7 ideas
| 20508 | How people vote should be on public record, so they can be held accountable [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Mill believed in an open vote. People should be held accountable for how they vote, and therefore it should be a matter of public record. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Nowadays it is a mantra that voting should be secret, because coercion is an obvious problem, but MPs vote publicly, and are held accountable for their voting records. People like the mafia seem to make open public voting impossible. |
| 20507 | Voting is a strict duty, like jury service, and must only be aimed at the public good [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The citizen's vote is not a thing in which he has an option; it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. ...he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.299), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Mill was also concerned that voters might pursue 'class interest' (which they currently do, big time). |
| 20505 | Direct democracy is inexperience judging experience, and ignorance judging knowledge [Mill] |
| Full Idea: At its best [direct democracy] is inexperience sitting in judgement on experience, ignorance on knowledge. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.232), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Recent experiments have suggested that inexperienced people can become very good at making large decisions, if they are allowed to consult experts when they want to. See Van Reybrouck's 'Against Elections'. |
| 20504 | People can only participate in decisions in small communities, so representatives are needed [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Since all cannot, in a community exceeding a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be representative. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.217-8), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Wolff offers Mill as the principal spokesman for representative democracy. It is not only the difficulty of achieving participation, but also the slowness of decision-making. Modern technology may be changing all of this. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 15313 | By 'force' I mean the sources of all actions - sometimes called 'powers' by their outcomes [Breheny] |
| Full Idea: I mean by the word 'force' the source or sources of all possible actions of the particles or materials of the universe: these being often called the powers of nature when spoken of in relation to the different manners in which their effects are shown. | |
| From: Richard Breheny (Letter to Clerk Maxwell [1855]), quoted by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 9.II.B | |
| A reaction: He uses 'force' for what is fundamental, and 'powers' for their results. I am inclining to talk of 'fundamental powers' and 'complex powers', leaving the word 'force' to the physicists. |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |