44 ideas
| 1212 | Replacing timbers on Theseus' ship was the classic illustration of the problem of growth and change [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: At intervals they removed old timbers from the preserved ship and replaced them with sound ones, so the ship became a classic illustration for the philosophers of the disputed question of growth and change, some saying it was the same, others different. | |
| From: Plutarch (Life of Theseus [c.85], 23) |
| 5958 | The sun is always bright; it doesn't become bright when it emerges [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The sun doesn't become bright when it emerges from the clouds; it always is bright. | |
| From: Plutarch (26: Oracles in Decline [c.85], §39) | |
| A reaction: Not an argument, but a nice appeal to common sense, like Russell's example of the cat that disappears behind the furniture and then reappears. To disagree with Plutarch here strikes me as the road to philosophical absurdity. |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
| From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
| 5959 | Some philosophers say the soul is light [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers hold that the soul is in its essence light. | |
| From: Plutarch (75: Is 'Live Unknown' a Wise Precept? [c.85], §6) | |
| A reaction: A nice idea, to rival the stoic view that the soul is fire. It is understandable to propose that the soul is some sort of lightweight and fast moving matter. How else could thought be achieved physically? Nowadays, parallel processing is our only model. |
| 5960 | When the soul is intelligent and harmonious, it is part of god and derives from god [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The soul, when it has partaken of intelligence and reason and concord, is not merely a work but also a part of god and has come to be not by his agency but both from him as source and out of his substance. | |
| From: Plutarch (67: Platonic Questions [c.85], II.1001) | |
| A reaction: A most intriguing shift of view from earlier concepts of the psuché. How did this come about? This man is a pagan. The history is in the evolution of Platonism. See 'The Middle Platonists' by John Dillon. Davidson is also very impressed by reason. |
| 5952 | Rather than being the whole soul, maybe I am its chief part? [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Is each of us not the soul, but the chief part of the soul, by which we think and reason and act, all the other parts of soul as well as of body being mere instruments of its power? | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1119) | |
| A reaction: Socrates is associated with the idea that I am my whole soul (Idea 1650). Plutarch represents an interesting development, which may lead both to the Christian 'soul' and to the Cartesian 'ego'. I think Plutarch is right, but what is the 'soul'? |
| 5951 | If atoms have no qualities, they cannot possibly produce a mind [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Perception, mind, intelligence and thought cannot so much as be conceived, even with the best will, as arising among void and atoms, things which taken separately have no quality. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1112) | |
| A reaction: A nice articulation of the intuition of all anti-physicalists. Plutarch would have to rethink his position carefully if he learned of the sheer number of connections in the brain, and of the theory of natural selection. His challenge remains, though. |
| 5963 | Some say emotion is a sort of reason, and others say virtue concerns emotion [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers make the emotions varieties of reason, on the ground that all desire and grief and anger are judgments, while others declare that the virtues have to do with emotions, as when fear is the province of courage. | |
| From: Plutarch (68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus' [c.85], 1025d) | |
| A reaction: The second idea comes from Aristotle, but the second is interesting, and corresponds to the views coming from modern neuroscience, where even the most basic thought seems to involve emotion. What could be the motivation for 'pure' reason? |
| 20796 | Action needs an affinity for a presentation, and an impulse toward the affinity [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The sceptics say there are three movements of the soul: presentation, impulse and assent. …And action requires two things: a presentation of something to which one has an affinity, and an impulse toward what is presented as an object of affinity. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], 1122c) | |
| A reaction: Not much reasoning involved in this account, which the sceptics say is compatible with suspension of judgement. |
| 1477 | Being manly and brave is the result of convention, not of human nature [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Manliness is not a natural human attribute, otherwise women would be just as brave. It is due to pressure from laws, and this pressure has no free will, but is a slave of convention and criticism. | |
| From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 988c) | |
| A reaction: This is the first glimmerings of seeing gender as a cultural creation, rather than as a fact. Presumably he takes the same view of some of the supposed feminine virtues. |
| 1478 | Animals don't value pleasure, as they cease sexual intercourse after impregnation [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Animals of both sexes cease to have intercourse after impregnation; that shows how little animals value pleasure, and that nature is all that counts. | |
| From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 990d) | |
| A reaction: A famous monkey had an implant to stimulate pleasure, and a button to trigger it. It apparently would have starved to death rather than release the button. Animal sex is dull? |
| 5948 | The good life involves social participation, loyalty, temperance and honesty [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: To live the good life is to live a life of participation in society, of loyalty to friends, of temperance and honest dealing. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1108) | |
| A reaction: 'Participation in society' is the interesting one. This might translate as 'doing your duty', or as 'leading a well-rounded life'. Solitude is wrong if you are indebted to others, and it is unhealthy if you are not. Is solitude really immoral, though? |
| 22849 | Rawls's theory cannot justify liberalism, since it presupposes free and equal participants [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Rawls's theory presupposes that the contractors are conceived, and conceive themselves, to be free and equal persons. Consequently, the theory cannot be presented as a justificatory theory of liberalism. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: Nice. If you imagine diverse groups with many strong beliefs coming together to form a society, Rawls is asking them all to become liberals before they all decide how to live together. |
| 22848 | People with strong prior beliefs would have nothing to do with a veil of ignorance [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Why would a group of people with strong beliefs (e.g. religious beliefs) agree to debate the problem of what norms should govern their association from behind a veil of ignorance? …They would not accept the veil of ignorance as fair. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Rawls's experiment assumes liberal people with very few beliefs. No racial supremacist is going to enter a society in which they may be of a different race. Charvet says the entrants would all need to be pluralists about the good. |
| 22838 | Societies need shared values, so conservatism is right if rational discussion of values is impossible [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Were it true that rational discussion of values is impossible, then a conservative attitude would seem to be the only viable position. Some set of common values is necessary to maintain the unity of a political society. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: Better to say that the less values can be both discussed and changed the stronger is the case for a degree of conservatism. Conservatives tend to favour values asserted by authority, rather than by popular (undiscussed) consensus. |
| 22846 | The universalism of utilitarianism implies a world state [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism is a universalist ethic, so the political realisation of this ethic would seem to be a world state seeking to maximise happiness for the world's population. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 12) | |
| A reaction: It certainly doesn't seem to favour the citizens of the state where it is implemented, since miserable people just across the border would have priority, and all miserable migrants must be welcomed. There is no loyalty to citizens. |
| 22835 | Liberals value freedom and equality, but the society itself must decide on its values [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: While freedom and equality are liberal values …they are fundamental regulative ideas of an independent society that is self-regulating …and decides what its own social and political arrangements should be. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 06) | |
| A reaction: So the central political activity is persuasion, not enforcement. Illiberal societies all contain liberal individuals. |
| 22831 | Modern libertarian societies still provide education and some housing [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: No society today is libertarian in the extreme sense. Even the freest economically, such as Singapore have their governments provide education services and public housing. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: There is a good argument that many other services should be provided by a libertarian state, on the grounds that it is more efficient, and the services must otherwise paid for by much higher salaries. |
| 22839 | Liberalism needs people to either have equal autonomy, or everyone to have enough autonomy [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: To get a liberal society one would have to claim that either everyone possesses autonomy to an equal degree or that everyone possesses a threshold level of the capacity that entitles them to enjoy the full liberal rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: This leaves out the more right-wing attitude that people can increase their capacity for autonomy if they are forced to stand on their own feet. A liberal society must decide how to treat persons incapable of proper autonomy. |
| 22847 | Kant places a higher value on the universal rational will than on the people asserting it [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: For Kant what is of absolute worth is the universal rational will which become an individual's actual will. Insofar as the individual fails to will the universal, they have no absolute worth, so whether or not they exist is unimportant. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 14) | |
| A reaction: A lovely demolition of the claims of Kant to be the patriarch of liberalism! Liberalism must place supreme value on each individual, not on some abstracted realm of pure reason and moral good. Liberals are motivated by love, not reason. |
| 22821 | Liberalism asserts maximum freedom, but that must be equal for all participants [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism attaches fundamental value to leaving individuals as free as possible … - but there is another fundamental value implicit in this idea - the equal status of the participants in the practice. By this I mean that they all have the same rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Libertarian liberalism (e.g. Nozick) only asserts the fundament principle of freedom, but such a society swiftly deprives most of its members of those very freedoms. Egalitarian Liberalism should be our default political ideology. |
| 22834 | Egalitarian liberals prefer equality (either of input or outcome) to liberty [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Rather than libertarianism, egalitarian liberals promote equality, either of outcomes (of happiness or of well-being), or of inputs (such as opportunities, capacities or resources), which they favour ahead of freedom. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 06) | |
| A reaction: This is my team, I think. I think I'm a liberal who thinks liberty is a bit overrated. Equal outcome according to capacity (promoted by Nussbaum) seems attractive. |
| 22822 | Liberals promote community and well-being - because all good societies need them [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Community and well-being are not specifically liberal values. They are values any independent political society must pursue whether it is a liberal society or not. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems, at a stroke, to undermine the familiar debate between liberals and communitarians. I've switched to the former from the latter, because communitarians is potentially too paternalistic and conservative. Persuade individuals to be communal! |
