48 ideas
6887 | Linguistic philosophy approaches problems by attending to actual linguistic usage [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Linguistic philosophy gives careful attention to actual linguistic usage as a method of dealing with problems of philosophy, resulting in either their solution or dissolution. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.318) | |
A reaction: This approach is now deeply discredited and unfashionable, and, I think (on the whole), rightly so. Philosophy should aim a little higher in (say) epistemology than merely describing how people use words like 'know' and 'believe' and 'justify'. |
6881 | Analytic philosophy studies the unimportant, and sharpens tools instead of using them [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Critics of analytic philosophers accuse them of excessive attention to relatively unimportant matters, and of being more interested in sharpening tools than in using them. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.111) | |
A reaction: The last part is a nice comment. Both criticisms seem to me to contain some justice, but recently things have improved (notably in the new attention paid by analytical philosophy to metaphysics). In morality analytic philosophy seems superior. |
5439 | The 'hermeneutic circle' says parts and wholes are interdependent, and so cannot be interpreted [Mautner] |
Full Idea: The 'hermeneutic circle' consists in the fact that an interpretation of part of a text requires a prior understanding of the whole, and the interpretation of the whole requires a prior understanding of its parts. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.247) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a benign circle, solved the way Aristotle solves the good man/good action circle. You make a start somewhere, like a child learning to speak, and work your way into the circle. Not really a problem. |
4262 | If the only aim was consistent beliefs then new evidence and experiments would be irrelevant [Goldman] |
Full Idea: If mere consistency is our aim in achieving a coherent set of beliefs, then new evidence and experiments are irrelevant. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (The Internalist Conception of Justification [1980], §VIII) | |
A reaction: An important reminder. What epistemic duty requires us to attend to anomalous observations, instead of sweeping them under the carpet? |
9959 | 'Real' definitions give the essential properties of things under a concept [Mautner] |
Full Idea: A 'real definition' (as opposed to a linguistic one) is a statement which gives the essential properties of the things to which a given concept applies. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
A reaction: This is often seen as old-fashioned, Aristotelian, and impossible to achieve, but I like it and aspire to it. One can hardly be precise about which properties are 'essential' to something, but there are clear cases. Your 'gold' had better not be brass. |
9961 | 'Contextual definitions' replace whole statements, not just expressions [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Usually in a definition the definiens (definition) can replace the definiendum (expression defined), but in a 'contextual definition' only the whole statement containing the definiens can replace the whole statement containing the definiendum. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
A reaction: These definitions are crucial to Frege's enterprise in the 'Grundlagen'. Logicians always want to achieve definition with a single neat operation, but in ordinary language we talk around a definition, giving a variety of possibilities (as in teaching). |
9958 | Recursive definition defines each instance from a previous instance [Mautner] |
Full Idea: An example of a recursive definition is 'y is an ancestor of x' is defined as 'y is a parent of x, or y is a parent of an ancestor of x'. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
A reaction: From this example I guess that 'ancestor' means 'friend'. Or have I misunderstood? I think we need to define 'grand-parent' as well, and then offer the definition of 'ancestor' with the words 'and so on...'. Essentially, it is mathematical induction. |
9960 | A stipulative definition lays down that an expression is to have a certain meaning [Mautner] |
Full Idea: A stipulative definition lays down that a given linguistic expression is to have a certain meaning; this is why they cannot be said to be correct or incorrect. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
A reaction: These are uncontroversial when they are explicitly made in writing by a single person. The tricky case is where they are implicitly made in conversation by a community. After a century or two these look like facts, their origin having been lost. |
9957 | Ostensive definitions point to an object which an expression denotes [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Ostensive definitions explain what an expression means by pointing to an object, action, event, etc. denoted by the expression. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
A reaction: These will need some context. If I define 'red' simply by pointing to a red square, you might conclude that 'red' means square. If I point to five varied red objects, you have to do the work of spotting the common ingredient. I can't mention 'colour'. |
6219 | The fallacy of composition is the assumption that what is true of the parts is true of the whole [Mautner] |
Full Idea: The fallacy of composition is an inference relying on the invalid principle that whatever is true of every part is also true of the whole; thus, we cannot assume that because the members of a committee are rational, that the committee as a whole is. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.102) | |
