19 ideas
| 1765 | Diogenes said avoidance of philosophy is the lack of a desire to live properly [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When a man said that he was not suited to philosophy, Diogenes said to him, 'Why then do you live, if you have no desire to live properly.' | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 | |
| A reaction: Meaning philosophy is already more practice than theory. |
| 21829 | Philosophy aims to understand how things (broadly understood) hang together (broadly understood) [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man [1962], p.3), quoted by Owen Flanagan - The Really Hard Problem 1 'Vocation' | |
| A reaction: I'm happier with broad things than broad hanging together, but to me this sounds about right. |
| 6550 | Reduction requires that an object's properties consist of its constituents' properties and relations [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: The 'Principle of Reducibility' says if an object is a system of objects, then every property of the object must consist in the fact that its constituents have such and such qualities and such and such relations | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man [1962], p.27), quoted by William Lycan - Consciousness | |
| A reaction: This sounds to me a more promising attitude to reduction than all this talk of Ernest Nagel's 'Bridge Laws'. If we ask HOW a higher level property arises because of a lower level property, we can describe a mechanism rather than a law. |
| 16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
| 16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
| 16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
| 16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
| A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
| 8793 | If observation is knowledge, it is not just an experience; it is a justification in the space of reasons [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: In characterizing an observational episode or state as 'knowing', we are not giving an empirical description of it; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Does Emp.Knowledge have Foundation? [1956], p.123) | |
| A reaction: McDowell has made the Kantian phrase 'the logical space of reasons' very popular. This is a very nice statement of the internalist view of justification, with which I sympathise more and more. It is a rationalist coherentist view. It needn't be mystical! |
| 8792 | Observations like 'this is green' presuppose truths about what is a reliable symptom of what [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: Observational knowledge of any particular fact, e.g. that this is green, presupposes that one knows general facts of the form 'X is a reliable symptom of Y'. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Does Emp.Knowledge have Foundation? [1956], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This is a nicely observed version of the regress problem with justification. I would guess that foundationalists would simply deny that this further knowledge is required; 'this is green' arises out of the experience, but it is not an inference. |
| 1762 | When someone denied motion, Diogenes got up and walked away [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Diogenes replied to one who asserted that there was no such thing as motion by getting up and walking away. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 |
| 6382 | The 'grain problem' says physical objects are granular, where sensations appear not to be [Sellars, by Polger] |
| Full Idea: Sellars' Grain Problem contended that it was a problem for materialism that physical objects have a granularity whereas sensations are homogeneous and without grain. | |
| From: report of Wilfrid Sellars (Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind [1956], Ch. n22) by Thomas W. Polger - Natural Minds Ch.1 n22 | |
| A reaction: This doesn't strike me as a serious problem. I assume that my sensations are granular, but at a level too fine for me to introspect. There are three hundred trillion connections in the brain (Idea 2952), a lot of them involved in sensations. |
| 8791 | The concept of 'green' involves a battery of other concepts [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: One can only have the concept of green by having a whole battery of concepts of which it is one element. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Does Emp.Knowledge have Foundation? [1956], p.120) | |
| A reaction: This points in the direction of holism about language and thought, but need not imply it. It might be that concepts have to be learned in small families. It is not clear, though, what is absolutely essential to 'green', except that it indicates colour. |
| 7813 | Cynicism was open to anyone, and needed neither education nor sophistication [Diogenes of Sin., by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: An advantage of Cynicism was that it was open to anyone who could grasp its simple teachings. Understanding it required neither education nor sophistication. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This was the source of the well-known opposition of Diogenes to Plato's Academy, and it makes him a key predecessor of the teachings of Jesus. Personally I think the really good life is difficult, and it needs education and careful rational thought. |
| 1763 | Diogenes said a plucked chicken fits Plato's definition of man [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Plato defined man as a two-footed featherless animal, so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the school, and said, 'This is Plato's man'. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 | |
| A reaction: You have to be very serious about your philosophy to enact your counterexamples, rather than just suggest them. Which university will actually reconstruct the Trolley Problem? |
| 5071 | The Cynics rejected what is conventional as irrational, and aimed to live by nature [Taylor,R on Diogenes of Sin.] |
| Full Idea: The Cynics were convinced of the purely conventional foundation of Athenian values, which meant they had no rational foundation at all. They therefore rejected them in favour of what is correct and worthwhile by nature. | |
| From: comment on Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: This shows how the Cynics are key players in the progress of the nomos-physis debate, which keeps resurfacing as relativism vs absolutism, cognitivism vs non-cognitivism, and even romanticism vs classicism. The trouble is, convention is natural! |
| 7812 | For peace of mind, you need self-government, indifference and independence [Diogenes of Sin.] |
| Full Idea: There are three essential conditions for peace of mind: autarchy, apathy and freedom. Autarchy is self-government and self-sufficiency; apathy is indifference to what the world can do to you; the freedom is from dependence and possessions. | |
| From: Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]), quoted by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: Quite good advice, but I don't see 'peace of mind' as the highest human ideal. The basic suggestion here is live alone and do nothing. Certainly don't get married, or have children, or try to achieve anything. |
| 1764 | Diogenes said he was a citizen of the world [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Diogenes said he was a citizen of no country, but of the world. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 |
| 5968 | Diogenes masturbated in public, wishing he could get rid of hunger so easily [Diogenes of Sin., by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus praises Diogenes for saying to bystanders as he masturbated in public, "Would that I could thus rub the hunger too out of my belly". | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1044b | |
| A reaction: So it is not quite true that people only need corn and water. Diogenes' remark doesn't explain why he did it in public. Was it to defy local convention (as befits a citizen of the world), or was it to teach? |
| 1766 | Diogenes said that the most excellent thing among men was freedom of speech [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Diogenes said that the most excellent thing among men was freedom of speech. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 |