511 ideas
1922 | Spiritual qualities only become advantageous with the growth of wisdom [Plato] |
Full Idea: If virtue is a beneficial attribute of spirit, it must be wisdom; for spiritual qualities are not in themselves advantageous, but become so with wisdom…..Hence men cannot be good by nature. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 88c) | |
A reaction: Personally I haven't got any 'spiritual qualities', so I don't really understand this. |
14179 | The finest branch of wisdom is justice and moderation in ordering states and families [Plato] |
Full Idea: By far the greatest and fairest branch of wisdom is that which is concerned with the due ordering of states and families, whose name is moderation and justice. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 209a) | |
A reaction: ['Justice' is probably 'dikaiosune'] It is hard to disagree with this, and it relegates ivory tower philosophical contemplation to second place, unlike the late books of Aristotle's Ethics. |
354 | Wisdom makes virtue and true goodness possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is wisdom that makes possible courage and self-control and integrity or, in a word, true goodness. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 069b) | |
A reaction: Aristotle also says that prudence (phronesis) makes virtue possible. |
13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
Full Idea: Wisdom [phronesis] is correctly given the name 'kalon' [beautiful], since it performs the works that we say are beautiful and welcome as such. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 416d) | |
A reaction: 'Phronesis' in Aristotle is more like prudence, or common sense, rather than wisdom ['sophia']. 'Kalon' also means fine or noble. This translation seems fair enough, though. |
23890 | For Plato true wisdom is supernatural [Plato, by Weil] |
Full Idea: It is evident that Plato regards true wisdom as something supernatural. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.61 | |
A reaction: Taken literally, I assume this is wrong, but we can empathise with the thought. Wisdom has the feeling of rising above the level of mere knowledge, to achieve the overview I associate with philosophy. |
13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: Are good people any different from wise ones? No, they aren't. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 398b) | |
A reaction: This is Socrates's 'intellectualism', his view that being good is entirely a matter of reason and knowledge, and not a matter of habit or emotion. Do we still accept the traditional assumption that wise people are thereby morally good? |
2136 | Philosophers become as divine and orderly as possible, by studying divinity and order [Plato] |
Full Idea: Because a philosopher's links are with a realm which is divine and orderly, he becomes as divine and orderly as is humanly possible. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 500d) | |
A reaction: Can you be too orderly? Without order nothing of any interest (to gods or men) could ever happen. |
291 | Don't assume that wisdom is the automatic consequence of old age [Plato] |
Full Idea: Don't assume that wisdom is the automatic consequence of old age. | |
From: Plato (Laches [c.381 BCE], 188b) | |
A reaction: I have taught teenagers who seemed to me wiser than nearly all the adults I have ever met. |
3060 | Plato never mentions Democritus, and wished to burn his books [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Plato, who mentions nearly all the ancient philosophers, nowhere speaks of Democritus; he wished to burn all of his books, but was persuaded that it was futile. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.7.8 |
162 | Can we understand an individual soul without knowing the soul in general? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Do you think it possible to form an adequate conception of the nature of an individual soul without considering the nature of soul in general? | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 270c) | |
A reaction: Do animals understand anything (as opposed to simply being aware of things)? |
326 | For relaxation one can consider the world of change, instead of eternal things [Plato] |
Full Idea: If, for relaxation, one gives up discussing eternal things, it is pleasant to consider likely accounts of the world of change. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 59c) | |
A reaction: To understand this, examine Plato's example of the Line at 'Republic' 509d. |
160 | The highest ability in man is the ability to discuss unity and plurality in the nature of things [Plato] |
Full Idea: When I believe that I have found in anyone the ability to discuss unity and plurality as they exist in the nature of things, I follow his footsteps as if he was a god. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 266b) | |
A reaction: This sounds like the problem of identity, which is at the heart of modern metaphysics. |
1642 | We must fight fiercely for knowledge, understanding and intelligence [Plato] |
Full Idea: We need to use every argument we can to fight against anyone who does away with knowledge, understanding, and intelligence, but at the same time asserts anything at all about anything. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 249c) | |
A reaction: Thus showing that reason is only central if you want to put a high value on it? |
315 | Philosophy is the supreme gift of the gods to mortals [Plato] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is the greatest gift the gods have ever given or ever will give to mortals. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 47b) | |
A reaction: I wonder why they gave it to us? |
370 | Philosophy is a purification of the soul ready for the afterlife [Plato] |
Full Idea: Souls which have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy will live after death without bodies. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 114b) | |
A reaction: Purifying it of what? Error, or desire, or narrow-mindedness, or the physical? |
23767 | The winds of the discussion should decide its destination [Plato] |
Full Idea: We must let our destination be decided by the winds of the discussion. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 394d) | |
A reaction: Always loved that one. Had it on the wall of my teaching room. I take it that the aim is to follow reason, rather than the powerful rhetoric of some member of the group. The spirit of philosophy is to avoid prejudgement of your enquiry. |
15447 | We shouldn't always follow where the argument leads! [Lewis on Plato] |
Full Idea: There comes a time not to go on following where the argument leads! | |
From: comment on Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 667b) by David Lewis - Against Structural Universals 'Variant' | |
A reaction: Lewis is a fine one to talk, since he follows argument that take him past innumerable incredulous stares of onlookers. |
125 | Is a gifted philosopher unmanly if he avoids the strife of the communal world? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: Even a naturally gifted philosopher isn't going to develop into a real man, because he's avoiding the heart of his community and the thick of the agora. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 485d) | |
A reaction: A serious charge against philosophy. An attraction of the subject is its purity, its necessity, its timelessness, and in some ways these are just nicer and easier and more understandable than the hard mess of real life. But understanding has to be good. |
2056 | Philosophers are always switching direction to something more interesting [Plato] |
Full Idea: Philosophers are always ready to change direction, if a topic crops up which is more attractive than the one to hand. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 172d) | |
A reaction: Which sounds trivial, but it may be what God does. |
2086 | Understanding mainly involves knowing the elements, not their combinations [Plato] |
Full Idea: A perfect grasp of any subject depends far more on knowing elements than on knowing complexes. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 206b) |
166 | A speaker should be able to divide a subject, right down to the limits of divisibility [Plato] |
Full Idea: A speaker must be able to define a subject generically, and then to divide it into its various specific kinds until he reaches the limits of divisibility. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 277b) |
16123 | Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato] |
Full Idea: The rule is that when one perceives first the community between the members of a group of many things, one should not desist until one sees in it all those differences that are located in classes. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285b) | |
A reaction: He goes on to recommend the opposite as well - see community even when there appears to be nothing but differences. I take this to be analysis, just as much as modern linguistic approaches are. Analyse the world, not language. |
2083 | Either a syllable is its letters (making parts as knowable as whole) or it isn't (meaning it has no parts) [Plato] |
Full Idea: Either a syllable is not the same as its letters, in which case it cannot have the letters as parts of itself, or it is the same as its letters, in which case these basic elements are just as knowable as it is. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205b) |
23682 | It would be absurd to be precise about the small things, but only vague about the big things [Plato] |
Full Idea: It would be absurd to devote all our energies to securing the greatest possible precision and clarity in matters of little consequence, and not to demand the highest precision in the most important things of all. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 504e) | |
A reaction: I offer this to modern analytic philosophers, who often strike me as having this priority the wrong way round. Their defence, of course, is that the important things depend on the things of little consequence - but they can lose the plot with big things. |
1645 | The desire to split everything into its parts is unpleasant and unphilosophical [Plato] |
Full Idea: To try to set apart everything from everything is not only especially jangling, but it is the mark of someone altogether unmusical and unphilosophic. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 259e) |
243 | It is foolish to quarrel with the mind's own reasoning processes [Plato] |
Full Idea: When the soul quarrels with knowledge or opinion or reason, its natural ruling principles, you have there what I call 'folly'. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 689b) |
224 | When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato] |
Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e) |
350 | In investigation the body leads us astray, but the soul gets a clear view of the facts [Plato] |
Full Idea: When philosophers investigate with the help of the body they are led astray, but through reflection the soul gets a clear view of the facts. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 065c) |
241 | We ought to follow where the argument leads us [Plato] |
Full Idea: We ought to follow where the argument leads us. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 667a) |
22361 | Contextual values are acceptable in research, but not in its final evaluation [Reichenbach, by Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: Reichenbach's claim is interpreted as saying that contextual values, which may have contributed to the discovery of a theory, are irrelevant for justifying the acceptance of a theory, and for assessing how evidence bears on theory. | |
From: report of Hans Reichenbach (On Probability and Induction [1938], pp.36-7) by Reiss,J/Spreger,J - Scientific Objectivity 3.2 | |
A reaction: This influential idea is very helpful. It allows Galileo and co to pursus all sorts of highly personal and quirky lines of enquiry, because we only demand full objectivity when it is all over. Very good! |
2082 | A rational account is essentially a weaving together of things with names [Plato] |
Full Idea: Just as primary elements are woven together, so their names may be woven together to produce a spoken account, because an account is essentially a weaving together of names. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 202b) | |
A reaction: If justification requires 'logos', and logos is a 'weaving together of names', then Plato might be taken as endorsing the coherence account of justification. Or do the two 'weavings' correspond? |
362 | The greatest misfortune for a person is to develop a dislike for argument [Plato] |
Full Idea: No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than developing a dislike for argument. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 089d) |
21264 | Mortals are incapable of being fully rational [Plato] |
Full Idea: We mustn't assume that mortal eyes will ever be able to look upon reason and get to know it adequately. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 897d) | |
A reaction: This is in the context of the rational control of the whole Cosmos. I presume Plato would be flabbergasted by the findings of recent physics and cosmology. Did Kant believe that he was being completely rational about ethics? |
306 | Nothing can come to be without a cause [Plato] |
Full Idea: Nothing can come to be without a cause. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28a) |
192 | Only one thing can be contrary to something [Plato] |
Full Idea: To everything that admits of a contrary there is one contrary and no more. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 332c) | |
A reaction: The sort of thing for which a modern philosopher would demand a proof (and then reject when the proof couldn't be found), where a Greek is happy to assert it as self-evident. I can't think of a counterexample. |
232 | Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Opposites are as unlike as possible. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159a) |
13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
Full Idea: What would you call someone who knows how to ask and answer questions? Wouldn't you call him a dialectician? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 390c) | |
A reaction: Asking good questions and giving good answers sound like two very different skills. I presume dialectic is the process of arriving at answers by means of asking the right questions. |
23891 | Two contradictories force us to find a relation which will correlate them [Plato, by Weil] |
Full Idea: Where contradictions appear there is a correlation of contraries, which is relation. If a contradiction is imposed on the intelligence, it is forced to think of a relation to transform the contradiction into a correlation, which draws the soul higher. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.70 | |
A reaction: A much better account of the dialectic than anything I have yet seen in Hegel. For the first time I see some sense in it. A contradiction is not a falsehood, and it must be addressed rather than side-stepped. A kink in the system, that needs ironing. |
2151 | Dialectic is the only method of inquiry which uproots the things which it takes for granted [Plato] |
Full Idea: Dialectic is the only field of inquiry whose quest for certainty causes it to uproot the things it takes for granted in the course of its journey. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 533c) |
2154 | The ability to take an overview is the distinguishing mark of a dialectician [Plato] |
Full Idea: The ability to take an overview is the distinguishing mark of a dialectician. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 537c) |
4011 | For Plato, rationality is a vision of and love of a cosmic rational order [Plato, by Taylor,C] |
Full Idea: In Plato's theory, to be rational is to have a vision of rational order, and to love this order. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 537d) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §4.1 | |
A reaction: There may be a worrying elitism in this, but it helps to pinpoint the sense in which 'all philosophers are Platonists'. |
287 | Good analysis involves dividing things into appropriate forms without confusion [Plato] |
Full Idea: It takes expertise in dialectic to divide things by kinds and not to think that the same form is a different one or that a different form is the same. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 253d) |
8937 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic. | |
From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Pref 71 | |
A reaction: It is a long way from the analytic tradition of philosophy to be singling out a classic text for its 'artistic' achievement. Eventually we may even look back on, say, Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity' and see it in that light. |
1644 | Dialectic should only be taught to those who already philosophise well [Plato] |
Full Idea: The dialectical capacity - you won't give it to anyone else, I suspect, except to whoever philosophises purely and justly. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 253e) |
1654 | In "Gorgias" Socrates is confident that his 'elenchus' will decide moral truth [Vlastos on Plato] |
Full Idea: In the 'Gorgias' Socrates is still supremely confident that the elenchus is the final arbiter of moral truth. | |
From: comment on Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.117 |
4321 | We should test one another, by asking and answering questions [Plato] |
Full Idea: Test me, and let yourself be tested as well, by asking and answering questions. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 462a) | |
A reaction: The idea must be to avoid wild speculation, by continually filtering ideas through rival critical intelligences. The best philosophical method ever devised. |
2093 | You must never go against what you actually believe [Plato] |
Full Idea: You must never go against what you actually believe. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 350e) |
20478 | In discussion a person's opinions are shown to be in conflict, leading to calm self-criticism [Plato] |
Full Idea: They collect someone's opinions together during the discussion, put them side by side, and show that they conflict with each other at the same time on the same subjects.... The person sees this, gets angry at themselves, and calmer towards others. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 230b) | |
A reaction: He goes on to say that the process is like a doctor purging a patient of internal harms. If anyone talks for long enough (even a good philosopher), their opinions will probably be seen to be in conflict. But which opinions do you abandon? |
2130 | People often merely practice eristic instead of dialectic, because they don't analyse the subject-matter [Plato] |
Full Idea: People often think they are practising dialectic when they are practising eristic; this is because of their inability to conduct the enquiry by dividing the subject-matter into its various aspects. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 454a) |
2052 | Eristic discussion is aggressive, but dialectic aims to help one's companions in discussion [Plato] |
Full Idea: Eristic discussions involve as many tricks and traps as possible, but dialectical discussions involve being serious and correcting the interlocutor's mistakes only when they are his own fault or the result of past conditioning. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 167e) |
16125 | To reveal a nature, divide down, and strip away what it has in common with other things [Plato] |
Full Idea: Let's take the kind posited and cut it in two, .then follow the righthand part of what we've cut, and hold onto things that the sophist is associated with until we strip away everything he has in common with other things, then display his peculiar nature. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 264e) | |
A reaction: This seems to be close to Aristotle's account of definition, when he is trying to get at what-it-is-to-be some thing. But if you strip away everything the definiendum has in common with other things, will anything remain? |
16124 | No one wants to define 'weaving' just for the sake of weaving [Plato] |
Full Idea: I don't suppose that anyone with any sense would want to hunt down the definition of 'weaving' for the sake of weaving itself. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285d) | |
A reaction: The point seems to be that the definition brings out the connections between weaving and other activities and objects, thus enlarging our understanding. |
15854 | A primary element has only a name, and no logos, but complexes have an account, by weaving the names [Plato] |
Full Idea: A primary element cannot be expressed in an account; it can only be named, for a name is all that it has. But with the things composed of these ...just as the elements are woven together, so the names can woven to become an account. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 202b01-3) | |
A reaction: This is the beginning of what I see as Aristotle's metaphysics, as derived from his epistemology, that is, ontology is what explains, and what we can give an account [logos] of. Aristotle treats this under 'definitions'. |
251 | Truth has the supreme value, for both gods and men [Plato] |
Full Idea: Truth heads the list of all things good, for gods and men alike. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 730c) |
13776 | Truths say of what is that it is, falsehoods say of what is that it is not [Plato] |
Full Idea: Those statements that say of the things that are that they are, are true, while those that say of the things that are that they are not, are false. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385b) | |
A reaction: It was quite a shock to discover this, because the famous Aristotle definition (Idea 586) is always quoted, and no modern writers seem to have any awareness of the Plato remark. Classical scholarship is very poor in analytic philosophy. |
2145 | In mathematics certain things have to be accepted without further explanation [Plato] |
Full Idea: The practitioners of maths take certain things as basic, and feel no further need to explain them. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 510c) |
15845 | It seems absurd that seeing a person's limbs, the one is many, and yet the many are one [Plato] |
Full Idea: Someone first distinguishes a person's limbs and parts and asks your agreement that all the parts are identical with that unity, then ridicules you that you have to admit one is many, and indefinitely many, and again that the many are only only one thing. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 14e) | |
A reaction: This is a passing aporia, but actually seems to approach the central mystery of the metaphysics of identity. A thing can't be a 'unity' if there are not things to unify? So what sorts of 'unification' are there? |
13777 | A name is a sort of tool [Plato] |
Full Idea: A name is a sort of tool. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 388a) | |
A reaction: Idea 13775 gives a background for this metaphor, from earlier in the text. Wittgenstein has a famous toolkit metaphor for language. The whole of this text, 'Cratylus', is about names. |
13790 | A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato] |
Full Idea: The name-giver might have made a mistake at the beginning and then forced the other names to be consistent with it. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 436c) | |
A reaction: Lovely. This is Gareth Evans's 'Madagascar' example. See Idea 9041. |
13791 | Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: If things cannot be learned except from their names, how can we possibly claim that the name-givers or rule-setters have knowledge before any names had been given for them to know? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 438b) | |
A reaction: Running through this is a hostility to philosophy of language, so I find it very congenial. We are animals who relate to the world before language takes a grip. We have full-blown knowledge of things, with no intervention of words. |
14650 | Maybe proper names involve essentialism [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Perhaps the notion of a proper name itself involves essentialism. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.43) | |
A reaction: This is just before Kripke's announcement of 'rigid designation', which seems to have relaunched modern essentialism. The thought is that you can't name something, if you don't have a stable notion of what is (and isn't) being named. |
13789 | Anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing [Plato] |
Full Idea: The simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 435d) | |
A reaction: A nice slogan, but it seems to be blatantly false. The best example is Gareth Evans's of joining in a conversation about a person ('Louis'?), and only gradually tuning in to the person to which the name refers. |
11259 | How can you seek knowledge of something if you don't know it? [Plato] |
Full Idea: How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know? | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 80d05) | |
A reaction: Vasilis Politis cites this as a nice example of the 'aporiai' (puzzles) which Aristotle said were the foundation of enquiry. Nowadays the problem is called the 'paradox of enquiry'. |
13986 | Plato found antinomies in ideas, Kant in space and time, and Bradley in relations [Plato, by Ryle] |
Full Idea: Plato (in 'Parmenides') shows that the theory that 'Eide' are substances, and Kant that space and time are substances, and Bradley that relations are substances, all lead to aninomies. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Gilbert Ryle - Are there propositions? 'Objections' |
14150 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made [Russell on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made. | |
From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §337 |
8726 | Geometry can lead the mind upwards to truth and philosophy [Plato] |
Full Idea: Geometry can attract the mind towards truth. It can produce philosophical thought, in the sense that it can reverse the midguided downwards tendencies we currently have. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 527b) | |
A reaction: Hence the Academy gate bore the inscription "Let no one enter here who is ignorant of geometry". He's not necessarily wrong. Something in early education must straighten out some of the kinks in the messy human mind. |
9867 | It is absurd to define a circle, but not be able to recognise a real one [Plato] |