A reaction: This is a very common and very significant fallacy, which is perpetrated by major philosophers like Aristotle (Idea 31), unlike most of the other informal fallacies. |
6888 | Fuzzy logic is based on the notion that there can be membership of a set to some degree [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Fuzzy logic is based upon fuzzy set-theory, in which the simple notion of membership of a set is replaced by a notion of membership to some degree. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.214) | |
A reaction: The idea that something could be to some degree a 'heap of sand' sounds plausible, but Williamson and Sorensen claim that the vagueness is all in us (i.e. it is epistemological), and not in the world. This will scupper fuzzy logic. |
6877 | Entailment is logical requirement; it may be not(p and not-q), but that has problems [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Entailment is the modern word saying that p logically follows from q. Its simplest definition is that you cannot have both p and not-q, but this has the problem that if p is impossible it will entail every possible proposition, which seems unacceptable. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.169) | |
A reaction: The word 'entail' was introduced by G.E. Moore in 1920, in preference to 'imply'. It seems clear that we need terms for (say) active implication (q must be true if p is true) and passive implication (p must be false if q is false). |
6880 | Strict implication says false propositions imply everything, and everything implies true propositions [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Strict implication [not(p and not-q)] carries the paradoxes that a false proposition (p) implies any proposition (q), and a true proposition (q) is materially implied by any proposition (p). | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.270) | |
A reaction: This seems to show that we have two drastically different notions of implication; one (the logician's) is boring and is defined by a truth table; the other (the ordinary interesting one) says if you have one truth you can deduce a second. |
6879 | 'Material implication' is defined as 'not(p and not-q)', but seems to imply a connection between p and q [Mautner] |
Full Idea: 'Material implication' is a term introduced by Russell which is defined as 'the conjunction of p and not-q is false', but carries a strong implication that p implies q, and so there must be some kind of connection between them, which is misleading. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.270) | |
A reaction: Mautner says statements of the form 'if p then q' are better called 'conditionals' than 'material implications'. Clearly there is a need for more precise terminology here, as the underlying concepts seem simple enough. |
6878 | A person who 'infers' draws the conclusion, but a person who 'implies' leaves it to the audience [Mautner] |
Full Idea: 'Implying' is different from 'inferring', because a person who infers draws the conclusion, but a person who implies leaves it to the audience to draw the conclusion. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.279) | |
A reaction: I had always taken it just that the speaker does the implying and the audience does the inferring. Of course a speaker may not know what he or she is implying, but an audience must be aware of what it is inferring. |
6889 | Vagueness seems to be inconsistent with the view that every proposition is true or false [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Vagueness is of great philosophical interest because it seems to be inconsistent with the view that every proposition is true or false. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.585) | |
A reaction: This would explain why Williamson and Sorensen are keen to argue that vagueness is an epistemological (rather than ontological) problem. In ordinary English we are happy to say that p is 'sort of true' or 'fairly true'. |
6890 | Quantifiers turn an open sentence into one to which a truth-value can be assigned [Mautner] |
Full Idea: In formal logic, quantifiers are operators that turn an open sentence into a sentence to which a truth-value can be assigned. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.464) | |
A reaction: The standard quantifiers are 'all' and 'at least one'. The controversy is whether quantifiers actually assert existence, or whether (as McGinn says) they merely specify the subject matter of the sentence. I prefer the latter. |
4045 | Children may have three innate principles which enable them to learn to count [Goldman] |
Full Idea: It has been proposed (on the basis of observations) that young children have three innate principles of counting - one-to-one correspondence of number to item, stable order for numbers, and cardinality (which labels the nth item counted). | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.60) | |
A reaction: I like the idea of observed patterns as central (which is the one-to-one principle). But the other two principles are plausible, and show why pure empiricism won't work. |
4044 | Rat behaviour reveals a considerable ability to count [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Rats can determine the number of times they have pressed a lever up to at least twenty-four presses,…and can consistently turn down the fifth tunnel on the left in a maze. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.58) | |
A reaction: This seems to encourage an empirical view of maths (pattern recognition?) rather than a Platonic one. Or numbers are innate in rat brains? |
