56 ideas
| 15105 | F(x) walked into a bar. The barman said.. [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: F(x) walked into a bar. The barman said, 'Sorry, we don't cater for functions'. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 16588 | I prefer a lack of form to mean non-existence, than to think of some quasi-existence [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I sooner judged that what lacks all form does not exist, than thought of as something in between form and nothing, neither formed nor nothing, unformed and next to nothing. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XII.6), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.1 | |
| A reaction: Scholastics were struck by the contrast between this remark, and the remark of Averroes (Idea 16587) that prime matter was halfway existence. Their two great authorities disagreed! This sort of thing stimulated the revival of metaphysics. |
| 18933 | Not-Being obviously doesn't exist, and the five modes of Being are all impossible [Gorgias, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: I. Nothing exists. a) Not-Being does not exist. b) Being does not exist as everlasting, as created, as both, as One, or as Many. II. If anything does exist, it is incomprehensible. III. If existence is comprehensible, it is incommunicable. | |
| From: report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE], B03) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09 | |
| A reaction: [Also Sextus Empiricus, Against Logicians I.65-] For Part I he works through all the possible modes of being he can think of, and explains why none of them are possible. It is worth remembering that Gorgias loved rhetoric, not philosophy! |
| 12408 | Sartre to Waitress: Coffee with no cream, please... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Sartre to Waitress: Coffee with no cream, please. Waitress: Sorry, we're out of cream; would no milk do? | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 22979 | Three main questions seem to be whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I am told that I can ask three sorts of questions - whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very Aristotelian approach. I am pleased to see that what it is and what sort it is are not conflated. The first one must be its individual essence, and the second its generic essence. |
| 12397 | Said Plato: 'The things that we feel... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Said Plato: 'The things that we feel/ Are not ontologically real,/ But just the excrescence/ Of numinous essence/ Our senses can never reveal.' [Basil Ransome-Davis] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 3912 | I must exist in order to be mistaken, so that even if I am mistaken, I can't be wrong about my own existence [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Since therefore I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, there can be no doubt that I am not mistaken in my knowledge that I exist…. I know that I exist, and I also know that I know. | |
| From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], Ch.XI.26) | |
| A reaction: Fine, but the main problem is his over-confidence about a stable personal identity that does the thinking. |
| 12407 | Barman to Descartes: Would you like another drink?... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Barman to Descartes: Would you like another drink? Descartes: I think not (...and promptly vanishes) | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12399 | There was a young student called Fred... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: There was a young student called Fred,/ Who was questioned on Descartes and said:/ 'It's perfectly clear/ That I'm not really here,/ For I haven't a thought in my head.' [V.R. Ormerod] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 20963 | A philosopher and his wife are out for a drive... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: A philosopher and his wife are out for a drive in the country. 'Oh look!' she says, 'Those sheep have been shorn.' 'Yes', says the philosopher, 'on this side'. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12402 | ..But if he's a student of Berkeley... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: (continued from 12401) ..But if he's a student of Berkeley,/ One thing will emerge, rather starkly,/ That he ought to believe/ What his senses perceive,/ No matter how dimly or darkly. [Leslie Johnson] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12409 | The philosopher Berkeley once said.. [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher Berkeley once said/ In the dark to a maid in his bed:/ 'No perception, my dear,/ Means I'm not really here,/ But only a thought in your head.' [P.W.R. Foot] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12404 | Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd.... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: (reply to 12403) Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd:/ I am always about in the Quad./ And that's why the tree/ Will continue to be,/ Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.' [anon] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12403 | There once was a man who said: 'God... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: There once was a man who said: 'God/ Must think it exceedingly odd/ If he finds that this tree/ Continues to be,/ When there's no-one about in the Quad.' [Ronald Knox] (reply in 12404) | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 22167 | Our images of bodies are not produced by the bodies, but by our own minds [Augustine, by Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Augustine says bodies don't form images in our spirit; our spirit does that itself with amazing quickness. ...So the appearances under which mind knows things aren't drawn from the things themselves. | |
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Thomas Aquinas - Quodlibeta 8.2.1 | |
| A reaction: This is Augustine's theory of 'illumination' - that God creates experience within us. His theory was soon discarded by the early scholastics. |