Full Idea: It will be ridiculous if our student knows the definition of the circle and of the divine sphere itself, but cannot recognize the human sphere and these our circles, used in housebuilding. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 62a) | |
A reaction: This is the equivalent of being able to recite numbers, but not to count objects. It also resembles Molyneux's question (to Locke), of whether recognition by one sense entails recognition by others. Nice (and a bit anti-platonist!). |
14648 | Could I name all of the real numbers in one fell swoop? Call them all 'Charley'? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Can't I name all the real numbers in the interval (0,1) at once? Couldn't I name them all 'Charley', for example? | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.40) | |
A reaction: Plantinga is nervous about such a sweeping move, but can't think of an objection. This addresses a big problem, I think - that you are supposed to accept the real numbers when we cannot possibly name them all. |
13155 | If you add one to one, which one becomes two, or do they both become two? [Plato] |
Full Idea: I cannot convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become two by the addition of the one to the other, ...or that when you divide one, the cause of becoming two is now the division. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |
A reaction: Lovely questions, all leading to the conclusion that two consists of partaking in duality, to which you can come by several different routes. |
9865 | Daily arithmetic counts unequal things, but pure arithmetic equalises them [Plato] |
Full Idea: The arithmetic of the many computes sums of unequal units, such as two armies, or two herds, ..but philosopher's arithmetic computes when it is guaranteed that none of those infinitely many units differed in the least from any of the others. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 56d) | |
A reaction: But of course 'the many' are ironing out the differences too, when they say there are 'three armies'. Shocking snob, Plato. Even philosophers are interested in the difference between three armies and three platoons. |
9863 | We aim for elevated discussion of pure numbers, not attaching them to physical objects [Plato] |
Full Idea: Our discussion of numbers leads the soul forcibly upward and compels it to discuss the numbers themselves, never permitting anyone to propose for discussion numbers attached to visible or tangible bodies. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525d) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as very important, because it shows that the platonist view of numbers places little or no importance on counting, inviting the question of whether they could be understood in complete ignorance of the process of counting. |
9864 | In pure numbers, all ones are equal, with no internal parts [Plato] |
Full Idea: With those numbers that can be grasped only in thought, ..each one is equal to every other, without the least difference and containing no internal parts. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 526a) | |
A reaction: [Two voices in the conversation are elided] Intriguing and tantalising. Does 13 have internal parts, in the platonist view? If so, is it more than the sum of its parts? Is Plato committed to numbers being built from indistinguishable abstract units/ |
8727 | Geometry is not an activity, but the study of unchanging knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: Geometers talk as if they were actually doing something, and the point of their theorems is to have some effect (like 'squaring'). ...But the sole purpose is knowledge, of things which exist forever, not coming into existence and passing away. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 527a) | |
A reaction: Modern Constructivism defends the view which Plato is attacking. The existence of real infinities can be doubted simply because we have not got enough time to construct them. |
10216 | We master arithmetic by knowing all the numbers in our soul [Plato] |
Full Idea: It must surely be true that a man who has completely mastered arithmetic knows all numbers? Because there are pieces of knowledge covering all numbers in his soul. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 198b) | |
A reaction: This clearly views numbers as objects. Expectation of knowing them all is a bit startling! They also appear to be innate in us, and hence they appear to be Forms. See Aristotle's comment in Idea 645. |
16150 | One is, so numbers exist, so endless numbers exist, and each one must partake of being [Plato] |
Full Idea: If one is, there must also necessarily be number - Necessarily - But if there is number, there would be many, and an unlimited multitude of beings. ..So if all partakes of being, each part of number would also partake of it. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 144a) | |
A reaction: This seems to commit to numbers having being, then to too many numbers, and hence to too much being - but without backing down and wondering whether numbers had being after all. Aristotle disagreed. |
9861 | The same thing is both one and an unlimited number at the same time [Plato] |
Full Idea: We see the same thing to be both one and an unlimited number at the same time. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525a) | |
A reaction: Frege makes the same point, that a pair of boots is both two and one. The point is at its strongest in opposition to empirical accounts of arithmetic. However, Mill observes that pebbles can be both 5 and 3+2, without contradiction. |
14664 | Necessary beings (numbers, properties, sets, propositions, states of affairs, God) exist in all possible worlds [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: A 'necessary being' is one that exists in every possible world; and only some objects - numbers, properties, pure sets, propositions, states of affairs, God - have this distinction. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], 2) | |
A reaction: This a very odd list, though it is fairly orthodox among philosophers trained in modern modal logic. At the very least it looks rather parochial to me. |
229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d) |
324 | Before the existence of the world there must have been being, space and becoming [Plato] |
Full Idea: There were, before the world came into existence, being, space, and becoming, three distinct realities. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 52d) |
20364 | The apprehensions of reason remain unchanging, but reasonless sensation shows mere becoming [Plato] |
Full Idea: That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state, but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason is always in a process of becoming and perishing, and never really is. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28a) | |
A reaction: Lots of problems with this, of which I take the main one to be the idea that sensation is 'without reason', as if there were a sharp dichotomy in our ways of evaluating reality. Laws of nature seem to be laws of change, not of stasis. |
9862 | To become rational, philosophers must rise from becoming into being [Plato] |
Full Idea: Philosophers must rise up out of becoming and grasp being, if they are ever to become rational. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525b) | |
A reaction: I am never quite sure what 'being' means in such contexts, and it seems suffused with mysticism. In Plato's case, it is obviously related to what is unchanging, but why would something lack 'being', just because it underwent change? |
11278 | What does 'that which is not' refer to? [Plato] |
Full Idea: What should the name 'that which is not' be applied to? | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 237c) | |
A reaction: This leads into a discussion of the problem, in The Sophist. It became a large issue when modern logic was being developed by Frege and Russell. |
1643 | If statements about non-existence are logically puzzling, so are statements about existence [Plato] |
Full Idea: When the question was put to us as to the name of 'that which is not', to whatever one must apply it, we got stuck in every kind of perplexity. Are we now in any less perplexity about 'that which is'? | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 250d) | |
A reaction: Nice. This precapitulates the whole story of modern philosophy of language. What started as a nagging doubt about reference to non-existents ends as bewilderment about everything we say. |
21818 | Being depends on the Good, which is not itself being, but superior to being [Plato] |
Full Idea: Not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good is not being, but superior to it in rank and power. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 509b) | |
A reaction: I was surprised to find that in Plotinus the One is not being, because it is the source of being, and thus superior to being. Then a footnote sent me here, and I realise that Plato thought that the Form of the Good is superior to Being. |
21821 | Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus] |
Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God. |
7022 | To be is to have a capacity, to act on other things, or to receive actions [Plato] |
Full Idea: A thing really is if it has any capacity, either by nature to do something to something else or to have even the smallest thing done to it by the most trivial thing, even if it only happens once. I'll define those which are as nothing other than capacity. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 247e) | |
A reaction: If philosophy is footnotes to Plato, this should be the foundational remark in all discussions of existence (though Parmenides might claim priority). It seems to say 'to be is to have a causal role (active or passive)'. It also seems essentialist. |
2061 | The best things (gods, healthy bodies, good souls) are least liable to change [Plato] |
Full Idea: The best things (such as a god, a healthy body, or a good soul) are least liable to alteration or change. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 380e) |
2060 | There seem to be two sorts of change: alteration and motion [Plato] |
Full Idea: There are two kinds of change, I think: alteration and motion. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 181d) |
2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e) |
15857 | Any mixture which lacks measure and proportion doesn't even count as a mixture at all [Plato] |
Full Idea: Any blend [mixture] which does not have measure or the nature of proportion in any way whatsoever, of necessity destroys both its ingredients and, primarily, itself. It is truly no blend at all, but a kind of unblended disaster. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 64e) | |
A reaction: Obviously there can be chaotic mixtures, but I guess Plato is picking out mixtures about which we can say something |
14503 | If a mixture does not contain measure and proportion, it is corrupted and destroyed [Plato] |
Full Idea: Any kind of mixture that does not ...possess measure or the nature of proportion will necessarily corrupt its ingredients and most of all itself. For there would be no blending in such cases but really an unconnected medley, and ruin what contains it. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 64d) | |
A reaction: My guess is that Plato is thinking of the decay of living things when they die, losing the proportions of psuché, and then applying this to the unity of inanimate objects as well. One might compare Leibniz's monads. |
7953 | Reasoning needs to cut nature accurately at the joints [Plato] |
Full Idea: In our reasoning we need a clear view of the ability to divide a genus into species, observing the natural joints, not mangling any of the parts, like an unskilful butcher. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 265d) | |
A reaction: In modern times this Platonic idea has become the standard metaphor for realism. I endorse it. I think nature has joints, and we should hunt for them. There are natural sets. The joints may exist in abstract concepts, as well as in objects. |
221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c) |
6562 | Plato's reality has unchanging Parmenidean forms, and Heraclitean flux [Plato, by Fogelin] |
Full Idea: For Plato, the intelligible world - the world of eternal and unchanging forms - is Parmenidean; the world of appearances - the world of flux we inhabit - is Heraclitean. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
A reaction: Parmenides said reality is 'One'; Heraclitus said reality is 'flux'. This is a nice summary of Plato's view, and encapsulates two key influences on Plato, though the mathematical reality of Pythagoras should also be mentioned on the 'forms' side. |
1641 | Some alarming thinkers think that only things which you can touch exist [Plato] |
Full Idea: One group drags everything down to earth, insisting that only what offers tangible contact is, since they define being as the same as body, despising anyone who says that something without a body is. These are frightening men. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 246b) |
10784 | Whenever there's speech it has to be about something [Plato] |
Full Idea: Whenever there's speech it has to be about something. It's impossible for it not to be about something. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 262e) | |
A reaction: [Quoted by Marcus about ontological commitment] The interesting test case would be speech about the existence of circular squares. |
13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
Full Idea: If we undertake to cut something and make the cut in whatever way we choose and with whatever tool we choose, we will not succeed. If we cut according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with the natural tool, we'll succeed and cut correctly. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 387a) | |
A reaction: I take this passage to be the creed for realists about the physical world - a commitment not merely to the existence of an external world, but to the existence of facts about it, which we may or may not be able to discover. |
16121 | I revere anyone who can discern a single thing that encompasses many things [Plato] |
Full Idea: If I believe that someone is capable of discerning a single thing that is also by nature capable of encompassing many, I follow 'straight behind, in his footsteps, as if he were a god'. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 266b) | |
A reaction: [Plato quote Odyssey 2.406] This is the sort of simple but profound general observation which only the early philosophers bothered to make, and no one comments on now. Encompassing many under one is the very essence of thinking. |
21347 | If Simmias is taller than Socrates, that isn't a feature that is just in Simmias [Plato] |
Full Idea: When you say Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, so you mean there is in Simmias both tallness and shortness? - I do. ...But surely he is not taller than Socrates because he is Simmias but because of the tallness he happens to have? | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102b-c) | |
A reaction: He adds that both people must be cited. This appears to be what we now call a rejection relative height as an 'internal' relation, which is it would presumably be if it was a feature of one or of both men. |
14502 | Plato's idea of 'structure' tends to be mathematically expressed [Plato, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: 'Structure' tends to be characterized by Plato as something that is mathematically expressed. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects V.3 iv | |
A reaction: [Koslicki is drawing on Verity Harte here] |
2142 | The plurality of beautiful things must belong to a single class, because they have a single particular character [Plato] |
Full Idea: All the things we refer to as pluralities (e.g. beautiful things) we also count as belonging to a single class by virtue of the fact that they have a single particular character. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 507b) |
153 | It takes a person to understand, by using universals, and by using reason to create a unity out of sense-impressions [Plato] |
Full Idea: It takes a man to understand by the use of universals, and to collect out of the multiplicity of sense-impressions a unity arrived at by a process of reason. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 249b) |
227 | You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name [Plato] |
Full Idea: You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 147d) |
223 | If you deny that each thing always stays the same, you destroy the possibility of discussion [Plato] |
Full Idea: If a person denies that the idea of each thing is always the same, he will utterly destroy the power of carrying on discussion. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135c) |
16122 | Good thinkers spot forms spread through things, or included within some larger form [Plato] |
Full Idea: It takes dialectic to divide things by kinds...such a person can discriminate a single form spread through a lot of separate things…and forms included in a single outside form…or a form connected as a unit through many wholes. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 253d) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This is very helpful in indicating the complex structure of the Forms that Plato envisages. If you talk of the meanings of words (other than names), though, it comes to the same thing. Wise people fully understand their language. |
1607 | Diotima said the Forms are the objects of desire in philosophical discourse [Plato, by Roochnik] |
Full Idea: According to Diotima, the Forms are the objects of desire operative in philosophical discourse. | |
From: report of Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 210a4-) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.199 |
3039 | When Diogenes said he could only see objects but not their forms, Plato said it was because he had eyes but no intellect [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: When Diogenes told Plato he saw tables and cups, but not 'tableness' and 'cupness', Plato replied that this was because Diogenes had eyes but no intellect. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.2.6 |
2159 | Craftsmen making furniture refer to the form, but no one manufactures the form of furniture [Plato] |
Full Idea: The manufacture of beds and tables involves the craftsman looking to the form and then making the furniture. The form itself is not manufactured by anyone. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 596b) |
210 | It would be absurd to think there were abstract Forms for vile things like hair, mud and dirt [Plato] |
Full Idea: Are there abstract ideas for such things as hair, mud and dirt, which are particularly vile and worthless? That would be quite absurd. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
220 | The concept of a master includes the concept of a slave [Plato] |
Full Idea: Mastership in the abstract is mastership of slavery in the abstract. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133e) |
360 | We must have a prior knowledge of equality, if we see 'equal' things and realise they fall short of it [Plato] |
Full Idea: We must have some previous knowledge of equality, before the time when we saw equal things, but realised that they fell short of it. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 075a) |
17948 | Plato's Forms meant that the sophists only taught the appearance of wisdom and virtue [Plato, by Nehamas] |
Full Idea: Plato's theory of Forms allowed him to claim that the sophists and other opponents were trapped in the world of appearance. What they therefore taught was only apparent wisdom and virtue. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.118 |
5094 | Plato's Forms are said to have no location in space [Plato, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Plato claims that the Forms are not beyond the heavens, because they are not anywhere. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 203a09 | |
A reaction: This is an important corrective to caricature accounts of Plato's Forms (encouraged, I'm afraid, by 'Phaedrus'), when critics talk about 'Platonic Heaven'. Forms are not part of space-time. I like the view that they are hypothetical truths. |
154 | We would have an overpowering love of knowledge if we had a pure idea of it - as with the other Forms [Plato] |
Full Idea: What overpowering love knowledge would inspire if it could bring a clear image of itself before our sight, and the same may be said of the other forms. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 250d) | |
A reaction: the motivation in Plato's theory |
211 | If admirable things have Forms, maybe everything else does as well [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is troubling that if admirable things have abstract ideas, then perhaps everything else must have ideas as well. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
219 | If absolute ideas existed in us, they would cease to be absolute [Plato] |
Full Idea: None of the absolute ideas exists in us, because then it would no longer be absolute. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133c) |
228 | Greatness and smallness must exist, to be opposed to one another, and come into being in things [Plato] |
Full Idea: These two ideas, greatness and smallness, exist, do they not? For if they did not exist, they could not be opposites of one another, and could not come into being in things. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 149e) |
20906 | Platonists argue for the indivisible triangle-in-itself [Plato, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: The Platonists, on the basis of purely logical arguments, posit the existence of an indivisible 'triangle in itself'. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 316a15 | |
A reaction: A helpful confirmation that geometrical figures really are among the Forms (bearing in mind that numbers are not, because they contain one another). What shape is the Form of the triangle? |
12043 | Forms are not universals, as they don't cover every general term [Plato, by Annas] |
Full Idea: Despite a widely misinterpreted passage in the Republic, Plato does not think that there is a Form for every general term; Forms are not what came to be called universals. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
A reaction: Hm. This is a bit of a blow to someone who has catalogued Platonic Forms under 'Universals'. See also Idea 12042, for what Annas thinks Plato may really have had in mind. |
16151 | Plato moves from Forms to a theory of genera and principles in his later work [Plato, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: It seems to me that Plato in the later dialogues, beginning with the second half of 'Parmenides', wants to substitute a theory of genera and theory of principles that constitute these genera for the earlier theory of forms. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
A reaction: My theory is that the later Plato came under the influence of the brilliant young Aristotle, and this idea is a symptom of it. The theory of 'principles' sounds like hylomorphism to me. |
10422 | The not-beautiful is part of the beautiful, though opposed to it, and is just as real [Plato] |
Full Idea: So 'the not beautiful' turns out to be ..both marked off within one kind of those that are, and also set over against one of those that are, ..and the beautiful is no more a being than the not beautiful. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 257d) | |
A reaction: [dialogue eliminated] This is a highly significant passage, for two reasons. It suggests that the Form of the beautiful can have parts, and also that the negations of Forms are Forms themselves (both of which come as a surprise). |
12042 | Plato's Forms were seen as part of physics, rather than of metaphysics [Plato, by Annas] |
Full Idea: In the ancient world Plato's Theory of Forms was mostly seen as one aspect of Plato's 'physics' or theory of the world (rather than as 'metaphysics'). | |
From: report of Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
A reaction: This is how I also see the theory, but then I am inclined to see religion as a rather startling branch of speculative physics. Annas cites 'Timaeus' as the key text for this. |
307 | Something will always be well-made if the maker keeps in mind the eternal underlying pattern [Plato] |
Full Idea: Whenever the maker of anything keeps his eye on the eternally unchanging and uses it as his pattern for the form and function of his product the result must be good. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28b) |
318 | In addition to the underlying unchanging model and a changing copy of it, there must also be a foundation of all change [Plato] |
Full Idea: In addition to an eternal unchanging model and a visible and changing copy of reality, there must be a third part, the receptacle and nurse of all becoming and change. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 49b) | |
A reaction: cf Aristotle's criticism in Metaphysics |
321 | For knowledge and true opinion to be different there must be Forms; otherwise we are just stuck with sensations [Plato] |
Full Idea: If intelligence and true opinion are different, then the forms must exist, but if they are the same, then what our senses perceive must be the most certain reality. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 51d) |
1 | There is only one source for all beauty [Plato] |
Full Idea: If anything is beautiful other than beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason but because it participates in that beautiful. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 100c) | |
A reaction: The Greek word will be 'kalon' (beautiful, fine, noble). Like Aristotle, I find it baffling that such diversity could have a single source. Beautiful things have diverse aims. |
368 | Other things are named after the Forms because they participate in them [Plato] |
Full Idea: The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they participate in the forms. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102a) |
304 | Beautiful things must be different from beauty itself, but beauty itself must be present in each of them [Plato] |
Full Idea: Are fine things different from or identical to fineness? They are different from fineness itself, but fineness itself is in a sense present in each of them. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 301a) |
556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