4048 | Infant brains appear to have inbuilt ontological categories [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Infant behaviour implies inbuilt ontological categories of thing, place, event, path, action, sound, manner, amount and number. ...There is an algebra of relationships between them. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.109) | |
A reaction: Interesting. We would expect the categories in infant brains to have instrumental value, but we don't have to accept them as true. Adults (even Aristotle) are big infants. |
6886 | Counterfactuals are not true, they are merely valid [Mautner] |
Full Idea: One view of counterfactuals says they are not true, but are merely valid. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
A reaction: This makes counterfactuals a branch of logic rather than of metaphysics. I find the metaphysical view more exciting as they are part of speculation and are beyond the capacity of computers (which I suspect they are). |
6882 | Counterfactuals presuppose a belief (or a fact) that the condition is false [Mautner] |
Full Idea: A conditional is called counterfactual because its use seems to presuppose that the user believes its antecedent to be false. Some insist that the antecedent must actually be false. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
A reaction: I am inclined to favour the stricter second version. "If I am on Earth then I have weight" hardly sounds counterfactual. However, in "If there is a God then I will be saved" it is not clear whether it is counterfactual, so it had better be included. |
6885 | Counterfactuals are true if in every world close to actual where p is the case, q is also the case [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Another view of counterfactuals (Lewis, Pollock, Stalnaker) is that they are true if at every possible world at which it is the case that p, and which is otherwise as similar as possible to the actual world, it is also the case that q. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
A reaction: This seems a good way if putting if, like Lewis, you actually believe in the reality of possible worlds, because then you are saying a counterfactual is made true by a set of facts. Otherwise it is not clear what the truth-maker is here. |
6884 | Counterfactuals say 'If it had been, or were, p, then it would be q' [Mautner] |
Full Idea: A counterfactual conditional (or 'counterfactual') is a proposition or sentence of the form 'If it had been the case that p, then it would have been the case that q', or 'If it were the case that p, then it would be the case that q'. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
A reaction: The first statement refers to the past, but the second (a subjunctive) refers to any situation at any time. We know more about inferences that we could have made in the past than we do about what is inferable at absolutely any time. |
6883 | Maybe counterfactuals are only true if they contain valid inference from premisses [Mautner] |
Full Idea: One view of counterfactuals (Chisholm, Goodman, Rescher) is that they are only true if there is a valid logical inference from p and some other propositions of certain kinds (controversial) to q. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.115) | |
A reaction: The aspiration that counterfactual claims should reduce to pure logic sounds a bit hopeful to me. Logic is precise, but assertions about how things would be is speculative and imaginative. |
5449 | Essentialism is often identified with belief in 'de re' necessary truths [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Many writers identify essentialism with the belief in 'de re' necessary truths | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.179) | |
A reaction: I like essentialism, but I cautious about this. If I accept that I have an essential personal identity as I write this, but that it could change over time, the same principle might apply to other natural essences. |
6898 | Fallibilism is the view that all knowledge-claims are provisional [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Fallibilism is the view, proposed by Peirce, and found in Reichenbach, Popper, Quine etc that all knowledge-claims are provisional and in principle revisable, or that the possibility of error is ever-present. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.194) | |
A reaction: I think of this as footnote to all thought which reads "Note 1: but you never quite know". Personally I would call myself a fallibilist, and am surprise at anyone who doesn't. The point is that this does not negate 'knowledge'. I am fairly sure 2+3=5. |
4043 | Elephants can be correctly identified from as few as three primitive shapes [Goldman] |
Full Idea: An elephant may be fully represented by nine primitive shapes ('geons'), but it may require as few as three geons in appropriate relations to be correctly identified. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.7) | |
A reaction: Encouraging the idea of the mind as a maker of maps and models |
6452 | 'Sense-data' arrived in 1910, but it denotes ideas in Locke, Berkeley and Hume [Mautner] |
Full Idea: The term 'sense-data' gained currency around 1910, through writings of Moore and Russell, but it seems to denote at least some of the things referred to as 'ideas of sense' (Locke), or 'ideas' and 'sensible qualities' (Berkeley), or 'impressions' (Hume). | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.518) | |
A reaction: See also Hobbes in Idea 2356 for an even earlier version. It looks as if the concept of sense-data is almost unavoidable for empiricists, and yet most modern empiricists have rejected them. You still have to give an account of perceptual illusions. |
