3 ideas
| 5210 | We could know what a lion thinks by mapping both its brain patterns and its experiences [Douglas,A] |
| Full Idea: In principle, it seems possible to monitor both the brain activity and the external experiences of a lion cub from birth, and by extensive mapping of one against the other to work out fairly accurately what a lion is thinking. | |
| From: Andy Douglas (talk [2003]) | |
| A reaction: This has limitations (e.g. we could monitor the external events, but not the way the lion experiences them), but it seems to me to offer a real theoretical possibility of breaching the mental privacy of an inarticulate creature. |
| 22237 | The Greeks had a single word meaning both 'beautiful' and 'good' [Pormann] |
| Full Idea: The later Greeks coined the term 'kalokagathia' for the fact of being both beautiful [kalos] and good [agathos], thus linking moral and physical health. | |
| From: Peter E. Pormann (Medical Conceptions of Health pre-Renaissance [2019], p.44) | |
| A reaction: In their literature good people are often handsome, and bad people ugly. Socrates was famous for being an exception. |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
| From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
| A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |