15 ideas
| 7893 | Our life is the creation of our mind [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §1.1) | |
| A reaction: I may adopt this as a second epigraph for the database. This idea records the subjective view, which now comes up against evolutionary psychology. Maybe philosophy is opposed to science, because it is committed to exploring the subjective view? |
| 19086 | Does the pragmatic theory of meaning support objective truth, or make it impossible? [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: Peirce and Sellars takes Peirce's conception of meaning, on which pragmatism is founded, to support an adequate account of objective truth; James, Dewey and Rorty say it forecloses all possibility of such an account. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.169) | |
| A reaction: Ah. Very helpful. I thought there was a pragmatic theory of truth, then began to think that it was just a denial of truth. I've long suspected that Peirce is wonderful, and James is not very good (on this topic). |
| 19093 | Greek mathematics is wholly sensory, where ours is wholly inferential [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: Ancient mathematical concepts were essentially sensory; they were not mathematical in our sense - that is, wholly constituted by their inferential potential. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.187) | |
| A reaction: The latter view is Frege's, though I suppose it had been emerging for a couple of centuries before him. I like the Greek approach, and would love to see that reunited with the supposedly quite different modern view. (Keith Hossack is attempting it). |
| 7898 | The world is just the illusion of an appearance [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: When a man considers this world as a bubble of froth, and as the illusion of an appearance, then the king of death has no power over him. | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §13.170) | |
| A reaction: Strictly, of course, this says you can 'consider' things this way. Perhaps we could substitute 'pretends', but the world's great religions don't go in for that sort of thing. Berkeley would be shocked to learn he was approaching Buddhism. |
| 19091 | Seeing reality mathematically makes it an object of thought, not of experience [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: As mathematically understood, the world is not an object of experience but instead an object of thought. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.183) | |
| A reaction: Since I am keen on citing biology to show that science does not have to be mathematical, this nicely shows that there is something wrong with a science which places a large gap between itself and the world. |
| 7876 | Even if we identify pain with neural events, we can't explain why those neurons cause that feeling [Levine, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Materialists identify pain with the firing of nociceptive-specific neurons in the parietal cortex. Even so, Levine argues, we will still lack any explanation of why nociceptive-specific neurons yield pain. | |
| From: report of Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
| A reaction: [Proposed by Levine in 1983] I don't think we need to instantly go dualist when faced with this, but we may all eventually have to concede a bit of mysterianism. The explanation may be holistic (and hence hopelessly complex). |
| 7877 | Only phenomenal states have an explanatory gap; water is fully explained by H2O [Levine, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Levine says the explanatory gap is peculiar to phenomenal states. Once water has been identified with H2O, or temperature with mean kinetic energy, we do not continue to ask why H2O yields water, or why mean kinetic energy yields temperature. | |
| From: report of Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
| A reaction: Everything is mysterious if you think about if for long enough. What about a representational gap? Why do those neurons represent that tree (if the neurons aren't tree-shaped)? To understand qualia, we must understand the whole brain, I suspect. |
| 7878 | Materialism won't explain phenomenal properties, because the latter aren't seen in causal roles [Papineau on Levine] |
| Full Idea: We cannot give materialist explanations of why brain yields phenomenal properties because phenomenal concepts are not associated with descriptions of causal roles in the same way as pre-theoretical terms in other areas of science. | |
| From: comment on Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
| A reaction: I think Papineau has part of the answer, and I certainly like his notion of Conceptual Dualism, but if qualia are physical, there must be a physical account of how they acquire their properties. I think the whole brain needs to be understood first. |
| 19088 | For pragmatists a concept means its consequences [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: In the pragmatist view, the meaning of a concept is exhausted by its consequences. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.173) | |
| A reaction: I'm unclear why the concept of a volcanic eruption only concerns its dire consequences, and is supposed to contain nothing of its causes. Pragmatists seem to be all future, and no past. Very American. |
| 7894 | Hate is conquered by love [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: Hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is the law eternal. | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §1.5) | |
| A reaction: [N.B. This thought was not invented by Jesus] The challenge to this view might be the tit-for-tat strategy of game theory, which says that hate is actually conquered by a combination of hate and love, judiciously applied. |
| 7899 | Even divine pleasure will not satisfy the wise, as it is insatiable, and leads to pain [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: Since a shower of gold coins could not satisfy craving desires and the end of all pleasure is pain, how could a wise man find satisfaction even in the pleasures of the gods? | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §14.186) | |
| A reaction: I'm never sure how so many ancient thinkers arrived at this implausible view. They seem to think that no one knows when to stop, and that every drink leads to hangover. What is actually wrong with moderate sensible pleasure? |
| 7896 | The foolish gradually fill with evil, like a slowly-filled water-jar [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: The falling of drops of water will in time fill a water-jar. Even so the foolish man becomes full of evil, although he gather it little by little. | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §9.121) | |
| A reaction: This coincides closely with Aristotle's view of moral education. Maybe a wise man can maintain one small vice. Not all slopes are slippery. |
| 7897 | The wise gradually fill with good, like a slowly-filled water-jar [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: The falling of drops of water will in time fill a water-jar. Even so the wise man becomes full of good, although he gather it little by little. | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §9.122) | |
| A reaction: Again, this is like Aristotle's proposal of how to educate people in virtue. In my experience, there is no guarantee that small acts of politeness and charity will eventually guarantee goodness of character. Thought is also needed. |
| 7895 | Don't befriend fools; either find superior friends, or travel alone [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: If on the great journey of life a man cannot find one who is better or at least as good as himself, let him joyfully travel alone: a fool cannot help him on his journey. | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §5.61) | |
| A reaction: This is a slightly disturbing aspect of Buddhism, possibly leading to contradiction. It urges friendship and love, but the finest people will have virtually no friends, and solitude is presented as a finer state than friendship. |
| 7900 | Speak the truth, yield not to anger, give what you can to him who asks [Anon (Dham)] |
| Full Idea: Speak the truth, yield not to anger, give what you can to him who asks: these three steps lead you to the gods | |
| From: Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §17.224) | |
| A reaction: I don't recall either the Old or New Testament, or the Koran, placing great emphasis on speaking the truth. The injunction to give is not so simple. Give to greedy children, to alcoholics, to criminals, to the rich, to fools, to yourself? |