4049 | The way in which colour experiences are evoked is physically odd and unpredictable [Goldman] |
Full Idea: A unique yellow experience may be evoked with monochrome light of 580nm, or a mixture of 540nm and 670nm. ..Our interpretation of colour experience is a highly idiosyncratic artefact of our visual system. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.117) | |
A reaction: This confirms what I have always thought - that colour (as qualia) is strictly a feature of minds, not of the world. |
4047 | Gestalt psychology proposes inbuilt proximity, similarity, smoothness and closure principles [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Gestalt psychology claims that there are at least four unlearned factors in perceptual grouping - the principles of proximity (close things), of similarity, of good continuation (extending lines in a smooth course), and closure (which completes figures). | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.103) | |
A reaction: This offers a bridge between Hume's associationism and rationalist claims of innate ideas |
8830 | A belief can be justified when the person has forgotten the evidence for it [Goldman] |
Full Idea: A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: This is a central problem for any very literal version of internalism. The fully rationalist view (to which I incline) will be that the cognizer must make a balanced assessment of whether they once had the evidence. Were my teachers any good? |
6871 | We can't only believe things if we are currently conscious of their justification - there are too many [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Strong internalism says only current conscious states can justify beliefs, but this has the problem of Stored Beliefs, that most of our beliefs are stored in memory, and one's conscious state includes nothing that justifies them. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §2) | |
A reaction: This point seems obviously correct, but one could still have a 'fairly strong' version, which required that you could always call into consciousness the justificiation for any belief that you happened to remember. |
6872 | Internalism must cover Forgotten Evidence, which is no longer retrievable from memory [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Even weak internalism has the problem of Forgotten Evidence; the agent once had adequate evidence that she subsequently forgot; at the time of epistemic appraisal, she no longer has adequate evidence that is retrievable from memory. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: This is certainly a basic problem for any account of justification. It will rule out any strict requirement that there be actual mental states available to support a belief. Internalism may be pushed to include non-conscious parts of the mind. |
6874 | Internal justification needs both mental stability and time to compute coherence [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The problem for internalists of Doxastic Decision Interval says internal justification must avoid mental change to preserve the justification status, but must also allow enough time to compute the formal relations between beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §4) | |
A reaction: The word 'compute' implies a rather odd model of assessing coherence, which seems instantaneous for most of us where everyday beliefs are concerned. In real mental life this does not strike me as a problem. |
8832 | If justified beliefs are well-formed beliefs, then animals and young children have them [Goldman] |
Full Idea: If one shares my view that justified belief is, at least roughly, well-formed belief, surely animals and young children can have justified beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], III) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a key hallmark of the externalist view of knowledge. Personally I think we should tell the animals that they have got true beliefs, but that they aren't bright enough to aspire to 'knowledge'. Be grateful for what you've got. |
6873 | Coherent justification seems to require retrieving all our beliefs simultaneously [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The problem of Concurrent Retrieval is a problem for internalism, notably coherentism, because an agent could ascertain coherence of her entire corpus only by concurrently retrieving all of her stored beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: Sounds neat, but not very convincing. Goldman is relying on scepticism about short-term memory, but all belief and knowledge will collapse if we go down that road. We couldn't do simple arithmetic if Goldman's point were right. |
8829 | Justification depends on the reliability of its cause, where reliable processes tend to produce truth [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the processes that cause it, where (provisionally) reliability consists in the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: Goldman's original first statement of reliabilism, now the favourite version of externalism. The obvious immediate problem is when a normally very reliable process goes wrong. Wise people still get it wrong, or right for the wrong reasons. |
6875 | Reliability involves truth, and truth is external [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Reliability involves truth, and truth (on the usual assumption) is external. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §6) | |
A reaction: As an argument for externalism this seems bogus. I am not sure that truth is either 'internal' or 'external'. How could the truth of 3+2=5 be external? Facts are mostly external, but I take truth to be a relation between internal and external. |