| 22841 | Identity multiculturalism emerges from communitarianism, preferring community to humanity [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Identity-based multiculturalism developed from communitarianism. …People come to consciousness of themselves as members of some community before they identify themselves as members of the human race. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: This is 'identity politics', which Carvet sees as a problem from liberalism. Is it more important to be a woman or a Muslim or a Scot than to be a human being? It seems to create institutional antagonisms. |
| 22842 | For communitarians it seems that you must accept the culture you are born into [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Communitarians have difficulty avoiding the relativist trap. It seems they must claim that if one is born into a liberal society one cannot but be a liberal, and if one is born into a communist society one cannot but be a communist. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who accepts the Hegelian view of history and culture seems doomed to such relativism, and Hegel is a communitarian precursor. This is a good reason for me to reject communitarianism, after a long flirtation. We can criticise our own culture. |
| 22830 | Give by ability and receive by need, rather than a free labour market [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Only the most extreme collective socialism denies the freedom to sell one's labour power and buy that of others, under the communist slogan 'from each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs'. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Marx 'Critique of the Gotha Programme'] I would guess that this practice is not abnormal in old traditional villages, though a community would be tempted to reward highly a very successful member. |
| 22829 | Allowing defamatory speech is against society's interests, by blurring which people are trustworthy [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The argument for restricting defamatory speech is that unrestricted speech makes it impossible, or too difficult, to distinguish between those who deserve a trustworthy reputation and those who don't - a distinction in society's best interests. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 03) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of appeal to the common good, in opposition to the normal freedoms of liberalism. An example of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Should assertion of the common good of a group be a prime value of liberalism? |
| 22836 | 'Freedom from' is an empty idea, if the freedom is not from impediments to my desires [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Berlin's distinction of 'freedom from' and 'freedom to' is worthless …because to say that I want to be free from something for absolutely no reason makes no sense. Unfreedom is being blocked from what I want to do, which ceases if I no longer want it. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The government could guarantee us against attacks by albatrosses, but we would hardly have a national holiday to celebrate the freedom. Still, there is freedom from incoming troubles, and freedom to output things. |
| 22837 | Positive freedom can lead to coercion, if you are forced to do what you chose to do [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Berlin saw positive freedom as a justification for illiberal coercion. If I am positively free only in doing X, then if I am forced to do X, I will still be free. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 07) | |
| A reaction: I suppose Berlin is thinking of Russian farmers, who wanted to farm, but then found they were forced to do what they were going to do anyway. It's better than being forced to do what you didn't want to do. Forcing clearly isn't freedom. |
| 22844 | First level autonomy is application of personal values; second level is criticising them [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: First level autonomy is being able to apply one's scheme of values to one's actions and life; second level autonomy is being able to subject those values to critical evaluation. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 10) | |
| A reaction: Charvet sees this as a key issue for liberalism. How do you treat citizens who cannot advance beyond the first level? He mentions the elitism of Plato's Republic that results. |
| 22840 | Mere equality, as in two trees being the same height, has no value at all [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: That the relation of equality might be considered a value in itself is an absurdity. Would the equality of blinding the only sighted person in a blind society be good? Is it inherently good that two trees are the same height? This is nonsense. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 08) | |
| A reaction: He cites Temkin 1993 as defending the blinding example! Obviously equality is only possible in certain respects (though electrons might be equal in all respects). So the point is to identify the important respects. The rest is rhetoric. |
| 22843 | Inequalities are worse if they seem to be your fault, rather than social facts [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Inequality is worse in a meritocracy than in a stratified society, because everyone enjoys a formal equality of status and your position in the social order is due to your merit or lack of merit, so you have only yourself to blame for being at the bottom. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 10) | |
| A reaction: This is the simple point that it is worse to lack some good if you might have possessed it, rather than it being entirely out of reach. It also makes the false assumption that people are largely responsible for their merit or lack of it (ignoring luck). |
| 22845 | Money allows unlimited inequalities, and we obviously all agree to money [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The introduction of money allows people to accumulate wealth without limit. Since money only works through everyone's agreement …everyone can be taken to have agreed to the consequences of money in the unequal distribution of wealth. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 11) | |
| A reaction: [Locke] Presumably large inequalities of possessions and territory were possible before money, but there was at least an upper limit. The current owner of Amazon may end up with more wealth than the whole of the rest of humanity combined. |
| 22823 | The rule of law is mainly to restrict governments [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The rule of law is directed at the restriction of the power of governments as much, if not more, then the power of private individuals. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: The more powerful you are the more restricting is the rule of law. Every government is tempted to change the law to expand its powers. The UK government has just legislated to restrict public demonstrations. Law is the people's weapon against autocrats. |
| 22825 | The 1689 Bill of Rights denied the monarch new courts, or the right to sit as judge [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The 1689 Bill of Rights said the monarch could not create new courts of law, or act as a judge at law. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: The background was the abolition of the court of Star Chamber in 1641, which had been secret, severe, and controlled by the monarch. Is it possible to create a new type of court, or are we stuck with the current ones? |
| 22826 | From 1701 only parliament could remove judges, whose decisions could not be discussed [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: In 1701 UK judges were given secure tenure, being removable only by parliament which at the same time undertook to follow a convention not to discuss particular judicial decisions. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: In recent years the UK Daily Mail published the pictures of three judges, and labelled them 'traitors' because of their verdict about leaving the European Union. |
| 22827 | Justice superior to the rule of law is claimed on behalf of the workers, or the will of the nation [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: Communist leaders justify themselves as the embodiment of the people's will as workers, and fascist leaders as expressing the will of the nation. Both believe their policies contain a superior justice on this basis. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] A neat summary of why the rule of law might be rejected (other than by simple tyrrany justified only by force). In modern democracies recent right-wing governments have pushed back the law and attacked justice on this basis. |
| 22828 | The rule of law mainly benefits those with property and liberties [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: A rule of law regime will primarily benefit those possessing property and liberty rights. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 02) | |
| A reaction: Important. It's no good fighting for the law if the law doesn't protect what you have got, or if you have got nothing to protect. Important steps must precede assertion of the rule of law. |
| 22832 | Welfare is needed if citizens are to accept the obligations of a liberal state [Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The welfare state provides the background conditions under which it is reasonable to expect one's fellow citizens to commit to liberal principles of interaction, even if those conditions can only be achieved through a degree of compulsion. | |
| From: John Charvet (Liberalism: the basics [2019], 05) | |
| A reaction: You cannot expect people to accept the role of 'free' citizen if that is likely to result in swift misery. A liberal state will only command loyalty if it has a safety net. Fully committed liberalism implies modest socialism. |
| 1479 | Animals have not been led into homosexuality, because they value pleasure very little [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Because animals value pleasure very little, they have not been led into sex between males or between females. | |
| From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 990d) |
| 5950 | If only atoms exist, how do qualities arise when the atoms come together? [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: If you accept atomism, you must show how bodies without quality have given rise to qualities of every kind by the mere fact of coming together. For example, how has the quality called 'hot' been imposed on the atoms? | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1111) | |
| A reaction: This argument is still significant in current philosophy of mind. If temperature is 'mean kinetic energy', you are left wondering where the energy came from, and why minds experience the heat. This is the 'Hard Question'. |
| 5974 | People report seeing through rocks, or over the horizon, or impossibly small works [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: It is said that Lynceus could see through rock and tree, and a lookout in Sicily saw Carthaginian ships a day and a half away, and Callicrates and Myrmecides are said to fashion carriages canopied with the wings of fly, and write on sesame seeds. | |
| From: Plutarch (72: Against Stoics on common Conceptions [c.85], 1083e) | |
| A reaction: A warning from Plutarch against believing everything you hear! |
| 5957 | Absurd superstitions make people atheist, not disharmony in nature [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Men have never thought the universe godless on the ground of detecting some fault in stars or seasons; ..it is the ridiculous things that superstition does that makes people say it would be better if there were no gods at all. | |
| From: Plutarch (14: Superstition [c.85], §12) | |
| A reaction: Not true, I would say. Absurd superstitions do discredit belief in the supernatural, but earthquakes are a disharmony in nature, and a nasty one at that. Nowadays we have other explanations to rival those of religion. |
| 5955 | No one will ever find a city that lacks religious practices [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: A city without holy places and gods, without any observance of prayers, oaths, oracles, sacrifices for blessings received or rites to avert evils, no traveller has ever seen or will ever see. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1125) | |
| A reaction: The nearest you might get would be Soviet Moscow, but in 1973 I saw a man there jeering at a woman who was kneeling in the street outside a closed church. Plutarch would be stunned at the decline in religious practices in modern Europe. |