Full Idea: If there is the same Form for the Forms and for their participants, then they must have something in common. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
317 | The universe is basically an intelligible and unchanging model, and a visible and changing copy of it [Plato] |
Full Idea: Our basic description of the universe contained an intelligible and unchanging model, and a visible and changing copy of it. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 48e) |
4447 | If the good is one, is it unchanged when it is in particulars, and is it then separated from itself? [Plato] |
Full Idea: If man is one, and the good is one, how are they supposed to exist? Do they stay the same even though they are found in many things at the same time, and are they then entirely separated from themselves, which seems most impossible of all? | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 15a) | |
A reaction: Presumably Plato anguishes over this because he thinks Forms are self-predicating (the Good is good). Big mistake. The Good fathers good particulars which resemble itself, but are diluted? |
212 | The whole idea of each Form must be found in each thing which participates in it [Plato] |
Full Idea: The whole idea of each form (of beauty, justice etc) must be found in each thing which participates in it. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131a) |
218 | Participation is not by means of similarity, so we are looking for some other method of participation [Plato] |
Full Idea: Participation is not by means of likeness, so we must seek some other method of participation. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
17 | A Form applies to a set of particular things with the same name [Plato] |
Full Idea: We always postulate a single form for each set of particular things, to which we apply the same name. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 596a) | |
A reaction: This implies that the Forms have a great deal in common with the things, but also hints at the possibility of the Form being quite different from the particular things. |
213 | Each idea is in all its participants at once, just as daytime is a unity but in many separate places at once [Plato] |
Full Idea: Just as day is in many places at once, but not separated from itself, so each idea might be in all its participants at once. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131b) |
216 | If things are made alike by participating in something, that thing will be the absolute idea [Plato] |
Full Idea: That by participation in which like things are made like, will be the absolute idea, will it not? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132e) |
215 | If things partake of ideas, this implies either that everything thinks, or that everything actually is thought [Plato] |
Full Idea: If all things partake of ideas, must either everything be made of thoughts and everything thinks, or everything is thought, and so can't think? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132c) |
217 | Nothing can be like an absolute idea, because a third idea intervenes to make them alike (leading to a regress) [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is impossible for anything to be like an absolute idea, because a third idea will appear to make them alike, and if that is like anything, it will lead to another idea, and so on. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
190 | If asked whether justice itself is just or unjust, you would have to say that it is just [Plato] |
Full Idea: If someone asked me 'Is justice itself just or unjust?' I should answer that it was just, wouldn't you? I agree. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 330c) |
563 | If gods are like men, they are just eternal men; similarly, Forms must differ from particulars [Aristotle on Plato] |
Full Idea: We say there is the form of man, horse and health, but nothing else, making the same mistake as those who say that there are gods but that they are in the form of men. They just posit eternal men, and here we are not positing forms but eternal sensibles. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 997b |
214 | If absolute greatness and great things are seen as the same, another thing appears which makes them seem great [Plato] |
Full Idea: If you regard the absolute great and the many great things in the same way, will not another appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132a) |
12122 | Plato mistakenly thought forms were totally abstracted away from matter [Bacon on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato lost the real fruit of his opinion, by considering forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Francis Bacon - The Advancement of Learning II.VII.5 | |
A reaction: This thought is roughly what got me interested in abstraction, on which you will find many ideas in this database. Research into Bacon's thought is hampered by that fact that the logicians have hijacked abstraction in recent philosophy. |
5574 | Plato's Forms not only do not come from the senses, but they are beyond possibility of sensing [Plato, by Kant] |
Full Idea: In Plato's use of the expression 'idea' we can see that he understood by it something that not only could never be borrowed from the senses, but even goes beyond the concepts of the understanding, since nothing in experience could be congruent to it. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason B370 | |
A reaction: This is why Kant is not a Platonist - because he thinks the limits of our world are the limits of our capacity for possible experience, and Platonic Forms exceed that limit. Personally I am with Plato. I'll never experience a quark either. |
565 | The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato] |
Full Idea: The Forms could not be changeless if they were in changing things. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 998a |
557 | A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato] |
Full Idea: A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
9607 | The greatest discovery in human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects [Brown,JR on Plato] |
Full Idea: The greatest discovery in the history of human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch. 2 | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 2860! Given the diametrically opposed views, it is clearly likely that Plato's central view is the most important idea in the history of human thought, even if it is wrong. |
16435 | Plantinga proposes necessary existent essences as surrogates for the nonexistent things [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Plantinga proposes surrogates for nonexistent things - individual essences that are themselves necessary existents and that correspond one-to-one with all the 'things' that might exist. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 1 | |
A reaction: There are an awful lot of competing concepts of essence flying around these days. This one seems to require some abstract 'third realm' (or worse) in which these essences can exist, awaiting the arrival of thinkers. Not for me. |
13263 | We can grasp whole things in science, because they have a mathematics and a teleology [Plato, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Due to the mathematical nature of structure and the teleological cause underlying the creation of Platonic wholes, these wholes are intelligible, and are in fact the proper objects of science. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
A reaction: I like this idea, because it pays attention to the connection between how we conceive objects to be, and how we are able to think about objects. Only examining these two together enables us to grasp metaphysics. |
14655 | The 'identity criteria' of a name are a group of essential and established facts [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: What we might call 'identity criteria' associated with a name such as 'Aristotle' are what the users of the name regard as essential and established facts about him. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], I) | |
A reaction: The problem here is that identifying something is superficial, whereas essences run deep. Plantinga is, in fact, talking about Lockean 'nominal essence' (and seems unaware of the fact, and never mentions the Lockean real/nominal distinction). |
13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Don't you think that just as each thing has a colour or some of those other qualities we mentioned, it also has a being or essence? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 423e) | |
A reaction: The Greek here seems to be 'ousia', which I increasingly think should be translated as 'distinct identity', rather than as 'existence' or as 'essence'. Maybe the philosophical term 'haecceity' captures it best. |
14647 | Surely self-identity is essential to Socrates? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: If anything is essential to Socrates, surely self-identity is. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.37) | |
A reaction: This is the modern move of Plantinga and Adams, to make 'is identical with Socrates' the one property which assures the identity of Socrates (his 'haecceity'). My view is that self-identity is not a property. Plantinga wonders about that on p.44. |
14658 | 'Being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterise Socrates, so they are among his properties [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Surely it is true of Socrates that he is Socrates and he is identical with Socrates. If these are true of him, then 'being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterize him; they are among his properties or attributes. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
A reaction: As far as I can see (if you insist on accepting self-identity as meaningful) the most you get here is that these are predicates that can attach to Socrates. If you identify predicates with properties you are in deep metaphysical trouble. |
13132 | A snowball's haecceity is the property of being identical with itself [Plantinga, by Westerhoff] |
Full Idea: Plantinga assumes that being identical with that snowball names a property which is that snowball's haecceity. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (De Essentia [1979]) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §52 | |
A reaction: Only a philosopher would suggest such a bizarre way of establishing the unique individuality of a given snowball. You could hardly keep track of the snowball with just that criterion. How do you decide whether something has Plantinga's property? |
15855 | If we see everything as separate, we can then give no account of it [Plato] |
Full Idea: To dissociate each thing from everything else is to destroy totally everything there is to say. The weaving together of forms is what makes speech [logos] possible for us. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 259e) | |
A reaction: This I take to be the lynchpin of metaphysics. We are forced to see the world in a way which enables us to give some sort of account of it. Our metaphysics is 'inference to the best logos'. |
13261 | Plato sees an object's structure as expressible in mathematics [Plato, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: The 'structure' of an object tends to be characterised by Plato as something that is mathematically expressible. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
A reaction: This seems to be pure Pythagoreanism (see Idea 644). Plato is pursuing Pythagoras's research programme, of trying to find mathematics buried in every aspect of reality. |
13265 | Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the source of unity in a complex object [Plato, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the project of how to account, in completely general terms, for the source of unity within a mereologically complex object. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.5 | |
A reaction: Plato seems to have simply asserted that some sort of harmony held things together. Aristotles puts the forms [eidos] within objects, rather than external, so he has to give a fuller account of what is going on in an object. He never managed it! |
15851 | Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato] |
Full Idea: The part would not be the part of many things or all, but of some one character ['ideas'] and of some one thing, which we call a 'whole', since it has come to be one complete [perfected] thing composed [created] of all. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157d) | |
A reaction: A serious shot by Plato at what identity is. Harte quotes it (125) and shows that 'character' is Gk 'idea', and 'composed' will translate as 'created'. 'Form' links this Platonic passage to Aristotle's hylomorphism. |
15856 | A thing can become one or many, depending on how we talk about it [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is through discourse that the same thing flits around, becoming one and many in all sorts of ways. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 15d) | |
A reaction: This is not scepticism about wholes on Plato's part, but a reminder of an obvious fact, that in thought we can break the world up and put it back together again. It is a touchstone of the debate, though. |
593 | Plato's holds that there are three substances: Forms, mathematical entities, and perceptible bodies [Plato, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Plato's doctrine was that the Forms and mathematicals are two substances and that the third substance is that of perceptible bodies. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1028b |
15846 | In Parmenides, if composition is identity, a whole is nothing more than its parts [Plato, by Harte,V] |
Full Idea: At the heart of the 'Parmenides' puzzles about composition is the thesis that composition is identity. Considered thus, a whole adds nothing to an ontology that already includes its parts | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 2.5 | |
A reaction: There has to be more to a unified identity that mere proximity of the parts. When do parts come together, and when do they actually 'compose' something? |
374 | If one object is divided into its parts, someone can then say that one are many and many is one [Plato] |
Full Idea: Someone can theoretically divide an object into constituent parts, concede that they are one object, and then claim that therefore the one is many and the many are one. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 14e) |
15849 | Plato says only a one has parts, and a many does not [Plato, by Harte,V] |
Full Idea: In 'Parmenides' it is argued that a part cannot be part of a many, but must be part of something one. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 3.2 | |
A reaction: This looks like the right way to go with the term 'part'. We presuppose a unity before we even talk of its parts, so we can't get into contradictions and paradoxes about their relationships. |
15850 | Anything which has parts must be one thing, and parts are of a one, not of a many [Plato] |
Full Idea: The whole of which the parts are parts must be one thing composed of many; for each of the parts must be part, not of a many, but of a whole. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
A reaction: This is a key move of metaphysics, and we should hang on to it. The other way madness lies. |
2084 | If a word has no parts and has a single identity, it turns out to be the same kind of thing as a letter [Plato] |
Full Idea: If a complex or a syllable has no parts and is a single identity, hasn't it turned out to be the same kind of thing as an element or letter? | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205d) |
15844 | A sum is that from which nothing is lacking, which is a whole [Plato] |
Full Idea: But this sum now - isn't it just when there is nothing lacking that it is a sum? Yes, necessarily. And won't this very same thing - that from which nothing is lacking - be a whole? | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205a) | |
A reaction: This seems to be right, be rather too vague and potentially circular to be of much use. What is the criterion for deciding that nothing is lacking? |
15843 | The whole can't be the parts, because it would be all of the parts, which is the whole [Plato] |
Full Idea: The whole does not consist of parts; for it did, it would be all the parts and so would be the sum. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 204e) | |
A reaction: That is, 'the whole is the sum of its parts' is a tautology! The claim that 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts' gets into similar trouble. See Verity Harte on this. |
13260 | Plato says wholes are either containers, or they're atomic, or they don't exist [Plato, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Plato considers a 'container' model for wholes (which are disjoint from their parts) [Parm 144e3-], and a 'nihilist' model, in which only wholes are mereological atoms, and a 'bare pluralities' view, in which wholes are not really one at all. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
A reaction: [She cites Verity Harte for this analysis of Plato] The fourth, and best, seems to be that wholes are parts which fall under some unifying force or structure or principle. |
13259 | It seems that the One must be composed of parts, which contradicts its being one [Plato] |
Full Idea: The One must be composed of parts, both being a whole and having parts. So on both grounds the One would thus be many and not one. But it must be not many, but one. So if the One will be one, it will neither be a whole, nor have parts. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137c09), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
A reaction: This is the starting point for Plato's metaphysical discussion of objects. It seems to begin a line of thought which is completed by Aristotle, surmising that only an essential structure can bestow identity on a bunch of parts. |
14666 | Socrates is a contingent being, but his essence is not; without Socrates, his essence is unexemplified [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Socrates is a contingent being; his essence, however, is not. Properties, like propositions and possible worlds, are necessary beings. If Socrates had not existed, his essence would have been unexemplified, but not non-existent. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], 4) | |
A reaction: This is a distinctive Plantinga view, of which I can make little sense. I take it that Socrates used to have an essence. Being dead, the essence no longer exists, but when we talk about Socrates it is largely this essence to which we refer. OK? |
11237 | Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis] |
Full Idea: Plato argues that only universals have essence. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
14656 | Does Socrates have essential properties, plus a unique essence (or 'haecceity') which entails them? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Does Socrates have, in addition to his essential properties, an 'essence' or 'haecceity' - a property essential to him that entails each of his essential properties and that nothing distinct from him has in the world? | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
A reaction: Plantinga says yes, and offers 'Socrateity' (borrowed from Boethius) as his candidate. This is a very odd use of the word 'essence'. I take an essence to be a complex set of fundamental properties. I am also puzzled by his use of the word 'entails'. |
13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
21259 | To grasp a thing we need its name, its definition, and what it really is [Plato] |
Full Idea: There are three elements in any given thing: the first is what the object actually is, the second is the definition of this, and the third is the name. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895d) | |
A reaction: I take the importance of this to be its distinction between what it is, and the definition of what it is. Aristotle maintains this distinction, but some modern Aristotelians seem to get the confused. Plato worried a lot more about names than we do. |
11238 | Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis] |
Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle have a shared general conception of essence: the essence of a thing is what that thing is simply in virtue of itself and in virtue of being the very thing it is. It answers the question 'What is this very thing?' | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
14646 | An object has a property essentially if it couldn't conceivably have lacked it [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: An object has a property essentially just in case it couldn't conceivably have lacked that property. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.35) | |
A reaction: Making it depend on what we can conceive seems a bit dubious, for someone committed to real essences. The key issue is how narrowly or broadly you interpret the word 'property'. The word 'object' needs a bit of thought, too! |
14654 | Properties are 'trivially essential' if they are instantiated by every object in every possible world [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Let us call properties that enjoy the distinction of being instantiated by every object in every possible world 'trivially essential properties'. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], I) | |
A reaction: These would appear to be trivially 'necessary' rather than 'essential'. This continual need for the qualifier 'trivial' shows that they are not talking about proper essences. |
14653 | X is essentially P if it is P in every world, or in every X-world, or in the actual world (and not ¬P elsewhere) [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Socrates has P essentially if he has P in every world, or has it in every world in which he exists, or - most plausible of all - has P in the actual world and has its complement [non-P] in no world. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], Intro) | |
A reaction: These strike me as mere necessary properties, which are not the same thing at all. Essences give rise to the other properties, but Plantinga offers nothing to do the job (and especially not 'Socrateity'!). Essences must explain, say I! |
14660 | If a property is ever essential, can it only ever be an essential property? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Is it the case that any property had essentially by anything is had essentially by everything that has it? | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], III) | |
A reaction: Plantinga says it is not true, but the only example he can give is Socrates having the property of 'being Socrates or Greek'. I take it to be universally false. There are not two types of property here. Properties sometimes play an essential role. |
14661 | Essences are instantiated, and are what entails a thing's properties and lack of properties [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: E is an essence if and only if (a) 'has E essentially' is instantiated in some world or other, and (b) for any world W and property P, E entails 'has P in W' or 'does not have P in W'. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], IV) | |
A reaction: 'Entail' strikes me as a very odd word when you are talking about the structure of the physical world (or are we??). Why would a unique self-identity (his candidate for essence) do the necessary entailing? |
13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is the being or essence of each of the things that are something private to each person, as Protagoras tells us? | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385e) | |
A reaction: This kind of drastic personal relativism about essences doesn't sound very plausible, but the idea that essences are private to each culture, or to each language, must certainly be taken seriously. |
16516 | The ship which Theseus took to Crete is now sent to Delos crowned with flowers [Plato] |
Full Idea: The day before the trial the prow of the ship that the Athenians send to Delos had been crowned with garlands. - Which ship is that? - It is the ship in which, the Athenians say, Theseus once sailed to Crete, taking the victims. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 058a) | |
A reaction: Not philosophical, but this is the Ship of Theseus whose subsequent identity, Plutarch tells us, became a matter of dispute. |
14657 | Does 'being identical with Socrates' name a property? I can think of no objections to it [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Is there any reason to suppose that 'being identical with Socrates' names a property? Well, is there any reason to suppose that it does not? I cannot think of any, nor have I heard any that are at all impressive. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
A reaction: Is there any reason to think that a planet somewhere is entirely under the control of white mice? Extraordinary. No wonder Plantinga believes in God and the Ontological Argument, as well as the existence of 'Socrateity' etc. |
15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically. |
13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
Full Idea: Soc: Suppose we made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you; would there then be two Cratyluses, or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus? Crat: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 432c) | |
A reaction: Don't think that science fiction examples are a modern development in philosophy. Plato has just invented the Startrek transporter. The two Cratyluses are the two spheres in Max Black's famous example. |
14642 | Expressing modality about a statement is 'de dicto'; expressing it of property-possession is 'de re' [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Some statements predicate modality of another statement (modality 'de dicto'); but others predicate of an object the necessary or essential possession of a property; these latter express modality 'de re'. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.26) | |
A reaction: The distinction seems to originate in Aquinas, concerning whether God knows the future (or, how he knows the future). 'De dicto' is straightforward, but possibly the result of convention. 'De re' is controversial, and implies deep metaphysics. |
14643 | 'De dicto' true and 'de re' false is possible, and so is 'de dicto' false and 'de re' true [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Aquinas says if a 'de dicto' statement is true, the 'de re' version may be false. The opposite also applies: 'What I am thinking of [17] is essentially prime' is true, but 'The proposition "what I am thinking of is prime" is necessarily true' is false. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.27) | |
