Add new comment

Ideas or actions?

Certainly there's a huge difference between doing something and merely advocating it. And another difference between advocating it and merely believing it to be right. And these are just three points on a continuum.

It is also true that how people act depends on their situation as well as their ideas (broadly construed). But how a person behaves in a given situation depends on nothing other than those ideas. If one denies that, one runs straight into the homunculus fallacy. So if a person with (say) President Bush's ideas becomes President, he will behave as President Bush does. There is no further decision required - no possible state of having those ideas but somehow not acting accordingly. That would be the homunculus fallacy again. And the same is true of someone with the ideas of a terrorist who happens to be given an opportunity to become one.

by David Deutsch on Sat, 09/04/2004 - 20:22

Reply



The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.




  • Allowed HTML tags: <p> <blockquote> <a> <b> <strong> <i> <em> <u> <ol> <ul> <li> <img> <strike> <cite> <sup> <sub>
  • Leave a blank line between paragraphs.
  • '@' characters will be replaced with images to impede spammers.
More information about formatting options