| 14694 | "My dog's got synaesthesia." How does he smell? ..... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: "My dog's got synaesthesia." How does he smell? "Purple." | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 22117 | Our minds grasp reality by direct illumination (rather than abstraction from experience) [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| Full Idea: Instead of supposing that what we know can be abstracted from sensible particulars that instantiate such knowledge, Augustine insists that our mind is so constituted as to see 'intelligible realities' directly by inner illumination. | |
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.74 | |
| A reaction: His 'theory of illumination'. This seems to be a sort of super-rationalism. This doesn't make clear the role of sensations. Surely he doesn't thing that we just bypass them? |
| 22981 | Mind and memory are the same, as shown in 'bear it in mind' or 'it slipped from mind' [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the memory are one and the same. We even call the memory the mind, for when we tell a person to remember something, we tell them to 'bear this in mind', and when we forget something 'it slipped out of my mind'. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This idea has become familiar in modern neuroscience, I think, presumably because we do not find distinct types of neurons for consciousness and for memory. |
| 22980 | Memory contains innumerable principles of maths, as well as past sense experiences [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory contains the innumerable principles and laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these can have been conveyed to me by the bodily senses. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.12) | |
| A reaction: Even if you have a fairly empirical view of the sources of mathematics (a view with which I sympathise), it must by admitted that our endless extrapolations from the sources also reside in memory. So we remember thoughts as well as experiences. |
| 22983 | We would avoid remembering sorrow or fear if that triggered the emotions afresh [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: If we had to experience sorrow or fear every time that we mentioned these emotions, no one would be willing to speak of them. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: Remembering the death of a loved one can trigger fresh grief, but remembering their dangerous illness from which they recovered no longer contains the feeling of fear. |
| 22977 | I can distinguish different smells even when I am not experiencing them [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I can distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets, even though there is no scent at all in my nostrils. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: Augustine has a nice introspective account of how we experience memory, and identifies lots of puzzling features. I know I can identify the smell of vinegar, but I can't bring it to mind, the way I can the appearance of roses. |
| 22982 | Why does joy in my mind make me happy, but joy in my memory doesn't? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How can it be that my mind can be happy because of the joy that is in it, and yet my memory is not sad by reason of the sadness that is in it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This seems to contradict his thought in Idea 22981, that memory and mind are the same. Recall seems to be a part of consciousness which is not fully wired up to the rest of the mind. |
| 12401 | A toper who spies in the distance... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: A toper who spies in the distance,/ Striped tigers, will get some assistance/ From reading Descartes,/ Who holds that it's part/ Of his duty to doubt their existence. ... [Leslie Johnson] - (continued in 12402) | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 22978 | Memory is so vast that I cannot recognise it as part of my mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory is a vast immeasurable sanctuary. It is part of my nature, but I cannot understand all that I am. Hence the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. Is the other part outside of itself, and not within it? How then can it be a part? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: He seems to understand the mind as entirely consisting of consciousness. Nevertheless, this seems to be the first inklings of the modern externalist view of the mind. |
| 22984 | Without memory I could not even speak of myself [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I do not understand the power of memory that is in myself, although without it I could not even speak of myself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.16) | |
| A reaction: Even if the self is not identical with memory, this idea seems to establish that memory is an essential aspect of the self. This point is neglected by those who see the self as an entity (the 'soul pearl') which persists through all experience. |
| 12410 | There once was a man who said 'Damn!... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: There once was a man who said 'Damn!/ It is borne in upon me I am/ An engine that moves/ In predestinate grooves:/ I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram.' [M.E. Hare] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 5982 | If the future does not exist, how can prophets see it? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How do prophets see the future, if there is not a future to be seen? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.17) | |
| A reaction: The answer, I suspect, is that prophets can't see the future. The prospect that the future already exists would seem to saboutage human freedom and responsibility, and point to Calvinist predestination, and even fatalism. |
| 6683 | The contact of spirit and body is utterly amazing, and incomprehensible [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The manner of contact of spirit with body, which produces a living being, is utterly amazing and beyond our powers of comprehension | |
| From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], XXI.10) | |
| A reaction: This leads to a rather clear objection against a theory which needs a miracle to explain a common natural phenomenon. At least Augustine was beginning to recognise that interaction is a bit of a problem. |