4783 | Observing lots of green x can confirm 'all x are green' or 'all x are grue', where 'grue' is arbitrary [Mautner, by PG] |
Full Idea: Observing green emeralds can confirm 'all emeralds are green' or 'all emeralds are grue', where 'grue' is an arbitrary predicate meaning 'green until t and then blue'. Thus predictions are arbitrary, depending on how the property is described. | |
From: report of Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.225) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as the sort of sceptical nonsense that is concocted by philosophers who are enthralled to language instead of reality. It does draw attention to an expectation of stability in induction, both in language and in nature. |
4782 | 'All x are y' is equivalent to 'all non-y are non-x', so observing paper is white confirms 'ravens are black' [Mautner, by PG] |
Full Idea: If observing a white sheet of paper confirms that 'all non-black things are non-ravens', and that is logically equivalent to 'all ravens are black' (which it is), then the latter proposition is confirmed by irrelevant observations. | |
From: report of Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.105) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: This seems to me more significant than the 'grue' paradox. If some observations can be totally irrelevant (except to God?), then some observations are much more relevant than others, so relevance is a crucial aspect of induction. |
8831 | Introspection is really retrospection; my pain is justified by a brief causal history [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Introspection should be regarded as a form of retrospection. Thus, a justified belief that I am 'now' in pain gets its justificational status from a relevant, though brief, causal history. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: He cites Hobbes and Ryle as having held this view. See Idea 6668. I am unclear why the history must be 'causal'. I may not know the cause of the pain. I may not believe an event which causes a proposition, or I may form a false belief from it. |
6899 | The references of indexicals ('there', 'now', 'I') depend on the circumstances of utterance [Mautner] |
Full Idea: Indexicals are expressions whose references depend on the circumstances of utterance, such as 'here', 'now', 'last month' 'I', 'you'. It was introduced by Peirce; Reichenbach called them 'token-reflexive', Russell 'ego-centric particulars'. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.272) | |
A reaction: Peirce's terminology seems best. They obviously create great problems for any theory of reference which is rather theoretical and linguistic, such as by the use of descriptions. You can't understand 'Look at that!' without practical awareness. |
6896 | Double effect is the distinction between what is foreseen and what is intended [Mautner] |
Full Idea: The doctrine of double effect is that there is a moral distinction between what is foreseen by an agent as a likely result of an action, and what is intended. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.150) | |
A reaction: Abortion for a pregnancy threatening the mother's life. What always intrigues me is the effects which you didn't foresee because you couldn't be bothered to think about them. How much obligation do you have to try to foresee events? |
6897 | Double effect acts need goodness, unintended evil, good not caused by evil, and outweighing [Mautner] |
Full Idea: It is suggested the double effect act requires 1) the act is good, 2) the bad effect is not intended, and is avoided if possible, 3) the bad effect doesn't cause the good result, 4) the good must outweigh the bad side effect. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.151) | |
A reaction: It is suggested that these won't work for permissibility of an action, but they might be appropriate for blameworthiness. Personally I am rather impressed by the four-part framework here, whatever nitpicking objections others may have found. |
5452 | 'Essentialism' is opposed to existentialism, and claims there is a human nature [Mautner] |
Full Idea: In philosophical anthropology, the view that there is a human nature or essence is called 'essentialism'. It became current in 1946 as a contrast to Sartre's existentialist view. | |
From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.179) | |
A reaction: Being a fan of Aristotle, I incline towards the older view, but you cannot get away from the fact that the human brain has similarities to a Universal Turing Machine, and diverse cultures produce very different individuals. |
22745 | Pherecydes said the first principle and element is earth [Pherecydes, by Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Pherecydes of Syros said that the principle and element of all things is earth. | |
From: report of Pherecydes (fragments/reports [c.600 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.360 | |
A reaction: Sextus is giving the history, and mentions it before saying that Thales thought it was water. Earth seems a sensible starting point, and I am guessing that Thales was trying to think a bit more deeply than Pherecydes about it. |
5883 | Pherecydes was the first to say that the soul is eternal [Pherecydes, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: As far as the literature tells us, Pherecydes of Syros was the first who pronounced the souls of men to be eternal. | |
From: report of Pherecydes (fragments/reports [c.600 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations I.xvi.38 | |
A reaction: Presumably before that it was the physical person who arrived in the Underworld. The Hindu tradition seems to require the soul to be very long-lived, if not eternal. Why did Pherecydes come up with this idea? |