A reaction: In his examples the first is 'de re' (about the number), and the second is 'de dicto' (about that proposition). |
14649 | Can we find an appropriate 'de dicto' paraphrase for any 'de re' proposition? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: To explain the 'de re' via the 'de dicto' is to provide a rule enabling us to find, for each de re proposition, an equivalent de dicto proposition. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.41) | |
A reaction: Many 'de dicto' paraphrases will change the modality of a 'de re' statement, so the challenge is to find the right equivalent version. Plantinga takes up this challenge. The 'de dicto' statement says the object has the property, and must have it. |
14652 | 'De re' modality is as clear as 'de dicto' modality, because they are logically equivalent [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: The idea of modality 'de re' is no more (although no less) obscure that the idea of modality 'de dicto'; for I think we can see that any statement of the former type is logically equivalent to some statement of the latter. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], Intro) | |
A reaction: If two things are logically equivalent, that doesn't ensure that they are equally clear! Personally I am on the side of de re modality. |
14659 | We can imagine being beetles or alligators, so it is possible we might have such bodies [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: We easily understand Kafka's story about the man who wakes up to discover that he now has the body of a beetle; and in fact the state of affairs depicted is entirely possible. I can imagine being an alligator, so Socrates could have had an alligator body. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], III) | |
A reaction: This really is going the whole hog with accepting whatever is conceivable as being possible. I take this to be shocking nonsense, and it greatly reduces Plantinga in my esteem, despite his displays of intelligence and erudition. |
11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: To say than x has a property in a possible world is simply to say that x would have had the property if that world had been actual. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
A reaction: Plantinga tries to defuse all the problems with identity across possible worlds, by hanging on to subjunctive verbs and modal modifiers. The point, though, was to explain these, or at least to try to give their logical form. |
14662 | Possible worlds clarify possibility, propositions, properties, sets, counterfacts, time, determinism etc. [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: The idea of possible worlds has delivered insights on logical possibility (de dicto and de re), propositions, properties and sets, counterfactuals, time and temporal relations, causal determinism, the ontological argument, and the problem of evil. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], Intro) | |
A reaction: This date (1976) seems to be the high-water mark for enthusiasm about possible worlds. I suppose if we just stick to 'insights' rather than 'answers' then the big claim might still be acceptable. Which problems are created by possible worlds? |
18383 | Plantinga says there is just this world, with possibilities expressed in propositions [Plantinga, by Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Plantinga rejects other possible worlds, but adds to our world an uncountable multitude of sets of propositions, each set a way that the world might have been, but is in fact not. (Roughly, for each Lewis world, Plantinga has such a set). | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (The Nature of Necessity [1974]) by David M. Armstrong - Truth and Truthmakers 07.2 | |
A reaction: To me it seems as ontologically extravagant to postulate unexpressed propositions as to postulate concrete possible worlds. I think the best line is that there is just the actual world, with the possibilities implied in its dispositions. |
16472 | Plantinga's actualism is nominal, because he fills actuality with possibilia [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Plantinga's critics worry that the metaphysics is actualist in name only, since it is achieved only by populating the actual world with entities whose nature is explained in terms of merely possible things that would exemplify them if anything did. | |
From: comment on Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.4 | |
A reaction: Plantinga seems a long way from the usual motivation for actualism, which is probably sceptical empiricism, and building a system on what is smack in front of you. Possibilities have to be true, though. That's why you need dispositions in actuality. |
11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: A possible world is just a maximal possible state of affairs. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
A reaction: The key point here is that Plantinga includes the word 'possible' in his definition. Possibility defines the worlds, and so worlds cannot be used on their own to define possibility. |
14651 | What Socrates could have been, and could have become, are different? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Is there a difference between what Socrates could have been, and what he could have become? | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.44) | |
A reaction: That is, I take it, 1) how different might he have been in the past, given how he is now?, and 2) how different might he have been in the past, and now, if he had permanently diverged from how he is now? 1) has tight constraints on it. |
11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: If the Socrates of the actual world has snubnosedness but Socrates-in-W does not, this is surely inconsistent with the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which none sounder can be conceived. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
A reaction: However, we allow Socrates to differ over time while remaining the same Socrates, so some similar approach should apply here. In both cases we need some notion of what is essential to Socrates. But what unites aged 3 with aged 70? |
11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: We may say it makes no sense to say that Socrates exists at a world, if there is in principle no way of identifying him. ...But this is confused. To suppose Agnew was a precocious baby, we needn't be able to pick him from a gallery of babies. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
A reaction: This seems a good point, and yet we have a space-time line joining adult Agnew with baby Agnew, and no such causal link is available between persons in different possible worlds. What would be the criterion in each case? |
11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: The Theory of Worldbound Individuals contends that no object exists in more than one possible world; this implies the outrageous view that - taking properties in the broadest sense - no object could have lacked any property that it in fact has. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
A reaction: Leibniz is the best known exponent of this 'outrageous view', though Plantinga shows that Lewis may be seen in the same light, since only counterparts are found in possible worlds, not the real thing. The Theory does seem wrong. |
11891 | Possibilities for an individual can only refer to that individual, in some possible world [Plantinga, by Mackie,P] |
Full Idea: Plantinga says for an individual to exist with certain properties in some possible world is simply for it to be true that, had that possible world obtained, that individual would have existed with those properties. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (The Nature of Necessity [1974]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 5.1 | |
A reaction: This is intended to dissolve the problem of transworld identity, and is certainly a flat rejection of counterparts. I take the point to be that the individual is the key element in defining the possible world, so can't possibly be different. |
11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: While Socrates has no counterparts that lack self-identity, he does have counterparts that lack identity-with-Socrates. He alone has that - the property, that is, of being identical with the object that in fact instantiates Socrateity. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
A reaction: I am never persuaded by arguments which rest on such dubious pseudo-properties. Whether or not a counterpart of Socrates has any sort of identity with Socrates cannot be prejudged, as it would beg the question. |
11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: It makes no sense to say I could have been someone else, yet Counterpart Theory implies not merely that I could have been distinct from myself, but that I would have been distinct from myself had things gone differently in even the most miniscule detail. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
A reaction: A counterpart doesn't appear to be 'me being distinct from myself'. We have to combine counterparts over possible worlds with perdurance over time. I am a 'worm' of time-slices. Anything not in that worm is not strictly me. |
2133 | Knowledge must be of the permanent unchanging nature of things [Plato] |
Full Idea: Those who can see each thing in itself, in its permanent and unvarying nature, we'll say they have knowledge and are not merely entertaining beliefs. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 479e) |
16120 | Knowing how to achieve immortality is pointless without the knowledge how to use immortality [Plato] |
Full Idea: If there exists the knowledge of how to make men immortal, but without the knowledge of how to use this immortality, there seems to be no value in it. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 289b) | |
A reaction: I take this to be not a gormless utilitarianism about knowledge, but a plea for holism, that knowledge only has value as part of some larger picture. The big view is the important view. He's wrong, though. Work out the use later. |
2080 | Things are only knowable if a rational account (logos) is possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Things which are susceptible to a rational account are knowable. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 201d) |
16126 | Expertise is knowledge of the whole by means of the parts [Plato] |
Full Idea: A man has passed from mere judgment to expert knowledge of the being of a wagon when he has done so in virtue of having gone over the whole by means of the elements. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 207c) | |
A reaction: Plato is emphasising that the expert must know the hundred parts of a wagon, and not just the half dozen main components, but here the point is to go over the whole via the parts, and not just list the parts. |
20184 | The only real evil is loss of knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only real kind of faring ill is the loss of knowledge. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 345b) | |
A reaction: This must crucially involve the intellectualist view (of Socrates) that virtuos behaviour results from knowledge, and moral wickedness is the result of ignorance. It is hard to see how forgetting a phone number is evil. |
20219 | True opinions only become really valuable when they are tied down by reasons [Plato] |
Full Idea: True opinions are a fine thing and all they do is good, …but they escape from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until one ties them down by (giving) an account of the reason why. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 98a3) | |
A reaction: This gives justification the role of guarantee, stabilising and securing true beliefs (rather than triggering some new thing called 'knowledge'). |
20185 | The most important things in life are wisdom and knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: It would be shameful indeed to say that wisdom and knowledge are anything but the most powerful forces in human activity. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 352d) | |
A reaction: He lumps wisdom and knowledge together, and I think we can take 'knowledge' to mean something like understanding, because obviously mere atomistic propositional knowledge can be utterly trivial. |
2050 | It is impossible to believe something which is held to be false [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is impossible to believe something which is not the case. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 167a) |
2076 | How can a belief exist if its object doesn't exist? [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the object of a belief is what is not, the object of this belief is nothing; but if there is no object to a belief, then that is not belief at all. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 189a) |
389 | How can you be certain about aspects of the world if they aren't constant? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Could we attribute certainty to studying aspects of the world, such as how it arose, or acts, or is acted upon, when none of them ever was or will be constant? Of course not. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 59b) |
5985 | Seeking and learning are just recollection [Plato] |
Full Idea: Seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 81d) | |
A reaction: This is a prelude to the famous conversation with the slave boy about geometry. You don't have to follow Plato into the doctrine of reincarnation; this remark is a key slogan for all rationalists. As pupils in maths lessons, we pull knowledge from within. |
5986 | The slave boy learns geometry from questioning, not teaching, so it is recollection [Plato] |
Full Idea: The slave boy's knowledge of geometry will not come from teaching but from questioning; he will recover it for himself, and the spontaneous recovery of knowledge that is in him is recollection. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 85d) | |
A reaction: Of course, if maths and geometry are huge tautological axiom systems, we would expect to be able to derive them (with hints from a teacher) entirely from their axioms. It is not clear why we might be able to derive the truths of all nature a priori. |
357 | People are obviously recollecting when they react to a geometrical diagram [Plato] |
Full Idea: The way in which people react to a geometrical diagram or anything like that is unmistakable proof of the theory of recollection. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 073a) |
359 | If we feel the inadequacy of a resemblance, we must recollect the original [Plato] |
Full Idea: If someone sees a resemblance, but feels that it falls far short of the original, they must therefore have a recollection of the original. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 074e) |
5961 | The soul gets its goodness from god, and its evil from previous existence. [Plato] |
Full Idea: From its composer the soul possesses all beautiful things, but from its former condition, everything that proves to be harsh and unjust in heaven. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 273b) | |
A reaction: A neat move to explain the origins of evil (or rather, to shift the problem of evil to a long long way from here). This view presumably traces back to the views of Empedocles on good and evil. Can the soul acquire evil in its current existence? |
9343 | To achieve pure knowledge, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things with the soul [Plato] |
Full Idea: We are convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the original ideal which motivates the devotion to a priori knowledge - that it will lead to a 'pure' knowledge, which in Plato's case will be eternal and necessary knowledge, like taking lessons from the gods. Wrong. |
2045 | Perception is infallible, suggesting that it is knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: Perception is always of something that is, and it is infallible, which suggests that it is knowledge. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 152c) |
2067 | Our senses could have been separate, but they converge on one mind [Plato] |
Full Idea: It would be peculiar if each of us were like a Trojan horse, with a whole bunch of senses sitting inside us, rather than that all these perceptions converge onto a single identity (mind, or whatever one ought to call it). | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 184d) |
18278 | Kant showed that our perceptions are partly constructed from our concepts [Reichenbach] |
Full Idea: It was Kant's great discovery that the object of knowledge is not simply given but constructed, and that it contains conceptual elements not contained in pure perception. | |
From: Hans Reichenbach (The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge [1965], p.49), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap |
2162 | If theory and practice conflict, the best part of the mind accepts theory, so the other part is of lower grade [Plato] |
Full Idea: When appearance and measure conflict…it is the best part of the mind which accepts measurements and calculations, and the part which opposes them, therefore, must be a low-grade part of the mind. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 603a) |
2069 | Thought must grasp being itself before truth becomes possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: If you can't apprehend being you can't apprehend truth, and so a thing could not be known. Therefore knowledge is not located in immediate experience but in thinking about it, since the latter makes it possible to grasp being and truth. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 186c) |
151 | True knowledge is of the reality behind sense experience [Plato] |
Full Idea: True knowledge is concerned with the abode of true reality, without colour or shape, intangible but utterly real, apprehensible only to the intellect. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 247c) |
334 | Only bird-brained people think astronomy is entirely a matter of evidence [Plato] |
Full Idea: Birds are empty-headed men who grew feathers instead of hair, because they were interested in astronomy but thought it was entirely a matter of physical evidence. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 91d) |
2068 | With what physical faculty do we perceive pairs of opposed abstract qualities? [Plato] |
Full Idea: With what physical faculty do we perceive being and not-being, similarity and dissimilarity, identity and difference, oneness and many, odd and even and other maths, ….fineness and goodness? | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 185d) |
2078 | You might mistake eleven for twelve in your senses, but not in your mind [Plato] |
Full Idea: Sight or touch might make someone take eleven for twelve, but he could never form this mistaken belief about the contents of his mind. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 195e) |
1637 | A soul without understanding is ugly [Plato] |
Full Idea: The soul that lacks understanding must be set down as ugly. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 228d) | |
A reaction: The teleological view of things understands their nature in things of their perfection. and the essence of beauty is perfection. It is the mind's nature to know. Failing to know is as ugly as allowing your crops to die. |
2140 | True belief without knowledge is like blind people on the right road [Plato] |
Full Idea: Don't people who have a correct belief but no knowledge strike you as exactly like blind people who happen to be taking the right road? | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 506c) | |
A reaction: Good. I love the style of this. Most philosophical points can be made in one concise sentence, and it is only the industry of journals and academe that forces points to be extended so much. |
1923 | As a guide to action, true opinion is as good as knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: True opinion is as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 97b) | |
A reaction: This is the germ of Peirce's epistemology - that knowledge is an interesting theoretical concept, but opinion/belief is what matters, and most needs explanation. |
2089 | An inadequate rational account would still not justify knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: If you don't know which letters belong together in the right syllables…it is possible for true belief to be accompanied by a rational account and still not be entitled to the name of knowledge. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 208b) | |
A reaction: In each case of justification there is a 'clinching' stage, for which there is never going to be a strict rule. It might be foundational, but equally it might be massive coherence, or no alternative. |
174 | True opinion without reason is midway between wisdom and ignorance [Plato] |
Full Idea: There is a state of mind half-way between wisdom and ignorance - having true opinions without being able to give reasons for them. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 202a) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 2140, where Plato scorns this state of mind. What he describes could be split into two - purely lucky true beliefs, and 'externalist knowledge', with non-conscious justification. |
2085 | Parts and wholes are either equally knowable or equally unknowable [Plato] |
Full Idea: Either a syllable and its letters are equally knowable and expressible in a rational account, or they are both equally unknowable and inexpressible. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205e) | |
A reaction: Presumably you could explain the syllable by the letters, but not vice versa, but he must mean that the explanation is worthless without the letters being explained too. So all explanation is worthless? |
2091 | Without distinguishing marks, how do I know what my beliefs are about? [Plato] |
Full Idea: If I only have beliefs about Theaetetus when I don't know his distinguishing mark, how on earth were my beliefs about you rather than anyone else? | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 209b) | |
A reaction: This is a rather intellectualist approach to mental activity. Presumably Theaetetus has lots of distinguishing marks, but they are not conscious. Must Socrates know everything? |
2087 | A rational account might be seeing an image of one's belief, like a reflection in a mirror [Plato] |
Full Idea: A rational account might be forming an image of one's belief, as in a mirror or a pond. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 206d) | |
A reaction: Not promising, since the image is not going to be clearer than the original, or contain any new information. Maybe it would be clarified by being 'framed', instead of drifting in muddle. |
2090 | A rational account involves giving an image, or analysis, or giving a differentiating mark [Plato] |
Full Idea: A third sort of rational account (after giving an image, or analysing elements) is being able to mention some mark which differentiates the object in question ('the sun is the brightest heavenly body'). | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 208c) | |
A reaction: This is Plato's clearest statement of what would be involved in adding the necessary logos to your true belief. An image of it, or an analysis, or an individuation. How about a cause? |
2081 | Maybe primary elements can be named, but not receive a rational account [Plato] |
Full Idea: Maybe the primary elements of which things are composed are not susceptible to rational accounts. Each of them taken by itself can only be named, but nothing further can be said about it. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 201e) | |
A reaction: This still seems to be more or less the central issue in philosophy - which things should be treated as 'primitive', and which other things are analysed and explained using the primitive tools? |
2088 | A rational account of a wagon would mean knowledge of its hundred parts [Plato] |
Full Idea: In the case of a wagon, we may only have correct belief, but someone who is able to explain what it is by going through its hundred parts has got hold of a rational account. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 207b) | |
A reaction: A wonderful example. In science, you know smoking correlates with cancer, but you only know it when you know the mechanism, the causal structure. This may be a general truth. |
303 | Say how many teeth the other has, then count them. If you are right, we will trust your other claims [Plato] |
Full Idea: If each of you says how many teeth the other has, and when they are counted we find you do know, we will believe your other claims as well. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 294c) | |
A reaction: This is the clairvoyant problem for reliabilism, if truth is delivered for no apparent reason. Useful, but hardly knowledge. HOW did you know the number of teeth? |
6356 | Maybe a reliable justification must come from a process working with its 'proper function' [Plantinga, by Pollock/Cruz] |
Full Idea: A modified version of reliabilism proposes that a belief is justified in case it is the product of a process that is working according to its 'proper function' in the environment for which it is appropriate. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function [1993]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.5.4 | |
A reaction: Something might infallibly indicate something without that being its proper function (e.g. 'Red sky at night/ Shepherds' delight'). An inaccurate clock is fulfilling its proper function (telling the time), but not very well. |
13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
Full Idea: It isn't even reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things are passing on and none remain. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 440a) | |
A reaction: This encapsulates Plato's horror at Heraclitus scepticism about the stable identity of things. It leads to the essentialism of Aristotle and Leibniz, who fear that there is no knowledge if we can't pin down individual identities. Know processes? |
2047 | What evidence can be brought to show whether we are dreaming or not? [Plato] |
Full Idea: What evidence could be brought if we were asked at this very moment whether we are asleep and are dreaming all our thoughts? | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 158b) |
1919 | You don't need to learn what you know, and how do you seek for what you don't know? [Plato] |
