6 ideas
| 6900 | A prior understanding of beauty is needed to assert that the Form of the Beautiful is beautiful [Westaway] |
| Full Idea: If it were asserted that the Form of the Beautiful was itself beautiful, such a statement would require a prior understanding of the concept of beauty, so would immediately lead to an infinite regress, so the Forms can't be self-predicating. | |
| From: Luke Westaway (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice clear statement of the mess that Plato gets himself into if he wants the Forms to be self-predicating. Clearly the Form of the Beautiful can't be beautiful, but must be that which gives other things their beauty. |
| 6956 | At what point does an object become 'whole'? [Westaway] |
| Full Idea: At what point does an object become 'whole'? | |
| From: Luke Westaway (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This nice question strikes me as the central one in mereology. It is tempting to reply that the matter is entirely conventional, but there seems an obvious fact about something missing if one piece is absent from a jigsaw, or a cube is chipped. |
| 20769 | Sphaerus he was not assenting to the presence of pomegranates, but that it was 'reasonable' [Sphaerus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When Sphaerus accepted pomegranates from the king, he was accused of assenting to a false presentation, to which Sphaerus replied that what he had assented to was not that they were pomegranates, but that it was reasonable that they were pomegranates. | |
| From: report of Sphaerus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.177 | |
| A reaction: He then cited the stoic distinction between a 'graspable' presentation and a 'reasonable' one. This seems a rather helpful response to Dretske's zebra problem. I like the word 'sensible' in epistemology, because animals can be sensible. |
| 7335 | The Chinese Room should be able to ask itself questions in Mandarin [Westaway] |
| Full Idea: If the Chinese Room is functionally equivalent to a Mandarin speaker, it ought to be able to ask itself questions in Mandarin (and it can't). | |
| From: Luke Westaway (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: Searle might triumphantly say that this proves there is no understanding in the room, but the objection won't go away, because the room is presumably functionally equivalent to a speaker, and not just a mere translator (who might use mechanical tricks). |
| 1868 | The world was made as much for animals as for man [Celsus] |
| Full Idea: The world was made as much for the irrational animals as for men. | |
| From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], §V) | |
| A reaction: A good remark. It seems to be a classic distortion of European Christianity that the world is made for us, and that animals only exist to fill our sandwiches. |
| 1867 | Christians presented Jesus as a new kind of logos to oppose that of the philosophers [Celsus] |
| Full Idea: Christians put forth this Jesus not only as the son of God, but as the very Logos - not the pure and holy Logos known to the philosophers, but a new kind of Logos. | |
| From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], III) |