facie duties. | |
| From: comment on G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica [1903]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §II | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it is better to say that we have obligations to benefit particular people, because of our obligations, and that we are confined to particular benefits which meet those obligations - not just any old benefit to any old person. |
| 7506 | God made man in his own image [Anon (Tor)] |
| Full Idea: And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. | |
| From: Anon (Tor) (01: Book of Genesis [c.750 BCE], 1.26) | |
| A reaction: Since we are obviously not identical in every way with God, we can presumably choose in which respects we think of ourselves as being like Him. Reason, understanding, beauty, goodness, consciousness? A troublesome verse, challenged by Darwin. |
| 16782 | The names of all the types of creature were given forever by Adam [Anon (Tor)] |
| Full Idea: Whatsoever Adam called any living creature, the same is its name. And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field. | |
| From: Anon (Tor) (01: Book of Genesis [c.750 BCE], 02:20) |
| 4013 | And God saw the light, that it was good [Anon (Tor)] |
| Full Idea: And God saw the light, that it was good. | |
| From: Anon (Tor) (01: Book of Genesis [c.750 BCE], 01.04) | |
| A reaction: The text seems to suggest that God did not decide that it was good, but that it conformed to a standard of goodness. |