Full Idea: You could argue that a man cannot discover what he does know or what he doesn't. The first needs no discovery, and how do you begin looking for the second? | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 80e) |
335 | Do the gods also hold different opinions about what is right and honourable? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Do the gods too hold different opinions about what is right, and similarly about what is honourable and dishonourable, good and bad? | |
From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 07e) |
2054 | Clearly some people are superior to others when it comes to medicine [Plato] |
Full Idea: In medicine, at least, most people are not self-sufficient at prescribing and effecting cures for themselves, and here some people are superior to others. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 171e) |
2053 | If you claim that all beliefs are true, that includes beliefs opposed to your own [Plato] |
Full Idea: To say that everyone believes what is the case, is to concede the truth of the oppositions' beliefs; in other words, the person has to concede that he himself is wrong. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 171a) |
2059 | How can a relativist form opinions about what will happen in the future? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Does a relativist have any authority to decide about things which will happen in the future? | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 178c) | |
A reaction: Nice question! It seems commonsense that such speculations are possible, but without a concept of truth they are ridiculous. |
165 | If the apparent facts strongly conflict with probability, it is in everyone's interests to suppress the facts [Plato] |
Full Idea: There are some occasions when both prosecution and defence should positively suppress the facts in favour of probability, if the facts are improbable. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 272e) |
17085 | A good explanation totally rules out the opposite explanation (so Forms are required) [Plato, by Ruben] |
Full Idea: For Plato, an acceptable explanation is one such that there is no possibility of there being the opposite explanation at all, and he thought that only explanations in terms of the Forms, but never physical explanations, could meet this requirement. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 2 | |
A reaction: [Republic 436c is cited] |
15859 | To investigate the causes of things, study what is best for them [Plato] |
Full Idea: If one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. Then it befitted a man to investigate only ...what is best. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |
A reaction: A reversal of the modern idea of 'best explanation'. Socrates is citing Anaxagoras's proposal to understand things by interpreting the workings of a supreme Mind. It is the religious version of best explanation. |
2096 | Is the function of the mind management, authority and planning - or is it one's whole way of life? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Does the mind have a function - say, management, authority and planning? And isn't one's way of life a function of the mind? | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353d) | |
A reaction: Note that this is Plato, not some Darwinian materialist. This strikes me as the correct starting point - what does a mind appear to be for (with or without the help of Darwin)? Plato's proposals seem good (though we could cut 'authority'). |
13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
Full Idea: Those who named the soul thought that when the soul is present in the body, it causes it to live and gives it the power to breathe the air and be revitalized [anapsuchon]. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 399d) | |
A reaction: I quote this to emphasis that Greek psuché is very different from the consciousness which is largely discussed in modern philosophy of mind. I find it helpful to make a real effort to grasp the Greek concept. The feeling of life within you. |
6009 | Psychic conflict is clear if appetite is close to the body and reason fairly separate [Plato, by Modrak] |
Full Idea: Plato makes psychic conflict intelligible by appeal to a conception of the soul such that the soul is closely connected to the body at the level of appetite and relatively separate from the body at the level of reason. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 339b) by Deborah K.W. Modrak - Classical theories of Mind | |
A reaction: I'm not sure about this at the level of biology or ontology, but at the phenomenal level this is obviously right. Hunger makes consciousness feel like a physical event, but doing arithmetic doesn't seem remotely physical. |
6041 | There is a third element to the mind - spirit - lying between reason and appetite [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is the third element of the mind a form of reason, so that there are only two elements to it, reason and appetite? There must be a third element, if spirit ('thumos') can be shown to be distinct - and you can see it in children when they are born. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 441a) | |
A reaction: This is Plato's famous tripartite doctrine of the soul, though in other dialogues he says that there is only reason and appetite. The suspicion is that he fixed the soul having three parts, to match the three parts of his republic's social structure. |
9296 | The soul is self-motion [Plato] |
Full Idea: Self-motion is of the very nature of the soul. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245e) | |
A reaction: This culminates a length discussion of the soul. He gives an implausible argument that the soul is immortal, because it could never cease its self-motion. Why are we so unimpressed by motion, when the Greeks were amazed by it? |
5962 | Plato says the soul is ordered by number [Plato, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Plato regards the substance of soul not as number but as being ordered by number. | |
From: report of Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE]) by Plutarch - 68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus' 1023 | |
A reaction: This remark points towards Plato's esoteric doctrines, which are some sort of mathematical metaphysics. The idea that order and numbers are in some way connected is one of the most powerful in western civilization, with undeniable appeal. |
21260 | Soul is what is defined by 'self-generating motion' [Plato] |
Full Idea: The entity which we call 'soul' is precisely that which is defined by the expression 'self-generating motion'. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896a) | |
A reaction: We may suspect that he defines soul in this way for a particular context, aimed at proving the existence of a First Mover. He must think there is more to soul than the generation of movement. |
2127 | The mind has parts, because we have inner conflicts [Plato] |
Full Idea: If someone is thirsty but something is making the mind resist the pull of its thirst, isn't this bound to be a different part of the mind from the thirsty part? | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) | |
A reaction: For Descartes there is one mind pulled by appetite and the 'natural light'. For Hume they don't seem to be 'parts' of anything. For Fodor there is an integrated team of modules. I like Fodor, and good integration is virtue. |
1737 | The soul seems to have an infinity of parts [Aristotle on Plato] |
Full Idea: There seem in a way to be an infinity of parts of the soul, and not only those that some have given, distinguishing the reasoning, spirited and desiderative parts, or with others the rational and irrational. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) by Aristotle - De Anima 432a25 | |
A reaction: This seems a nice response to Plato's proposal that the psuché has two or three parts. He could have said that the soul was a unity, and has no parts, but the proposal of infinite parts seems much closer to the modern neurological view of the mind. |
13154 | Do we think and experience with blood, air or fire, or could it be our brain? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is it with the blood that we think, or with the air or the fire that is in us? Or is it none of these, but the brain that supplies our senses of hearing and sight and smell. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097a) | |
A reaction: In retrospect it seems surprising that such clever people hadn't worked this one out, given the evidence of anatomy, in animals and people, and given brain injuries. By the time of Galen they appear to have got the answer. |
191 | Everything resembles everything else up to a point [Plato] |
Full Idea: Everything resembles everything else up to a point. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 331d) |
276 | My individuality is my soul, which carries my body around [Plato] |
Full Idea: While I am alive I have nothing to thank for my individuality except my soul, whereas my body is just the likeness that I carry around with me. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 959a) |
364 | One soul can't be more or less of a soul than another [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is one soul, even minutely, more or less of a soul than another? Not in the least. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 093b) | |
A reaction: This idea is attractive because unconsciousness and death seem to be abrupt procedures, and so appear to be all-or-nothing, but I would personally view extreme Alzheimer's as an erasing of the soul, though a minimum level of it seems all-or-nothing. |
180 | We call a person the same throughout life, but all their attributes change [Plato] |
Full Idea: During the period from boyhood to old age, man does not retain the same attributes, though he is called the same person. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 207d) | |
A reaction: This precisely identifies the basic problem of personal identity over time. If this is the problem, DNA looks more and more significant for the answer, though it would be an awful mistake to think a pattern of DNA was a person. |
181 | Only the gods stay unchanged; we replace our losses with similar acquisitions [Plato] |
Full Idea: We retain identity not by staying the same (the preserve of gods) but by replacing losses with new similar acquisitions. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 208b) | |
A reaction: Any modern student of personal identity should be intrigued by this remark! It appears to take a rather physical view of the matter, and to be aware of human biology as a process. Are my continuing desires token-identical, or just 'similar'? |
330 | No one wants to be bad, but bad men result from physical and educational failures, which they do not want or choose [Plato] |
Full Idea: No one wishes to be bad, but a bad man is bad because of some flaw in his physical makeup and failure in his education, neither of which he likes or chooses. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 86e) |
23997 | Plato saw emotions and appetites as wild horses, in need of taming [Plato, by Goldie] |
Full Idea: Plato had a conception of the emotions and our bodily appetites as being like wild horses, to be harnassed and controlled by reason. | |
From: report of Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE]) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Education' | |
A reaction: This seems to make Plato the patriarch of puritanism. See Symposium, as well as Phaedrus. But bringing up children can often seem like taming wild beasts. |
1651 | Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato put high on his agenda a project which did not figure in Socrates' programme at all: the hygienic conditioning of the passions. This cannot be an intellectual process, as argument cannot touch them. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.88 | |
A reaction: This is the standard traditional view of any thinker who exaggerates the importance and potential of reason in our lives. |
9086 | The idea of abstract objects is not ontological; it comes from the epistemological idea of abstraction [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: The notion of an abstract object comes from the notion of abstraction; it is in origin an epistemological rather than an ontological category. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.232) | |
A reaction: Etymology doesn't prove anything. However, if you define abstract objects as not existing in space or time, you must recognise that this may only be because that is how humans imaginatively created them in the first place. |
9087 | Theists may see abstract objects as really divine thoughts [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Theists may find attractive a view popular among medieval philosophers from Augustine on: that abstract objects are really divine thoughts. More exactly, propositions are divine thoughts, properties divine concepts, and sets divine collections. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.233) | |
A reaction: Hm. I pass this on because we should be aware that there is a theological history to discussions of abstract objects, and some people have vested interests in keeping them outside of the natural world. Aren't properties natural? Does God gerrymander sets? |
16469 | Plantinga has domains of sets of essences, variables denoting essences, and predicates as functions [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The domains in Plantinga's interpretation of Kripke's semantics are sets of essences, and the values of variables are essences. The values of predicates have to be functions from possible worlds to essences. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.4 | |
A reaction: I begin to think this is quite nice, as long as one doesn't take the commitment to the essences too seriously. For 'essence' read 'minimal identity'? But I take essences to be more than minimal, so use identities (which Kripke does?). |
16470 | Plantinga's essences have their own properties - so will have essences, giving a hierarchy [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
Full Idea: For Plantinga, essences are entities in their own right and will have properties different from what instantiates them. Hence he will need individual essences of individual essences, distinct from the essences. I see no way to avoid a hierarchy of them. | |
From: comment on Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.4 | |
A reaction: This sounds devastating for Plantinga, but it is a challenge for traditional Aristotelians. Only a logician suffers from a hierarchy, but a scientist might have to live with an essence, which contains a super-essence. |
14663 | Are propositions and states of affairs two separate things, or only one? I incline to say one [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Are there two sorts of thing, propositions and states of affairs, or only one? I am inclined to the former view on the ground that propositions have a property, truth or falsehood, not had by states of affairs. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], 1) | |
A reaction: Might a proposition be nothing more than an assertion that a state of affairs obtains? It would then pass his test. The idea that a proposition is a complex of facts in the external world ('Russellian' propositions?) quite baffles me. |
9085 | If propositions are concrete they don't have to exist, and so they can't be necessary truths [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Someone who believes propositions are concrete cannot agree that some propositions are necessary. For propositions are contingent beings, and could have failed to exist. But if they fail to exist, then they fail to be true. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.230) | |
A reaction: [compressed] He implies the actual existence of an infinity of trivial, boring or ridiculous necessary truths. I suspect that he is just confusing a thought with its content. Or we might just treat necessary propositions as hypothetical. |
9084 | Propositions can't just be in brains, because 'there are no human beings' might be true [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: If propositions are brain inscriptions, then if there had been no human beings there would have been no propositions. But then 'there are no human beings' would have been true, so there would have been at least one truth (and thus one proposition). | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.229) | |
A reaction: This would make 'there are no x's' true for any value of x apart from actual objects, which implies an infinity of propositions. Does Plantinga really believe that these all exist? He may be confusing propositions with facts. |
159 | Only a good philosopher can be a good speaker [Plato] |
Full Idea: Unless a man becomes an adequate philosopher he will never be an adequate speaker on any subject. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 261a) | |
A reaction: Depends. Hitler showed little sign of clear philosophical thinking, but the addition of lights and uniforms seemed to sweep reasonably intelligent people along with him. |
5945 | The 'Republic' is a great work of rhetorical theory [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
Full Idea: The 'Republic' is the greatest single achievement of ancient rhetorical theory. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment Ch.9 | |
A reaction: A lovely inversion of our normal reading of Plato! Is the real aim of philosophy the making of good speeches? Is the great aim to display the true beauty of the human mind, as the Olympics display the beauty of the body? |
114 | Rhetoric can produce conviction, but not educate people about right and wrong [Plato] |
Full Idea: Rhetoric is an agent of the kind of persuasion which is designed to produce conviction, but not to educate people about right and wrong. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 455a) | |
A reaction: Surely there must be good rhetoric (or at least it is an open question)? |
3324 | Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato is liable to the charge of having been duped by a figure of speech, albeit the most profound of all, the trope of reification. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12 | |
A reaction: That might be a plausible account if his view was ridiculous, but given how many powerful friends Plato has, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, we should assume he was cleverer than that. |
5946 | 'Phaedrus' pioneers the notion of philosophical rhetoric [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
Full Idea: The purpose of the 'Phaedrus' is to pioneer the notion of philosophical rhetoric. | |
From: comment on Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], Ch.10) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment | |
A reaction: This is a wonderfully challenging view of what Plato was up to. One might connect it with Rorty's claim that philosophy should move away from epistemology and analysis, towards hermeneutics, which sounds to me like rhetoric. 'Phaedrus' is beautiful. |
158 | An excellent speech seems to imply a knowledge of the truth in the mind of the speaker [Plato] |
Full Idea: If a speech is to be classed as excellent, does that not presuppose knowledge of the truth about the subject of the speech in the mind of the speaker. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 259e) | |
A reaction: I like the thought that Plato's main interest was rhetoric, but with the view that the only good rhetoric is truth-speaking. It would be hard to admire a speech if you disagreed with it. |
283 | The question of whether or not to persuade comes before the science of persuasion [Plato] |
Full Idea: The science of whether one must persuade or not must rule over the science capable of persuading. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 304c) | |
A reaction: Plato probably thinks that reason has to be top of the pyramid, but there is always the Nietzschean/romantic question of why we should place such a value on what is rational. |
116 | Rhetoric is irrational about its means and its ends [Plato] |
Full Idea: Rhetoric is a knack, because it lacks rational understanding of its object or what it dispenses (and can't explain the reason anything happens). | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 465a) | |
A reaction: If there are cunning people who have the wrong sort of intelligence for morality, there must be cunning users of rhetoric who know exactly what they are doing. |
135 | All activity aims at the good [Plato] |
Full Idea: All activity aims at the good. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 499e) | |
A reaction: He includes non-conscious activity, so this is the 'teleological' view of nature, which seems a bit optimistic to the modern mind. |
23316 | For Plato and Aristotle there is no will; there is only rational desire for what is seen as good [Plato, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: Neither Plato nor Aristotle has a notion of the will. …Willing is a form of desire which is specific to reason. If reason perceives something as good, it wills or desires it. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 577e) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 1 | |
A reaction: [Frede cites 577e, Aris. 413c8, 1113a15-, 1136b6] How do they explain the apparent decisions of non-rational animals? No modern neuroscientist thinks there is a physical object called a person's 'will'. |
16 | We avoid evil either through a natural aversion, or because we have acquired knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: Unless a man is born with a heaven-sent aversion to wrong-doing, or acquires the knowledge to refrain from it, he will never do right of his own free will. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 366c) | |
A reaction: This is the territory explored so carefully by Aristotle (after he had read Republic!). It is hard to see what the knowledge could be, other than awareness of consequences. |
203 | Courage is knowing what should or shouldn't be feared [Plato] |
Full Idea: Knowledge of what is and is not to be feared is courage. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 360d) |
1655 | If goodness needs true opinion but not knowledge, you can skip the 'examined life' [Vlastos on Plato] |
Full Idea: If true opinion without knowledge does suffice to guide action aright, the great mass of men and women may be spared the pain and hazards of the "examined" life. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Apology [c.383 BCE], 38a) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.125 |
4026 | Beauty is harmony with what is divine, and ugliness is lack of such harmony [Plato] |
Full Idea: Ugliness is out of harmony with everything that is godly; beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 206d) | |
A reaction: This remark shows how the concept of 'harmony' is at the centre of Greek thought (and is a potential bridge of the is/ought gap). |
390 | If goodness involves moderation and proportion, then it seems to be found in beauty [Plato] |
Full Idea: Moderation and proportion seem, in effect, to be beauty and excellence. So now this property we're looking for, goodness, has taken refuge in beauty. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 64e) |
299 | What is fine is always difficult [Plato] |
Full Idea: The proverb says 'Anything fine is difficult'. | |
From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 304e) | |
A reaction: attributed (as usual) to Solon |
172 | Love of ugliness is impossible [Plato] |
Full Idea: There cannot be such a thing as love of ugliness. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 201a) |
173 | Beauty and goodness are the same [Plato] |
Full Idea: What is good is the same as what is beautiful. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 201c) |
155 | Beauty is the clearest and most lovely of the Forms [Plato] |
Full Idea: Only beauty has the privilege of being the most clearly discerned and the most lovely of the forms. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 250e) | |
A reaction: the motivation in Plato's theory |
249 | People who value beauty above virtue insult the soul by placing the body above it [Plato] |
Full Idea: When a man values beauty above virtue, the disrespect he shows his soul is total and fundamental, because he argues that the body is more to be honoured than the soul. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 727e) |
183 | Stage two is the realisation that beauty of soul is of more value than beauty of body [Plato] |
Full Idea: The second stage of progress is to realise that beauty of soul is more valuable than beauty of body. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 210b) |
184 | Progress goes from physical beauty, to moral beauty, to the beauty of knowledge, and reaches absolute beauty [Plato] |
Full Idea: One should step up from physical beauty, to moral beauty, to the beauty of knowledge, until at last one knows what absolute beauty is. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 211c) | |
A reaction: Presumably this is why Socrates refused sexual favours to Alcibiades. The idea is inspiring, and yet it is a rejection of humanity. |
282 | Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato] |
Full Idea: The bodiless things, being the most beautiful and the greatest, are only shown with clarity by speech and nothing else. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 286a) | |
A reaction: Unfortunately this will be true of warped and ugly ideas as well. |
171 | Music is a knowledge of love in the realm of harmony and rhythm [Plato] |
Full Idea: Music may be called a knowledge of the principles of love in the realm of harmony and rhythm. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 187c) |
316 | Music has harmony like the soul, and serves to reorder disharmony within us [Plato] |
Full Idea: Music has harmonic motions like the orbits of the soul, and is not for irrational pleasure, but to reduce to order any disharmony in the revolutions within us. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 47d) |
16565 | Without the surface decoration, poetry shows only appearances and nothing of what is real [Plato] |
Full Idea: If you strip a poet's works of their musical colorings and take them by themselves, I think you know what they look like. …We say that a maker of an image - an imitator - knows nothing about that which is but only about its appearance. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 601a) | |
A reaction: Knowing the appearances well is more than most people can manage, and aspirations to know the true reality may be an idle dream. Poets are, I presume, welcome in the Cave. |
2160 | Representation is two steps removed from the truth [Plato] |
Full Idea: The province of representation is indeed two steps removed from the truth. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 602c) |
2163 | Artists should be excluded from a law-abiding community, because they destroy the rational mind [Plato] |
Full Idea: We are right to refuse admission to artists in any community which is going to respect convention, because he destroys the rational mind and feeds the irrational - it is like destroying good citizens by giving ruffians power. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 605b) |
2135 | Truth is closely related to proportion [Plato] |
Full Idea: Truth is closely related to proportion. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 486d) |
297 | What is fine is the parent of goodness [Plato] |
Full Idea: Fineness is the father of goodness. | |
From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 297b) |
168 | To understand morality requires a soul [Plato] |
Full Idea: Good and evil are meaningless to things that have no soul. | |
From: Plato (Letter Seven [c.352 BCE], 334) | |
A reaction: That is presumably psuché, and hence includes plants. Soulless things can still function well, but obviously that is not 'meaningful' to them. |
2141 | I suggest that we forget about trying to define goodness itself for the time being [Plato] |
Full Idea: I suggest that we forget about trying to define goodness itself for the time being. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 506e) | |
A reaction: This was a source of some humour in the ancient world (in the theatre). Goodness is like some distant glow, which can never be approached in order to learn of its source. |
302 | What knowledge is required to live well? [Plato] |
Full Idea: What knowledge would enable us to live finely for the rest of our lives? | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 293a) | |
A reaction: A successful grasp of other people's points of view might lead to respect for them. Also a realisation that we are not isolated individuals. We really are all in it together. |
1869 | The good cannot be expressed in words, but imprints itself upon the soul [Plato, by Celsus] |
Full Idea: Plato points to the truth about the highest good when he says that it cannot be expressed in words, but rather comes from familiarity - like a flash from the blue, imprinting itself upon the soul. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Celsus - On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) VII | |
A reaction: It is reasonable to be drawn to something inexpressible, such as an appealing piece of music, but not good philosophy to build a system around something so obscure. |
7503 | Plato never refers to examining the conscience [Plato, by Foucault] |
Full Idea: Plato never speaks of the examination of conscience - never! | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.276 | |
A reaction: Plato does imply some sort of self-evident direct knowledge about that nature of a healthy soul. Presumably the full-blown concept of conscience is something given from outside, from God. In 'Euthyphro', Plato asserts the primacy of morality (Idea 337). |
143 | The two ruling human principles are the natural desire for pleasure, and an acquired love of virtue [Plato] |
Full Idea: In each one of us there are two ruling and impelling principles: a desire for pleasure, which is innate, and an acquired conviction which causes us to aim at excellence. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 237d) | |
A reaction: This division is too neat and simple. An obsession with pleasure I would take to be acquired. If you set out to do something, I think there is an innate desire to do it well. |
4115 | Plato found that he could only enforce rational moral justification by creating an authoritarian society [Williams,B on Plato] |
Full Idea: For Plato, the problem of making the ethical into a force was the problem of making society embody rational justification, and that problem could only have an authoritarian solution. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch. 2 | |
A reaction: Plato's citizens were largely illiterate. We can be more carrot and less stick. |
122 | Moral rules are made by the weak members of humanity [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: It's the weaklings who constitute the majority of the human race who make the rules. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 483b) | |
A reaction: An aristocrat bemoans democracy. Presumably the qualification for being a 'weakling' is shortage of money. How strong are the scions of the aristocrats? |
2173 | As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato] |
Full Idea: Once gods and fate and social expectation were no longer there, Plato felt it necessary to discover ethics inside human nature, not just as ethical knowledge (Socrates' view), but in the structure of the soul. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.43 | |
A reaction: anti Charles Taylor |
4547 | Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value [Nietzsche on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 518d) by Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power (notebooks) §572 | |
A reaction: A most interesting comment. It epitomises the Nietzschean reading of Plato, in which the will to power leads the sense of value, which in turn creates the metaphysics. |
2094 | A thing's function is what it alone can do, or what it does better than other things [Plato] |
Full Idea: The function of anything is what it alone can do, or what it can do better than anything else. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353a) | |
A reaction: I take this concept to be the lynchpin of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Note that it arises earlier, in Plato. Perhaps he should say what it is 'meant to do'. |
2095 | If something has a function then it has a state of being good [Plato] |
Full Idea: Anything which has been endowed with a function also has a state of being good. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353b) | |
A reaction: 'ought' from 'is'? |
2129 | Goodness is mental health, badness is mental sickness [Plato] |
Full Idea: Goodness is a state of mental health, bloom and vitality; badness is a state of mental sickness, deformity and infirmity. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 444e) | |
A reaction: A nice statement of the closeness of goodness to health for the Greeks. The key point is that health is a deeply natural concept, which bridges the fact-value divide. |
1590 | The just man does not harm his enemies, but benefits everyone [Plato] |
Full Idea: First, Socrates, you told me justice is harming your enemies and helping your friends. But later it seemed that the just man, since everything he does is for someone's benefit, never harms anyone. | |
From: Plato (Clitophon [c.372 BCE], 410b) | |
A reaction: Socrates certainly didn't subscribe to the first view, which is the traditional consensus in Greek culture. In general Socrates agreed with the views later promoted by Jesus. |
14177 | Love assists men in achieving merit and happiness [Plato] |
Full Idea: Phaedrus: Love is not only the oldest and most honourable of the gods, but also the most powerful to assist men in the acquisition of merit and happiness, both here and hereafter. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 180b) | |
A reaction: Maybe we should talk less of love as a feeling, and more as a motivation, not just in human relationships, but in activities like gardening and database compilation. |
179 | Love is desire for perpetual possession of the good [Plato] |
Full Idea: Love is desire for perpetual possession of the good. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 206a) | |
A reaction: Even the worst human beings often have lovers. 'Perpetual' is a nice observation. |
176 | Love follows beauty, wisdom is exceptionally beautiful, so love follows wisdom [Plato] |
Full Idea: Wisdom is one of the most beautiful of things, and Love is love of beauty, so it follows that Love must be a love of wisdom. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 204b) | |
A reaction: Good, but wisdom isn't the only exceptionally beautiful thing. Music is beautiful partly because it is devoid of ideas. |
139 | A good person is bound to act well, and this brings happiness [Plato] |
Full Idea: A good person is bound to do whatever he does well and successfully, and success brings fulfilment and happiness. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 507c) | |
A reaction: Not how we would see it, I guess, but this is the Greek idea that a good person is one who functions well. Anyone who functions well is probably having a good time. |
12 | If we were invisible, would the just man become like the unjust? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Glaucon: with a ring of invisibility 'the just man would differ in no way from the unjust'. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 360c) | |
A reaction: I think a highly altruistic person would behave well with the ring, but I'm sure Glaucon would claim that these habits would wear off after a while. But I doubt that. |
128 | Is it natural to simply indulge our selfish desires? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: Nature says the only authentic way of life is to do nothing to hinder or restrain the expansion of one's desires. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 491e) | |
A reaction: Sounds like the natural desires of a young single man. Parents and spouses have natural desires that focus on other people's desires. |
2168 | Clever criminals do well at first, but not in the long run [Plato] |
Full Idea: Clever criminals are exactly like those runners who do well on the way up the track, and then flag on the way back. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 613b) | |
A reaction: Presumably there is some concept of natural justice lurking behind this comparison. Apart from the money, though, it is hard to imagine any professional criminal leading a flourishing life. |
202 | No one willingly and knowingly embraces evil [Plato] |
Full Idea: No one willingly goes to meet evil, or what he thinks is evil. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 358d) | |
A reaction: Presumably people who actively choose satanism can override this deep-seated attitude. But their adherence to evil usually seems to be rather restrained. A danger of tautology with ideas like this. |
2137 | The main aim is to understand goodness, which gives everything its value and advantage [Plato] |
Full Idea: The most important thing to try to understand is the character of goodness, because this is where anything which is moral (or whatever) gets its value and advantages from. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505a) | |
A reaction: I think I'm with Aristotle on this. I understand a good lunch or a good person, but pure goodness just seems to be an empty placeholder. A vote in favour. |
2139 | Every person, and every activity, aims at the good [Plato] |
Full Idea: The Good is something which everyone is after, and is the goal of all their activities. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505d) | |
A reaction: An obvious danger of tautology. If a blood crazed army is 'after' a massacre of some sort, that seems to qualify. What proportion is needed for 'everyone'? |
392 | Neither intellect nor pleasure are the good, because they are not perfect and self-sufficient [Plato] |
Full Idea: Both intellect and pleasure are completely absolved of being the good itself, since they both lack independence, that is, sufficiency and perfection. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 67a) | |
A reaction: This seems to be Plato disagreeing with Socrates, who sees reason and intellect as central to morality. Presumable he means that the good should be a primitive. Why is pleasure not sufficient? |
2143 | Good has the same role in the world of knowledge as the sun has in the physical world [Plato] |
Full Idea: As goodness stands in the intelligible realm to intelligence and the things we know, so in the visible realm the sun stands to sight and the things we see. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 508c) | |
A reaction: The claim seems to be that only goodness makes the world intelligible, but that strikes as closer to mysticism than to objective observation. |
2147 | The sight of goodness leads to all that is fine and true and right [Plato] |
Full Idea: The sight of goodness shows that it is responsible for everything that is right and fine,…and it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge. It is necessary for intelligent conduct of private and public affairs. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 517c) | |
A reaction: As so often with Plato, I am baffled by such a claim. I sometimes see things in the world which strike me as right or fine, but I cannot conceive of a separate 'sight of goodness'. |
4007 | For Plato we abandon honour and pleasure once we see the Good [Plato, by Taylor,C] |
Full Idea: For Plato, once we see the Good, we cease to be fascinated by and absorbed in the search for honour and pleasure as we were before. | |
From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505d) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §3.2 | |
A reaction: This is the quasi-religious aspect of the Good - that it is more like a vision than a reason |
391 | The good involves beauty, proportion and truth [Plato] |
Full Idea: If we are unable to net the good in a single concept, three must capture it: namely, beauty, proportion and truth. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 65a) | |
A reaction: Very interesting. More illuminating than the discussion of the Good in 'Republic'. Is a handsome and honest murderer good? Is beauty part of the nature of the good, or a hallmark of it? |
295 | The good is beautiful [Plato] |
Full Idea: The good is beautiful. | |
From: Plato (Lysis [c.400 BCE], 216d) | |
A reaction: also Timaeus 87c |
2144 | Goodness makes truth and knowledge possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is goodness which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 508e) | |
A reaction: If we take truth to be the hallmark of successful thinking, then I have no idea what this means. I can't see how truth would disappear in an amoral cosmos. |
2164 | Bad is always destructive, where good preserves and benefits [Plato] |
Full Idea: Badness always manifests in destruction and corruption, while goodness always manifests in preservation and benefit. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 608e) | |
A reaction: Suspicions of tautology in this one. Can we have any concepts of good or bad which are not linked to desirable or undesirable outcomes? |
393 | Good first, then beauty, then reason, then knowledge, then pleasure [Plato, by PG] |
Full Idea: Good is supreme, followed by beauty, then reason, then knowledge, then pure pleasure, then mixed pleasure. | |
From: report of Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 67a) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: He tells us that pure pleasures are simple pleasures. Epicurus presumably read this. No mention of truth, unless that is part of reason. Why does he value beauty so highly? |
9274 | Plato's legacy to European thought was the Good, the Beautiful and the True [Plato, by Gray] |
Full Idea: Plato's legacy to European thought was a trio of capital letters - the Good, the Beautiful and the True. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.8 | |
A reaction: It seems to have been Baumgarten who turned this into a slogan (Idea 8117). Gray says these ideals are lethal, but I identify with them very strongly, and am quite happy to see the good life as an attempt to find the right balance between them. |
177 | If a person is good they will automatically become happy [Plato] |
Full Idea: 'What will be gained by a man who is good?' 'That is easy - he will be happy'. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 205a) | |
A reaction: Suppose you tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944 (a good deed), but failed. Happiness presumably results from success, rather than mere good intentions. |
301 | Only knowledge of some sort is good [Plato] |
Full Idea: Nothing is good except knowledge of some sort. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 292b) | |
A reaction: I've heard it suggested that truth is the only value. This is the Socratic idea that moral goodness is a matter of successful rational judgement. Not convinced, but interesting. |
2138 | Pleasure is commonly thought to be the good, though the more ingenious prefer knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: The usual view of goodness is that it is pleasure, while there's also a more ingenious view that it is knowledge. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505b) | |
A reaction: Pleasure clearly has an attraction for everyone (even puritans), and is thus a plausible natural candidate. Is this pure or instrumental knowledge? Hard to justify the former. |
4322 | In slaking our thirst the goodness of the action and the pleasure are clearly separate [Plato] |
Full Idea: When we drink to quench thirst, we lose the distress of the thirst and the pleasure of drinking at the same moment, but one loss is good and the other bad, so the pleasure and the goodness must be separate. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 497d) | |
A reaction: This is open to the objection that the good of slaking one's thirst is a long-term pleasure, where the drinking is short-term, so pleasure is still the good. |
94 | Pleasure is better with the addition of intelligence, so pleasure is not the good [Plato, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Plato says the life of pleasure is more desirable with the addition of intelligence, and if the combination is better, pleasure is not the good. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1172b27 | |
A reaction: It is obvious why we like pleasure, but not why intelligence makes it 'better'. Maybe it is just because we enjoy intelligence? |
136 | Good should be the aim of pleasant activity, not the other way round [Plato] |
Full Idea: Good should be the goal of pleasant activities, rather than pleasure being the goal of good activities. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 500a) | |
A reaction: Nice. Not far off what Aristotle says on the topic. So what activities should we seek out? Narrow the pleasures down to the good ones, or narrow the good ones down to the pleasurable? |
2070 | Even people who think pleasure is the good admit that there are bad pleasures [Plato] |
Full Idea: Those who define good as pleasure are clearly confused, and are compelled to admit that there are bad pleasures, so that the same thing is both good and bad. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505c) | |
A reaction: The issue is whether the pleasure can be disentangled from the action. 'It was a hideous murder, but at least the murderer enjoyed it'. Sounds wrong to me. |
265 | An action is only just if it is performed by someone with a just character and outlook [Plato] |
Full Idea: The description 'just' is applicable only to the benefit conferred or injury inflicted by someone with a just character and outlook. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 862b) | |
A reaction: How should we describe the occasional administering of good justice by a generally wicked judge. Greeks focus on character, but moderns focus on actions. |
193 | Some things are good even though they are not beneficial to men [Plato] |
Full Idea: 'Do you mean by good those things that are beneficial to men?' 'Not only those. I call some things which are not beneficial good as well'. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 333e) | |
A reaction: Examples needed, but this would be bad news for utilitarians. Good health is not seen as beneficial if it is taken for granted. Not being deaf. |
269 | Attempted murder is like real murder, but we should respect the luck which avoided total ruin [Plato] |
Full Idea: An attempted murder should be treated like a successful one, but with respect shown for the luck which saved him from total ruin. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 877a) | |
A reaction: The earliest reference to moral luck, I think. 'Repect' sounds vague, but it is asking judges to 'take it into consideration', which is quite practical. Attempted murderers are just as dangerous. |
14178 | Happiness is secure enjoyment of what is good and beautiful [Plato] |
Full Idea: By happy you mean in secure enjoyment of what is good and beautiful? - Certainly. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 202c) | |
A reaction: We seem to have lost track of the idea that beauty might be an essential ingredient of happiness. |
17947 | Plato decided that the virtuous and happy life was the philosophical life [Plato, by Nehamas] |
Full Idea: Plato came to the conclusion that virtue and happiness consist in the life of philosophy itself. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.117 | |
A reaction: This view is obviously ridiculous, because it largely excludes almost the entire human race, which sees philosophy as a cul-de-sac, even if it is good. But virtue and happiness need some serious thought. |
332 | One should exercise both the mind and the body, to avoid imbalance [Plato] |
Full Idea: One should preserve a balance and avoid exercising the mind or body without the other; mathematicians should exercise physically, and athletes mentally. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 88c) | |
A reaction: Excellent, and very modern. Use it or lose it. It suggests that Plato had a fairly holistic view of a human being, and saw mind and body as closely integrated. |
385 | Some of the pleasures and pains we feel are false [Plato] |
Full Idea: Living beings experience pleasures and pains which seem, and indeed are, false. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 42c) | |
A reaction: The idea that there are 'authentic' pleasures and pains needs some investigation. Misguided anger is a false pain? Vanity is a false pleasure? |
387 | A small pure pleasure is much finer than a large one contaminated with pain [Plato] |
Full Idea: A tiny little pleasure is, if uncontaminated by pain, always more pleasant, truer and finer than a large amount. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 53b) | |
A reaction: More Platonic puritanism. Is a complete absence of pleasure the highest pleasure of all? I don't think I understand 'truer'. Why would a pleasure be false because it is intense? |
2157 | Nice smells are intensive, have no preceding pain, and no bad after-effect [Plato] |
Full Idea: Nice smells have no preceding feeling of pain, they are very intense, and they leave no distress when they are over. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 584b) | |
A reaction: A nice example for extreme puritans to contemplate. Objections to enjoying nice smells seem almost inconceivable. Puritans will, I suppose, say 'slippery slope'. |
371 | Reason, memory, truth and wisdom are far better than pleasure, for those who can attain them [Plato] |
Full Idea: My contention is that reason, intellect, memory - along with correct belief and true calculation - are far better than pleasure for all creatures capable of attaining them. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 11b) | |
A reaction: Why? Is it better to understand deeply, or to act well? Can we just say there is objective good and subjective good, and they have little in common? Depressed heroes. |
376 | Would you prefer a life of pleasure without reason, or one of reason without pleasure? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Try thinking about the life of pleasure without reason, and the life of reason without pleasure. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 20e) | |
A reaction: I suspect that we see the two as more deeply entangled that Plato did. It would be hard to motivate reasoning if we didn't enjoy it. Pleasure without reason sound dire. |
382 | It is unlikely that the gods feel either pleasure or pain [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is unlikely that the gods feel pleasure or the opposite. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 33b) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 383. |
240 | It would be strange if the gods rewarded those who experienced the most pleasure in life [Plato] |
Full Idea: It would be strange if the gods gave the greatest rewards in heaven to those who led the most pleasant life, rather than the most just. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 662c) | |
A reaction: All of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato.... See Idea 1454. |
197 | Some pleasures are not good, and some pains are not evil [Plato] |
Full Idea: There are some pleasures which are not good, and some pains which are not evil. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 351d) | |
A reaction: Sadism and child birth. Though Bentham (I think) says that there is nothing good about the pain, since the event would obviously be better without it. |
200 | People tend only to disapprove of pleasure if it leads to pain, or prevents future pleasure [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only reason the common man disapproves of pleasures is if they lead to pain and deprive us of future pleasures. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 354a) | |
A reaction: Plato has a strong sense that some pleasures are just innately depraved and wicked. If those pleasure don't hurt anyone, it is very hard to pinpoint what is wrong with them. |
2134 | Philosophers are concerned with totally non-physical pleasures [Plato] |
Full Idea: A person concerned with learning is concerned with purely mental pleasure, having nothing to do with pleasures reaching the mind through the body - assuming the person is a genuine philosopher. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 485d) | |
A reaction: It is hard to find any argument which can demonstrate that mental pleasures are superior to physical ones. Mill notably failed to do it. |
157 | Most pleasure is release from pain, and is therefore not worthwhile [Plato] |
Full Idea: Life is not worth living for pleasures whose enjoyment entirely depends on previous sensation of pain, like almost all physical pleasures. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 258e) | |
A reaction: Eating exotic food which is hard to obtain? (Pay someone to obtain it). Rock climbing. Training for sport. |
