19 ideas
12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise; philosophy is in false consciousness when it sees itself otherwise. | |
From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
A reaction: It is one thing to be permeated with values, and another to be value-driven. Truth, reason and logic are (I take it) granted a high value in philosophy, just as the offside rule is in football. I am trying to place reality in charge, not humanity. |
12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
Full Idea: How likely is it that a truly successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? | |
From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Van Fraassen announces "I reject metaphysic" (p.3), so we know where he stands. Anything becomes less certain as it moves to a higher level of generality. Should we abandon generalisation? There is much illumination in metaphysics. |
12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
Full Idea: Analytical philosophy can rightly pride itself on having produced the greatest critical arsenal the world has ever known. | |
From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.6) | |
A reaction: This is, of course, in the context of a scathing attack on the desire to use analytical methods to do speculative metaphysics. I say that if these are the best tools, then we should push forward with them to see how far we can get. |
12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
Full Idea: The specter that faces us is that we may end up having explained all that is dreamt of in our philosophies by intricately crafted postulates that are false. | |
From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
A reaction: This is more persuasive that Idea 12769. People who cannot bear to live with a total absence of explanation (with Keats's 'negative capability') are most in danger from this threat. |
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. |
12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
Full Idea: The very phrase 'inference to the best explanation' should wave a red flag for us. What is good, better, best? What values are slipped in here, under a common name, and where do they come from? | |
From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
A reaction: A point worth making, but overstated. If we are going to refuse to make judgements for fear that some wicked 'value' might creep in, our lives will be reduced to absurdity. |
12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
Full Idea: The choice among theories in science may be a choice to accept in some sense falling far short of endorsement as true. | |
From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
A reaction: When put like this, it is hard to deny the force of Van Fraassen's reservations about science. Lots of people, including me, use scientific theories as working assumptions for life, with nothing like full confidence in their truth. |
23438 | Full rationality must include morality [Foot] |
Full Idea: You haven't got a full idea of rationality until you've got morality within it. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.35) | |
A reaction: Does this mean that mathematical proofs are not rational, or that they are moral? |
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). |
23437 | Practical reason is goodness in choosing actions [Foot] |
Full Idea: Practical rationality is goodness in respect of reason for actions, just as rationality of thinking is goodness in respect of beliefs. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.35) | |
A reaction: It is very Greek to think that rationality involves goodness. There seems to be a purely instrumental form of practical reason that just gets from A to B, as when giving accurate street directions to someone. |
23436 | It is an odd Humean view to think a reason to act must always involve caring [Foot] |
Full Idea: One would need a very special, very Humean, view about reasons for actions to think a man doesn't have a reason unless he cares. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.34-5) | |
A reaction: She says she used to believe this, but was wrong. It is hard to imagine acting for reasons if they don't care about anything at all (even that it's their job). But then people just do care about things. |
23431 | Human defects are just like plant or animal defects [Foot] |
Full Idea: We describe defects in human beings in the same way as we do defects in plants and animals. …You cannot talk about a river as being defective. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
A reaction: This is a much clearer commitment to naturalistic ethics than I have found in her more academic writings. My opinion of Foot (which was already high) went up when I read this interview. …She says vice is a defect of the will. |
23432 | Concepts such as function, welfare, flourishing and interests only apply to living things [Foot] |
Full Idea: There are concepts which apply only to living things, considered in their own right, which would include function, welfare, flourishing, interests and the good of something. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
A reaction: This is a very Aristotelian view, with which I entirely agree. The central concept is function. |
23433 | Humans need courage like a plant needs roots [Foot] |
Full Idea: A plant needs strong roots in the same way human beings need courage. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
A reaction: I'm not quite convince by the analogy, but I strongly agree with her basic approach. |
23434 | There is no fact-value gap in 'owls should see in the dark' [Foot] |
Full Idea: If you say 'an owl should be able to see in the dark' …you're not going to think that there's a gap between facts and evaluation. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a major and fundamental idea, which pinpoints the failure of Humeans to understand the world correctly. There is always total nihilism, of course, but that is a sort of blindness to how things are. Demanding 'proof' of values is crazy. |
23439 | Principles are not ultimate, but arise from the necessities of human life [Foot] |
Full Idea: I don't believe in ultimate principles that must be simply affirmed or denied, but rather in an appeal to the necessities of human life. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.37) | |
A reaction: I agree. Humans have a strong tendency to elevate anything which they consider important into an absolute (such as the value of life, or freedom). |
23435 | If you demonstrate the reason to act, there is no further question of 'why should I?' [Foot] |
Full Idea: You lose the sense of 'should' if you go on saying 'why should I?' when you've finished the argument about what is rational to do, what you've got reason to do. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], P.34) | |
A reaction: Some people reify the concept of duty, so that they do what is required without caring about the reason. I suppose that would wither if they were shown that no reason exists. |