| 9392 | How do behaviourists greet each other? [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: How do behaviourists greet each other? Hi - you're fine, how am I? | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 22976 | Memories are preserved separately, according to category [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: In memory everything is preserved separately, according to its category. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the first seeds of the idea that the mind functions by means of mental files. Our memories of cats are 'close to' or 'linked to' our memories of dogs. |
| 5864 | Destroy seriousness with laughter, and laughter with seriousness [Gorgias] |
| Full Idea: Destroy the seriousness of others with laughter, and their laughter with seriousness. | |
| From: Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]), quoted by Aristotle - The Art of Rhetoric 1419b | |
| A reaction: This sounds like brilliant tactical advice, which should be on the wall of every barrister's chambers. This is a case of rhetoric having something to teach us which is nothing at all to do with truth. It is more like learning karate. |
| 9866 | Gorgias says rhetoric is the best of arts, because it enslaves without using force [Gorgias, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Gorgias insists that the art of persuasion is superior to all others because it enslaves all the rest, with their own consent, not by force, and is therefore by far the best of all the arts. | |
| From: report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Plato - Philebus 58a | |
| A reaction: A nice point, and it is not unreasonable to rank the arts in order of their power. To enchant, without achieving agreement, and to speak truth without persuading, are both very fine, but there is something about success that cannot be gainsaid. |
| 22118 | Augustine created the modern concept of the will [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| Full Idea: The modern concept of the will is often said to originate with Augustine. | |
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.74 | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that this is the source of the trouble. How can a thing be intrinsically free? Surely freedom is always a contextual concept? |
| 4348 | Love, and do what you will [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Love, and do what you will. | |
| From: Augustine (works [c.415]) | |
| A reaction: This sounds libertarian, but Augustine had a stern concept of what love required. It nicely captures one of the essential ideas of virtue ethics. |
| 7821 | Pagans produced three hundred definitions of the highest good [Augustine, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Augustine claimed that the pagan schools between them had produced nearly three hundred different definitions of the highest good. | |
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I would expect the right definition to be in there somewhere, but no doubt Augustine's definition made it 301. Perhaps the biggest problem of human life is that (as with the Kennedy assassination) proliferating stories obscure the true story. |
| 22985 | Everyone wants happiness [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Surely happiness is what everyone wants, so much so that there can be none who do not want it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.20) | |
| A reaction: His concept of happiness is, of course, religious. Occasionally you meet habitual grumblers about life who give the impression that they are only happy when they are discontented. So happiness is achieving desires, not feeling good? |
| 22119 | Augustine said (unusually) that 'ought' does not imply 'can' [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| Full Idea: Augustine insisted that 'ought' does not, in any straightforward way, imply 'can' - which distinguishes him from most modern ethicists. | |
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.74 | |
| A reaction: Not unreasonable. I ought to help my ailing friend who lives abroad, but I haven't the time or money to do it. We can experience impossibilities as duties. Impossibilities are just excuses. Augustine is opposing the Pelagian heresy. |
| 12405 | 'If you're aristocratic,' said Nietzsche... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: 'If you're aristocratic,' said Nietzsche,/ 'It's thumbs up, you're OK. Pleased to mietzsche./ If you're working-class bores,/ It's thumbs down and up yours!/ If you don't know your place, then I'll tietzsche.' [Gerry Hamill] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 9391 | Why do anarchists drink herbal tea? [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Why do anarchists drink herbal tea? Because proper tea is theft. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12400 | Cries the maid: 'You must marry me Hume!'... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Cries the maid: 'You must marry me Hume!'/ A statement that made David fume./ He said: 'In cause and effect,/ There is a defect;/ That it's mine you can only assume.' [P.W.R. Foot] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 16527 | Causation - we all thought we knew it/ Till Hume came along and saw through it/…. [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Causation - we all thought we knew it / Till Hume came along and saw through it / We notice that A / Follows B every day / And frankly that's all there is to it. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 5984 | Maybe time is an extension of the mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I begin to wonder whether time is an extension of the mind itself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.26) | |
| A reaction: The observation that the mind creates a 'specious present' (spreading experience out over a short fraction of second) reinforces this. Personally I like David Marshall's proposal that consciousness is entirely memory, which would deny this idea. |