373 | Pleasure is certainly very pleasant, but it doesn't follow that all pleasures are good [Plato] |
Full Idea: The pleasantness of pleasure is not in dispute, but where we say the majority of pleasures are bad, though some are good, you are attributing goodness to all of them. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 13b) | |
A reaction: Bentham's plausible view is that the feeling of pleasure is always good, and the badness is in some other aspect of the event. Compare sadistic fantasy with sadistic action. |
379 | The good must be sufficient and perfect, and neither intellect nor pleasure are that [Plato] |
Full Idea: Neither pleasure nor intellect comprises the good. If it did it would have to be sufficient and perfect. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 22b) | |
A reaction: Seems sensible. I can't make sense of any vision of the good which consists of suppressing some aspect of human nature. (Hm. Our capacity for violence?) |
381 | We feel pleasure when we approach our natural state of harmony [Plato] |
Full Idea: When harmony is being restored, and the natural state of harmony is approached, then pleasure arises. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 31d) | |
A reaction: The supreme value of harmony was important to Plato, but most of us are less convinced, I suspect. The way to achieve harmony is to avoid anything stressful. |
2156 | There are three types of pleasure, for reason, for spirit and for appetite [Plato] |
Full Idea: Each of the three mental categories (reason, spirit, appetite) has its own particular pleasure, so that there are three kinds of pleasure. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 580d) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure why the types of pleasure are distinguished by mental faculties, rather than by the variety of sources of the pleasure. |
361 | It is a mistake to think that the most violent pleasure or pain is therefore the truest reality [Plato] |
Full Idea: When anyone's soul feels a keen pleasure or pain it cannot help supposing that whatever causes the most violent emotion is the plainest and truest reality - which it is not. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 084c) | |
A reaction: Do people think that? Most people distinguish subjective from objective. Wounded soldiers are also aware of victory or defeat. |
328 | Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant [Plato] |
Full Idea: Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 81e) | |
A reaction: Not many people would agree with this. I recently watched a sparrowhawk eat a pigeon in my garden. This is the source of the stoic formula of living according to nature. |
134 | Good and bad people seem to experience equal amounts of pleasure and pain [Plato] |
Full Idea: There is little to tell between good and bad people (e.g. cowards) in terms of how much pleasure and distress they experience. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 498c) | |
A reaction: A very perceptive remark. If the good are people with empathy for others, then they may suffer more distress than the insensitive wicked. |
386 | Intense pleasure and pain are not felt in a good body, but in a worthless one [Plato] |
Full Idea: Intensity of pleasure and pain is to be found not in a good state of body and soul, but in a worthless one. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 45e) | |
A reaction: This just seems to be Plato's puritanism. How can you criticise someone for experience genuine intense pain? Experiencing intense pleasure is no crime, but pursuit of it might be. |
2123 | Excessive pleasure deranges people, making the other virtues impossible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Self-discipline and excessive pleasure cannot go together, because pleasure deranges people just as much as distress. Excessive pleasure cannot partner any of the other virtues. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 402e) | |
A reaction: This invites an examination of the word 'excessive', which seems too subjective. Aristotle says any good is improved by the addition of pleasure. Pleasure can certainly derange people. |
264 | The conquest of pleasure is the noblest victory of all [Plato] |
Full Idea: The conquest of pleasure is the noblest victory of all. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 840c) | |
A reaction: Plato's puritanical streak. Even Aristotle doesn't agree with this. Self-control does not imply conquest of pleasure. Has a good professional wine taster conquered pleasure? |
132 | If happiness is the satisfaction of desires, then a life of scratching itches should be happiness [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: I want to ask whether a lifetime spent scratching, itching and scratching, no end of scratching, is also a life of happiness. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 494c) | |
A reaction: There are plenty of people who think 'fun' is the main aim of life, and who fit what Socrates is referring to. We don't admire such a life, but not many people can be admired. |
2158 | Pleasure-seekers desperately seek illusory satisfaction, like filling a leaky vessel [Plato] |
Full Idea: Pleasure-seekers desperately and violently seek satisfaction in unreal things for a part of themselves which is also unreal - a leaky vessel they're trying to fill. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 586b) | |
A reaction: Plato dreams of some enduring 'satisfaction' which never fades. He should have attended more to Heraclitus, and less to Parmenides. |
4319 | In a fool's mind desire is like a leaky jar, insatiable in its desires, and order and contentment are better [Plato] |
Full Idea: In a fool's mind desire is a leaky jar, …which is an analogy for the mind's insatiability, showing we should prefer an orderly life, in which one is content with whatever is to hand, to a self-indulgent life of insatiable desire. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 493b) | |
A reaction: This points to an interesting paradox, that pleasure requires the misery of desire. And yet absence of desire is like death. An Aristotelian mean, of living according to nature, seems the escape route. |
2166 | We should behave well even if invisible, for the health of the mind [Plato] |
Full Idea: There's nothing better for the mind than morality, and a person ought to behave morally whether or not he owns Gyges' ring. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 612b) |
1636 | Wickedness is an illness of the soul [Plato] |
Full Idea: Wickedness is a sedition and illness of the soul. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 228b) |
388 | Hedonists must say that someone in pain is bad, even if they are virtuous [Plato] |
Full Idea: A hedonist must say that someone who happens to be feeling pain rather than pleasure is, as long as the pain lasts, a bad man, even if he is the most virtuous man in the world. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 55b) |
130 | Is the happiest state one of sensual, self-indulgent freedom? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: If a person has the means to live a life of sensual, self-indulgent freedom, there's no better or happier state of existence. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 492c) |
377 | If you lived a life of maximum pleasure, would you still be lacking anything? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Would you, Protarchus, gladly live your whole life experiencing only the greatest pleasure? Would you think you were still lacking anything? | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 21a) | |
A reaction: the pleasure machine problem |
378 | A life of pure pleasure with no intellect is the life of a jellyfish [Plato] |
Full Idea: A life of pure pleasure with no intellect is not the life of a human being, but the life of a jellyfish. | |
From: Plato (Philebus [c.353 BCE], 21c) |
2097 | Isn't it better to have a reputation for goodness than to actually be good? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Unless I gain a reputation for morality, my actually being moral will do me no good, but an immoral person who has managed to get a reputation for morality is said to have a wonderful life. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365b) |
19946 | Morality is a compromise, showing restraint, to avoid suffering wrong without compensation [Plato] |
Full Idea: The origin and nature of morality is a compromise between the ideal of doing wrong without paying for it, and the worst situation, which is having wrong done to one while lacking the means of exacting compensation. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 359a) | |
A reaction: This idea is from Glaucon, and is not endorsed by Socrates. Hobbes thought it was right, though he emphasised safety. Game theory makes this approach to moraliy much more plausible. |
5 | Justice is merely the interests of the stronger party [Plato] |
Full Idea: Thrasymachus: Justice or right is simply what is in the interest of the stronger party. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 338c) | |
A reaction: Not sure whether this is cynicism about the brutal realities of life, or cynicism about the very concept of justice. |
7 | Surely you don't return a borrowed weapon to a mad friend? [Plato] |
Full Idea: If one borrowed a weapon from a friend who subsequently went out of his mind and then asked for it back, surely one ought not to return it? | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 331c) | |
A reaction: Only a Kantian would think of disagreeing with this obvious truth. There is no promise here, but an implicit moral commitment. Such things should always have an all-things-being-equal clause. |
8 | Is right just the interests of the powerful? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Thrasymachus: right is the interest of the established government. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 339a) | |
A reaction: To believe this you would have to believe the powerful control not what is judged to be right, but also the ordinary language which expresses such judgements. Marxism explains that. |
15 | Sin first, then sacrifice to the gods from the proceeds [Plato] |
Full Idea: The thing to do is to sin first and sacrifice afterwards from the proceeds. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365e) | |
A reaction: A bit like Graham Greene's Catholicism. One Greek view of the gods seems to be that they are quite myopic and naïve. |
13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
Full Idea: 'Areté' signifies lack of perplexity [euporia, ease of movement], and that the flow of a good soul is unimpeded. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 415d) | |
A reaction: Some highly dubious etymology going on here, and throughout 'Cratylus', but it gives a nice feeling for the way Socrates and Plato saw virtue. |
6015 | Plato, unusually, said that theoretical and practical wisdom are inseparable [Plato, by Kraut] |
Full Idea: Two virtues that are ordinarily kept distinct - theoretical and practical wisdom - are joined by Plato; he thinks that neither one can be fully possessed unless it is combined with the other. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Richard Kraut - Plato | |
A reaction: I get the impression that this doctrine comes from Socrates, whose position is widely reported as 'intellectualist'. Aristotle certainly held the opposite view. |
170 | The only slavery which is not dishonourable is slavery to excellence [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only form of servitude which has no dishonour has for its object the acquisition of excellence. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 184c) |
144 | Reason impels us towards excellence, which teaches us self-control [Plato] |
Full Idea: The conviction which impels us towards excellence is rational, and the power by which it masters us we call self-control. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 237e) |
5944 | For Plato, virtue is its own reward [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
Full Idea: The 'Republic' is the first sustained philosophical defence of the idea that virtue is its own reward. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], Ch.9) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment | |
A reaction: Sceptics might say that at the heart of his claim is the idea that the virtuous life is the best means of achieving long-term pleasure (as opposed to short-sighted hedonism). What is it about people which could make virtue attractive to them? |
4332 | Virtue is a concord of reason and emotion, with pleasure and pain trained to correct ends [Plato] |
Full Idea: Virtue is the general concord of reason and emotion, but there is one key element, which is the correct formation of our feelings of pleasure and pain, which makes us hate what we ought to hate, and love what we ought to love. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 653c) | |
A reaction: An important truth, taken up by Aristotle. To see another person humiliated gives some people pleasure and other people pain. |
248 | A serious desire for moral excellence is very rare indeed [Plato] |
Full Idea: People who are anxious to attain moral excellence with all possible speed are pretty thin on the ground. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 718e) |
253 | Every crime is the result of excessive self-love [Plato] |
Full Idea: The cause of each and every crime we commit is precisely this excessive love of ourselves. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 731e) |
263 | The only worthwhile life is one devoted to physical and moral perfection [Plato] |
Full Idea: A life devoted to every physical perfection and every moral virtue is the only life worth the name. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 807c) |
120 | Should we avoid evil because it will bring us bad consequences? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: We should avoid doing wrong because of all the bad consequences it will bring us. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 480a) |
182 | The first step on the right path is the contemplation of physical beauty when young [Plato] |
Full Idea: The man who would pursue the right way to his goal must begin, when he is young, by contemplating physical beauty. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 210a) |
1927 | It seems that virtue is neither natural nor taught, but is a divine gift [Plato] |
Full Idea: If our discussion is right, virtue is acquired neither by nature nor by teaching. Whoever has it gets it by divine dispensation, without taking thought. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 99e) |
189 | If we punish wrong-doers, it shows that we believe virtue can be taught [Plato] |
Full Idea: Athenians inflict punishment on wrong-doers, which shows that they too think it possible to impart and teach goodness. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 324c) |
235 | Virtue is the aim of all laws [Plato] |
Full Idea: Virtue is the aim of the laws the legislator lays down. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 631a) |
1913 | Is virtue taught, or achieved by practice, or a natural aptitude, or what? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is virtue something that can be taught, or does it come by practice, or is it a natural aptitude, or something else? | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 70a) |
1921 | If virtue is a type of knowledge then it ought to be taught [Plato] |
Full Idea: If virtue is some sort of knowledge, then clearly it could be taught. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 87c) |
204 | Socrates is contradicting himself in claiming virtue can't be taught, but that it is knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates is contradicting himself by saying virtue is not teachable, and yet trying to demonstrate that every virtue is knowledge. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 361b) |
188 | Socrates did not believe that virtue could be taught [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: I do not believe that virtue can be taught. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 320b) |
118 | I would rather be a victim of crime than a criminal [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: If I had to choose between doing wrong and having wrong done to me, I'd prefer the latter to the former. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 469c) | |
A reaction: cf Democritus 68B45 |
305 | Something which lies midway between two evils is better than either of them [Plato] |
Full Idea: Something which is composed of two factors which are bad for different purposes and lies midway between them is better than either of the factors. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 306a) |
281 | The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is by preserving the mean that arts produce everything that is good and beautiful. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 284b) |
1918 | How can you know part of virtue without knowing the whole? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Does anyone know what a part of virtue is without knowing the whole? | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 79c) |
1916 | Even if virtues are many and various, they must have something in common to make them virtues [Plato] |
Full Idea: Even if virtues are many and various, at least they all have some common character which makes them all virtues. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 72c) |
2155 | True goodness requires mental unity and harmony [Plato] |
Full Idea: True goodness requires mental unity and harmony. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 554e) |
277 | The Guardians must aim to discover the common element in the four cardinal virtues [Plato] |
Full Idea: The guardians of the state should aim to get an exact idea of the common element in all the four virtues. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 965d) |
2126 | A good community necessarily has wisdom, courage, self-discipline and morality [Plato] |
Full Idea: A good community has everything which is good, so it necessarily has wisdom, courage, self-discipline and morality. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 427e) |
140 | Self-indulgent desire makes friendship impossible, because it makes a person incapable of co-operation [Plato] |
Full Idea: Self-indulgent desire makes a person incapable of co-operation, which is a prerequisite of friendship. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 507e) |
131 | If absence of desire is happiness, then nothing is happier than a stone or a corpse [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: If people who need nothing are happy, there would be nothing happier than a stone or a corpse. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 492e) | |
A reaction: We aren't really supposed to approve of Callicles, but to me this is a splendidly crushing western response to many of the ideals found in eastern philosophy. |
254 | Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided [Plato] |
Full Idea: Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 732c) |
119 | A criminal is worse off if he avoids punishment [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: A criminal is worse off if he doesn't pay the penalty, and continues to do wrong without getting punished. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 472e) |
2092 | Simonides said morality is helping one's friends and harming one's enemies [Plato] |
Full Idea: Simonides claims that morality is doing good to one's friends and harm to one's enemies. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 332d) |
266 | Injustice is the mastery of the soul by bad feelings, even if they do not lead to harm [Plato] |
Full Idea: My general description of injustice is this: the mastery of the soul by anger, fear, pleasure, pain, envy and desires, whether they lead to actual damage or not. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 863e) |
23562 | If the parts of our soul do their correct work, we will be just people, and will act justly [Plato] |
Full Idea: Each one of us in whom each part is doing its own work will himself be just and do his own. …So it is appropriate for the rational part to rule …and for the spirited part to obey. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 441d) | |
A reaction: 'Do his own' must mean play his own part in society correctly, because his internal faculties are also correctly focused on their role. So balancing the three parts in persons and society is not just an analogy, but one leads to the other. See 443e. |
129 | Do most people praise self-discipline and justice because they are too timid to gain their own pleasure? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: Why do most people praise self-discipline and justice? Because their own timidity makes them incapable of satisfying their pleasures. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 492a) |
293 | Being unafraid (perhaps through ignorance) and being brave are two different things [Plato] |
Full Idea: To be unafraid (like a small child who doesn't understand the danger) and to be brave are two quite different things. | |
From: Plato (Laches [c.381 BCE], 197b) |
4320 | The popular view is that health is first, good looks second, and honest wealth third [Plato] |
Full Idea: I'm sure you know the list of human advantages in the party song: 'The very best is health, Second good looks, and third honest wealth'. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 451e) | |
A reaction: This invites the obvious question of why anyone wants these three things, with the implied answer of 'pleasure'. But we might want them even if we couldn't use them, implying pluralism. |
242 | The best people are produced where there is no excess of wealth or poverty [Plato] |
Full Idea: The community in which neither wealth nor poverty exists will produce the finest characters. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 679b) |
256 | Virtue and great wealth are incompatible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Virtue and great wealth are quite incompatible. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 742e) |
351 | War aims at the acquisition of wealth, because we are enslaved to the body [Plato] |
Full Idea: All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth, and we want this because of the body, to which we are slave. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) |
294 | People say that friendship exists only between good men [Plato] |
Full Idea: People say that friendship exists only between good men. | |
From: Plato (Lysis [c.400 BCE], 214d) |
156 | Bad people are never really friends with one another [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is not ordained that bad men should be friends with one another. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 255b) |
2912 | Plato is boring [Nietzsche on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato is boring. | |
From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols 9.2 |
19889 | People need society because the individual has too many needs [Plato] |
Full Idea: Society originates because the individual is not self-sufficient, but has many needs which he cannot supply himself. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 369b) | |
A reaction: Notice that Plato has the liberal individualist approach to problem, of starting with isolated individuals, and asking why they need to gang together. This is despite the dependency of children, and the proximity of extended families. |
137 | As with other things, a good state is organised and orderly [Plato] |
Full Idea: As in every case (an artefact, a body, a mind, a creature), a good state is an organised and orderly state. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 506e) |
19890 | All exchanges in a community are for mutual benefit [Plato] |
Full Idea: In the community all mutual exchanges are made on the assumption that the parties to them stand to gain. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 369c) | |
A reaction: The sole purpose of his society appears to be trading, either of goods or of services. The assumption is that if each individual were self-sufficient there would be no society, which strikes me as unlikely. Aristotle offers a better picture. |
10 | After a taste of mutual harm, men make a legal contract to avoid it [Plato] |
Full Idea: Once people experience committing wrong and suffering it, they see the disadvantages are unavoidable and the benefits unobtainable, ...so they enter into a contract, guaranteeing no permitting or receiving wrong, ...and they then make laws and decrees. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 359a) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the earliest statement of the social contract idea. Here it both sets up the state and creates morality. This is Glaucon speaking, and is NOT endorsed by Socrates. |
23561 | People doing their jobs properly is the fourth cardinal virtue for a city [Plato] |
Full Idea: The power that consists in everyone's doing his own work rivals wisdom, moderation, and courage in its contribution to the virtue of the city. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 433d) | |
A reaction: Making conscientious the fourth cardinal virtue. Well said! My maxim for the modern world is that nearly all human misery consists of either bad health or other people not doing their jobs properly. You know I'm right. |
245 | Totalitarian states destroy friendships and community spirit [Plato] |
Full Idea: Excessively authoritarian government destroys all friendship and community of spirit in the state. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 697d) |
2149 | Reluctant rulers make a better and more unified administration [Plato] |
Full Idea: The less keen the would-be rulers of a community are to rule, the better and less divided the administration of that community are bound to be. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 520d) |
2132 | Only rule by philosophers of integrity can keep a community healthy [Plato] |
Full Idea: Unless communities have philosophers as kings, or the people who are currently called kings and rulers practise philosophy with enough integrity, there can be no end to political troubles. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 473d) |
22559 | Democracy is the worst of good constitutions, but the best of bad constitutions [Plato, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Plato judged that when the constitution is decent, democracy is the worst of them, but when they are bad it is the best. | |
