24008
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Reference to a person's emotions is often essential to understanding their actions [Williams,B]
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Full Idea:
The reference to a man's emotions has a significance for our understanding of his moral sincerity, not as a substitute for or addition to how he acts, but as, on occasion, underlying our understanding of how he acts.
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From:
Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.223)
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A reaction:
Williams aims to rescue emotion from the emotivists, and replace it at the centre of traditional modes of moral judgement. I suppose we could assess one rogue robot as behaving 'badly' in a community of robots.
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24009
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Moral education must involve learning about various types of feeling towards things [Williams,B]
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Full Idea:
If moral education does not revolve around what to fear, to be angry about, to despise, and where to draw the line between kindness and a stupid sentimentality - I do not know what it is. (Though there are principles, of truth-telling and justice).
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From:
Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.225)
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A reaction:
He cites Aristotle as the obvious source of this correct idea. The examples of principle both require us to place a high value on truth and justice, and not just follow rules in the style of arithmetic.
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11214
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We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
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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.
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From:
Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
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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).
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24012
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Kant's love of consistency is too rigid, and it even overrides normal fairness [Williams,B]
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Full Idea:
There is a certain moral woodenness or even insolence in Kant's blank regard for consistency. It smacks of Keynes's Principle of Unfairness - that if you can't do a good turn to everybody, you shouldn't do it to anybody.
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From:
Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.226)
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A reaction:
He says it also turns each of us into a Supreme Legislator, which deifies man. It is clearly not the case that morality consists entirely of rules and principles, but Williams recognises their role, in truth-telling for example.
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21091
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It would be absurd if even a free constitution did not impose restraints, for the public good [Hume]
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Full Idea:
A republican and free form of government would be an obvious absurdity, if the particular checks and controls, provided by the constitution, had really no influence, and made it not the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good.
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From:
David Hume (That Politics may be reduced to a Science [1750], p.14)
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A reaction:
Presumably if you attain absolute power you can write any old constitution you like (Clause 1: the presidency is for life). But there does seem much point in doing it - unless it is to facilitate the use of the law for persecutions.
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21092
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Nobility either share in the power of the whole, or they compose the power of the whole [Hume]
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Full Idea:
A nobility may possess power in two different ways. Either every nobleman shares the power as part of the whole body, or the whole body enjoys the power as composed of parts, which each have a distinct power and authority.
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From:
David Hume (That Politics may be reduced to a Science [1750], p.15)
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A reaction:
He says the first type is found in Venice, and is preferable to the second type, which is found in Poland. Presumably in the shared version there is some restraint on depraved nobles. The danger is each noble being an autocrat.
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