| 22888 | To be aware of time it can only exist in the mind, as memory or anticipation [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: Augustine answers that for us to be aware of time it must exist only in the mind, …and the difference between past and future is just the difference between memory and anticipation. | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: This is an extreme idealist view. Are we to say that the past consists only of what can be remembered, and the future only of what is anticipated? Absurd anti-realism, in my view. Where do his concepts come from, asks Le Poidevin. |
| 17592 | The barman called 'Time!', and Augustine said..... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: The barman called 'Time!'. Augustine: 'I don't know what you mean, though I did before you said that'. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 5980 | How can ten days ahead be a short time, if it doesn't exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: A short time ago or a short time ahead we might put at ten days, but how can anything which does not exist be either long or short? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: A nice question, which gets at the paradoxical nature of time very nicely. How can it be long, but non-existent? We could break the paradox by concluding '..and therefore time does exist', even though we can't see how. |
| 5979 | If the past is no longer, and the future is not yet, how can they exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Of the three divisions of time, how can two, the past and the future, be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: This is the oldest bewilderment about time, which naturally leads us to the thought that time cannot actually 'exist'. The remark implies that at least 'now' is safe, but that also succumbs to paradox pretty quickly. |
| 5981 | The whole of the current year is not present, so how can it exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: We cannot say that the whole of the current year is present, and if the whole of it is not present, the year is not present. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: Another nice way of presenting the paradox of time. We are in a particular year, so it has to be real. |
| 5978 | I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: A justly famous remark, even though it adds nothing to our knowledge of time. This sort of thought pushes us towards accepting many things as axiomatic, such as time, space, identity, persons, mind. |
| 15208 | The past, present and future walked into a bar.... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: The past, present and future walked into a bar. It was tense. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 5983 | I disagree with the idea that time is nothing but cosmic movement [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I once heard a learned man say that time is nothing but the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars, but I do not agree. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.22) | |
| A reaction: It is tempting to say that you either take time or movement as axiomatic, and describe one in terms of the other, but you are stuck unable to give the initial statement of the axiom without mentioning the second property you were saving for later. |
| 5977 | Heaven and earth must be created, because they are subject to change [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The fact that heaven and earth are there proclaims that they were created, for they are subject to change and variation; ..the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.04) | |
| A reaction: It seems possible that the underlying matter is eternal (as in various conservation laws, such as that of energy), and that all change is in the form rather than the substance. |
| 22887 | If God existed before creation, why would a perfect being desire to change things? [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: If nothing existed by God before creation, then what could have happened to, or within, God that led God to decide to create the universe at that particular moment? Why would an eternal or perfect being want or need to change? | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: I suppose you could reply that change is superior to stasis, but then why did God delay the creation? |
| 5976 | If God is outside time in eternity, can He hear prayers? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: O Lord, since you are outside time in eternity, are you unaware of the things that I tell you? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.01) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the single most difficult and most elusive question about the nature of a supreme divine being. If the being is trapped in time, as we are, it is greatly diminished, and if it is outside, it is hard to see how it could be a participant. |
| 16702 | All things are in the present time to God [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: To God there is neither past nor future, but all things are present. | |
| From: Augustine (Some Questions about time [c.420], 17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.3 | |
| A reaction: Presumably God's present was crowded, so He invented time to spread them out? |
| 22116 | Augustine identified Donatism, Pelagianism and Manicheism as the main heresies [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| Full Idea: Augustine did the most to define Christian heresy. The three most prominent were Donatism, Pelagianism (that humans are perfectible), and Manicheism (that good and evil are equally basic metaphysical realities). | |
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.73 | |
| A reaction: Manicheans had presumably been studying Empedocles. (I suppose it's too late to identify Christianity as a heresy?). |
| 19338 | Augustine said evil does not really exist, and evil is a limitation in goodness [Augustine, by Perkins] |
| Full Idea: Augustine solution to the problem of evil was to say that, strictly speaking, evil does not exist. Human beings are not part evil and part good, but rather just a limited amount of goodness. | |
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 2.III | |
| A reaction: Augustine was rebelling against Manicheanism, which he espoused when young, which proposed a good and an evil force. An apathetic slob seems devoid of goodness, but is not evil. It takes extra effort to perform active evil. |