From: report of Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 302e) by Aristotle - Politics 1289b07 | |
A reaction: Aristotle denies that a good oligarchy is superior. What of technocracy? The challenge is to set up institutions which ensure the health of the democracy. The big modern problem is populists who lie. |
141 | A good citizen won't be passive, but will redirect the needs of the state [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only responsibility of a good member of a community is altering the community's needs rather than going along with them. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 517b) |
239 | Education in virtue produces citizens who are active but obedient [Plato] |
Full Idea: Education in virtue produces a keen desire to become a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled as justice demands. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 643e) |
2131 | Is there anything better for a community than to produce excellent people? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is anything better for a community than for it to engender women and men who are exceptionally good? | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 456e) |
262 | Men and women should qualify equally for honours on merit [Plato] |
Full Idea: Men and women who have shown conspicuous merit should qualify for all honours without distinction of sex. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 802a) |
123 | Do most people like equality because they are second-rate? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: It's because most people are second-rate that they are happy for things to be distributed equally. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 483c) |
1402 | Friendship is impossible between master and slave, even if they are made equal [Plato] |
Full Idea: Even if you proclaim that a master and a slave shall have equal status, friendship between them is inherently impossible. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 757a) |
124 | Does nature imply that it is right for better people to have greater benefits? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: We only have to look at nature to find evidence that it is right for better to have a greater share than worse. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 483d) |
236 | Sound laws achieve the happiness of those who observe them [Plato] |
Full Idea: Sound laws achieve the happiness of those who observe them. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 631b) |
259 | Justice is granting the equality which unequals deserve [Plato] |
Full Idea: Justice consists of granting the 'equality' which unequals deserve to get. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 757d) | |
A reaction: Beautifully simple, and hard to improve on. It shows the close link between equality and justice, but shows why they are not the same. The main debate about justice concerns the criteria for 'deserving'. |
322 | Intelligence is the result of rational teaching; true opinion can result from irrational persuasion [Plato] |
Full Idea: Intelligence is produced by teaching, involves truth and reason, and cannot be moved; true opinion involves persuasion, is irrational and can be moved. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 51e) |
2152 | Dialectic is the highest and most important part of the curriculum [Plato] |
Full Idea: Dialectic occupies the highest position and forms, as it were, the copestone of the curriculum. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 534e) |
257 | Mathematics has the widest application of any subject on the curriculum [Plato] |
Full Idea: For domestic and public purposes, and all professional skills, no branch of a child's education has as big a range of applications as mathematics. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 747a) |
331 | Bad governments prevent discussion, and discourage the study of virtue [Plato] |
Full Idea: Under a bad government discussion, both public and private, is bad, and no courses of study are available to cure faults of character. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 87b) |
238 | Children's games should channel their pleasures into adult activity [Plato] |
Full Idea: We should use children's games to channel their pleasures and desires towards activities in which they will have to engage when they are adult. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 643c) |
260 | Control of education is the key office of state, and should go to the best citizen [Plato] |
Full Idea: The Minister of Education is by far the most important of all the supreme offices of the state; the best all-round citizen in the state should be appointed. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 765e) |
2148 | To gain knowledge, turn away from the world of change, and focus on true goodness [Plato] |
Full Idea: To gain knowledge we must turn the mind away from the world of becoming, until it becomes capable of bearing the sight of real being and reality at its most bright, which we are saying is goodness. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 518c) |
250 | The best way to educate the young is not to rebuke them, but to set a good example [Plato] |
Full Idea: The best way to educate the younger generation (as well as yourself) is not to rebuke them but patently to practise all your life what you preach to others. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 729c) |
222 | Only a great person can understand the essence of things, and an even greater person can teach it [Plato] |
Full Idea: Only a man of very great natural gifts will be able to understand that everything has a class and absolute essence, and an even more wonderful man can teach this. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135a) |
4331 | Education is channelling a child's feelings into the right course before it understands why [Plato] |
Full Idea: I call 'education' the initial acquisition of virtue by the child, when the feelings of pleasure and affection, pain and hatred, are channelled in the right courses before he can understand the reason why. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 653b) | |
A reaction: A precursor of Aristotle's view (Ethics 1104b11). A profound, simple and important insight. |
2153 | Compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind [Plato] |
Full Idea: Compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 536e) |
1638 | Didactic education is hard work and achieves little [Plato] |
Full Idea: With a lot of effort the admonitory species of education accomplishes little. | |
From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 230a) |
298 | While sex is very pleasant, it should be in secret, as it looks contemptible [Plato] |
Full Idea: As for sex, everyone agrees that, while it is extremely pleasant, it should be indulged in (if at all) in secret, because it is a highly contemptible sight. | |
From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 299a) |
311 | The cosmos must be unique, because it resembles the creator, who is unique [Plato] |
Full Idea: So that our universe can resemble the perfect living creature in being unique, the universe was, is and will continue to be its maker's only creation. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 31c) |
310 | The creator of the cosmos had no envy, and so wanted things to be as like himself as possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: This changing cosmos was made because its maker is good, and therefore lacks envy; he therefore wished all things to be as like himself as possible. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 29e) |
275 | Creation is not for you; you exist for the sake of creation [Plato] |
Full Idea: Creation is not for your benefit; you exist for the sake of the universe. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 903c) |
225 | The unlimited has no shape and is endless [Plato] |
Full Idea: The unlimited partakes neither of the round nor of the straight, because it has no ends nor edges. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137e) |
233 | Some things do not partake of the One [Plato] |
Full Idea: The others cannot partake of the one in any way; they can neither partake of it nor of the whole. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159d) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 231 |
2062 | The only movement possible for the One is in space or in alteration [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the One moves it either moves spatially or it is altered, since these are the only motions. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 138b) |
231 | Everything partakes of the One in some way [Plato] |
Full Idea: The others are not altogether deprived of the one, for they partake of it in some way. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 233. |
325 | We must consider the four basic shapes as too small to see, only becoming visible in large numbers [Plato] |
Full Idea: We must think of the individual units of all four basic shapes as being far too small to be visible, and only becoming visible when massed together in large numbers. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 56c) |
327 | There are two types of cause, the necessary and the divine [Plato] |
Full Idea: We must distinguish two types of cause, the necessary and the divine. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 68e) |
13156 | Fancy being unable to distinguish a cause from its necessary background conditions! [Plato] |
Full Idea: Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing, and the condition without which it could not be a cause. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 099c) | |
A reaction: Not as simple as he thinks. It seems fairly easy to construct a case where the immediately impacting event remains constant, and the background condition is changed. Even worse when negligence is held to be the cause. |
8410 | A theory of causal relations yields an asymmetry which defines the direction of time [Reichenbach, by Salmon] |
Full Idea: Reichenbach wanted to implement a causal theory of time. He did not stipulate that causes are temporally prior to their effects. Instead, he constructs a theory of causal relations to yield a causal asymmetry which is used to define temporal priority. | |
From: report of Hans Reichenbach (The Direction of Time [1956]) by Wesley Salmon - Probabilistic Causality | |
A reaction: I find his approach implausible. I suspect strong empiricism is behind it - that he wants to build from observable causes to unobservable time, not vice versa. But normal intuition sees time as one of the bedrocks of reality, making events possible. |
314 | Heavenly movements gave us the idea of time, and caused us to inquire about the heavens [Plato] |
Full Idea: Days, months, years and solstices have caused the invention of number, given us the notion of time, and caused us to inquire into the nature of the universe. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 47a) |
14935 | The direction of time is grounded in the direction of causation [Reichenbach, by Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: Reichenbach argued that temporal asymmetry is grounded in causal asymmetry. | |
From: report of Hans Reichenbach (The Direction of Time [1956]) by J Ladyman / D Ross - Every Thing Must Go | |
A reaction: I'm not sure that I can make sense of giving priority either to time or to causation when it comes to this asymmetry. How do you decide which one is boss? |
1526 | Almost everyone except Plato thinks that time could not have been generated [Plato, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: With a single exception (Plato) everyone agrees about time - that it is not generated. Democritus says time is an obvious example of something not generated. | |
From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 251b14 |
312 | Time came into existence with the heavens, so that there will be a time when they can be dissolved [Plato] |
Full Idea: Time came into being with the heavens, so that they should be dissolved together if ever they are dissolved. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 38c) |
369 | If the Earth is spherical and in the centre, it is kept in place by universal symmetry, not by force [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the earth is spherical and in the middle of the heavens, it needs neither air nor force to keep it from falling. The uniformity of heaven and equilibrium of earth are sufficient support. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 108e) |
309 | Clearly the world is good, so its maker must have been concerned with the eternal, not with change [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the world is beautiful and its maker good, he had an eye on the eternal; if not, on that which is subject to change; clearly the world is the fairest of things, and he the best of causes, so it is eternal. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 29a) |
273 | Movement is transmitted through everything, and it must have started with self-generated motion [Plato] |
Full Idea: Motion is transmitted to innumerable things, and this must spring from some initial principle, which must be the change effected by self-generated motion. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895a) |
148 | If the prime origin is destroyed, it will not come into being again out of anything [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the prime origin is destroyed, it will not come into being again out of anything. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245d) | |
A reaction: This is the essence of Aquinas's Third Way of proving God's existence. |
308 | If the cosmos is an object of perception then it must be continually changing [Plato] |
Full Idea: The cosmos is visible, tangible and corporeal, and therefore perceptible by the senses; therefore it is an object of opinion and sensation, and therefore change and coming into being. | |
From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28d) |
13779 | The natural offspring of a lion is called a 'lion' (but what about the offspring of a king?) [Plato] |
Full Idea: It seems to me that it is right to call a lion's offspring a 'lion' and a horse's offspring a 'horse' (I'm talking about natural offspring, not some monster). ...but by the same argument any offspring of a king should be called a 'king'. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 393b) | |
A reaction: The standard modern difficulty is whether all descendants of dinosaurs are still called 'dinosaur', which they are not. |
13783 | Even the gods love play [Plato] |
Full Idea: Even the gods love play. | |
From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 406c) |
279 | Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is fitting for only the most divine things of all to be always the same and in the same state and in the same respects, and the nature of body is not of this ordering. | |
From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 269b) |
175 | Gods are not lovers of wisdom, because they are already wise [Plato] |
Full Idea: No god is a lover of wisdom or desires to be wise, for he is wise already. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 204a) |
152 | The mind of God is fully satisfied and happy with a vision of reality and truth [Plato] |
Full Idea: The mind of a god, sustained by pure intelligence and knowledge, is satisfied with the vision of reality, and nourished and made happy by the vision of truth. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 247d) |
2630 | If Plato's God is immaterial, he will lack consciousness, wisdom, pleasure and movement, which are essential to him [Cicero on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato holds God to be without a body, immaterial; but this is an incomprehensible idea. Such a god would inevitably lack any consciousness, any wisdom and any pleasure (…or motion), all of which are bound up in our idea of God. | |
From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.30 |
337 | It seems that the gods love things because they are pious, rather than making them pious by loving them [Plato] |
Full Idea: So things are loved by the gods because they are pious, and not pious because they are loved? It seems so. | |
From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10e) | |
A reaction: Socrates' answer to the Euthyphro Question (see Idea 336). The form of piety precedes the gods. |
336 | Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? (the 'Euthyphro Question') [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? | |
From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10a) | |
A reaction: The famous Euthyphro Question, the key question about the supposed religious basis of morality. The answer of Socrates is Idea 337. |
2058 | God must be the epitome of goodness, and we can only approach a divine state by being as good as possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is impossible for God to be immoral and not to be the acme of morality; and the only way any of us can approximate to God is to become as moral as possible. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 176c) |
8004 | In 'The Laws', to obey the law is to be obey god [Plato, by MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: The divine is important in 'The Laws' because it is identified with law; to be obedient before the law is to be obedient before god. | |
From: report of Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.6 | |
A reaction: Christian conservativism in a nutshell. Plato is rejecting his view in Euthyphro that piety (etc.) must precede the will of the gods. The obvious problem is bad laws, made by corrupt rulers. |
234 | We couldn't discuss the non-existence of the One without knowledge of it [Plato] |
Full Idea: There must be knowledge of the one, or else not even the meaning of the words 'if the one does not exist' would be known. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 160d) |
20704 | A possible world contains a being of maximal greatness - which is existence in all worlds [Plantinga, by Davies,B] |
Full Idea: Plantinga reformulates Malcolm's argument thus: 1) There is a possible world in which there exists a being with maximal greatness, 2) A being has maximal greatness in a world only if it exists in every world. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (The Nature of Necessity [1974], p.213) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 4 'b Descartes' | |
A reaction: This is only Plantinga's starting point, which says nothing about the nature of God, but only that this 'great' being exists in all worlds. I would like to know why it is a 'being' rather than a 'thing'. Malcolm says if it is possible it is necessary. |
21258 | The only possible beginning for the endless motions of reality is something self-generated [Plato] |
Full Idea: When the motion in reality is transmitted to thousands of things one after another, the entire sequence of their movements must surely spring from some initial principle, which can hardly be anything except the change effected by self-generated motion. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895a) | |
A reaction: This gives a domino picture of reality, with all of reality responding inertly to a first kick. Much better is to see self-generated motion in the active qualities of all matter, as seen in the sea of virtual subatomic particles at the smallest level. |
21261 | Self-moving soul has to be the oldest thing there is [Plato] |
Full Idea: Soul, being the source of motion, is the most ancient thing there is. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896b) | |
A reaction: Plato seems to assume that the First Mover must still exist, which doesn't follow from anything in the argument. The First Pusher could be dead before the last domino falls. Why can't activity be the default state of everything? |
21257 | Self-generating motion is clearly superior to all other kinds of motion [Plato] |
Full Idea: We can't resist the conclusion that the motion which can generate itself is infinitely superior, and all the others are inferior to it. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 894d) | |
A reaction: Who said you can't get values from facts! Not that the argument depends on superiority. There could be an inferior First Mover, as a bus driver is subservient to the passengers, or (my favourite) a head teacher is inferior to the pupils. |
274 | Soul must be the cause of all the opposites, such as good and evil or beauty and ugliness [Plato] |
Full Idea: Soul must be cause of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, justice and injustice, and all the opposites. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896d) |
21263 | If all the motions of nature reflect calculations of reason, then the best kind of soul must direct it [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the movement of the heavens and all that is in them reflects the motion and revolution and calculation of reason ...then clearly we have to admit that it is the best kind of soul that cares for the entire universe and directs it along the best path. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 897c) | |
A reaction: Most of this passage reflects the cosmological argument - that without some initiating source natural events could not occur - but this slides into the design argument. So who designed mud (which is too inferior to have a Form)? |
14 | If the gods are non-existent or indifferent, why bother to deceive them? [Plato] |
Full Idea: If there are no gods or if they care nothing for human affairs, why should we bother to deceive them? | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365d) | |
A reaction: There is incipient deism here, as well as atheism. |
150 | We cannot conceive of God, so we have to think of Him as an immortal version of ourselves [Plato] |
Full Idea: Because we have never seen or formed an adequate idea of a god, we picture him to ourselves as a being of the same kind as ourselves but immortal. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 246d) |
149 | There isn't a single reason for positing the existence of immortal beings [Plato] |
Full Idea: There is not a single sound reason for positing the existence of such a being who is immortal | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 246d) |
278 | If astronomical movements are seen as necessary instead of by divine will, this leads to atheism [Plato] |
Full Idea: If a man studying astronomy sees events apparently happening by necessity rather than being directed by the intention of a benevolent will, he will turn into an atheist. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 967a) |
21265 | The heavens must be full of gods, controlling nature either externally or from within [Plato] |
Full Idea: A soul or souls have been shown to be cause of all the phenomena, and whether it is by their living presence in matter that they direct all the heavens, or by some other means, we insist that these souls are gods. So 'everything is full of gods'. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 899b) | |
A reaction: This seems to have little to do with the pagan gods on Olympus. It is also notably not monotheistic. It is somewhere between animism and panpsychism. Does he think the rivers and woods contain gods? Probably not. Just the orderly heavens. |
21262 | There must be at least two souls controlling the cosmos, one doing good, the other the opposite [Plato] |
Full Idea: There must be more than one soul (not fewer than two) controlling movement and the heavens: that which does good, and that which has the opposite capacity. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896e) | |
A reaction: [Wording compressed - as often with the dialogues] This idea of controlling opposites is found in Empedocles. Presumably this good soul defers to the Form of the Good, as implied by the Euthyphro Question. |
363 | Whether the soul pre-exists our body depends on whether it contains the ultimate standard of reality [Plato] |
Full Idea: The theory that our soul exists even before it enters the body surely stands or falls with the soul's possession of the ultimate standard of reality. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 092d) |
146 | Soul is always in motion, so it must be self-moving and immortal [Plato] |
Full Idea: All soul is immortal, for what is always in motion is immortal. Only that which moves itself never ceases to be in motion. | |
From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245c) |
2165 | Something is unlikely to be immortal if it is imperfectly made from diverse parts [Plato] |
Full Idea: Something is unlikely to be immortal if it's a compound, formed imperfectly from diverse parts. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 611b) |
13 | Is the supreme reward for virtue to be drunk for eternity? [Plato] |
Full Idea: (the poets think) 'the supreme reward of virtue was to be drunk for eternity'. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 363d) | |
A reaction: A perceptive thought. Most people consider the best life to contain endless fun and physical pleasure, so a boozy bawdy holiday in the sunshine ticks all the boxes. |
2057 | There must always be some force of evil ranged against good [Plato] |
Full Idea: The elimination of evil is impossible, Theodorus; there must always be some force ranged against good. | |
From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 176a) |
1474 | Moral evil may be acceptable to God because it allows free will (even though we don't see why this is necessary) [Plantinga, by PG] |
Full Idea: Moral evil may be acceptable to a benevolent God because it is the only way to allow genuine free will, which may have a supreme value in creation (even if we are unsure what it is). | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Free Will Defence [1965], Pref.) by PG - Db (ideas) |
2120 | God is responsible for the good things, but we must look elsewhere for the cause of the bad things [Plato] |
Full Idea: God and God alone must be held responsible for the good things, but responsibility for bad things must be looked for elsewhere, and not attributed to God. | |
From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 379c) |
1475 | It is logically possible that natural evil like earthquakes is caused by Satan [Plantinga, by PG] |
Full Idea: Physical evil (e.g. earthquakes) may be attributable to a fallen angel (Satan), who is the enemy of God, and this is enough to retain the idea that God is omnipotent and benevolent, and yet evil exists. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Free Will Defence [1965], III) by PG - Db (ideas) |