24 ideas
| 21812 | Being is the product of pure intellect [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Intellectual-Principle [Nous] by its intellective act establishes Being. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.04) | |
| A reaction: This is a surprising view - that there is something which is prior to Being - but I take it to be Plotinus giving primacy to Plato's Form of the Good (a pure ideal), ahead of the One of Parmenides (which is Being). |
| 21817 | The One does not exist, but is the source of all existence [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The First is no member of existence, but can be the source of all. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.07) | |
| A reaction: The First is the One, and this explicitly denies that it has Being. This answers the self-predication problem of Forms. Plato thought the Form of the Beautiful was beautiful, but it can't be (because of the regress). The source of existence can't exist. |
| 21824 | The One is a principle which transcends Being [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: There exists a principle which transcends Being; this the One. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.10) | |
| A reaction: The idea that the One transcends Being is the distinctive Plotinus doctrine. He defends the view that this was also the view of Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato. |
| 21813 | Number determines individual being [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Number is the determinant of individual being. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.05) | |
| A reaction: You might have thought that number was the consequence of the individualities (or units) within being, but not so. You can't get more platonic than saying that the idealised numbers are the source of the particular units. |
| 13437 | A CAR and its major PART can become identical, yet seem to have different properties [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: At t1 there is a whole CAR, and a PART of it, which is everything except the right front wheel. At t2 the wheel is removed, leaving just PART, so that CAR is now PART. But PART was a proper part of CAR, and CAR had the front wheel. Different properties! | |
| From: André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998], 1.II) | |
| A reaction: [compressed summary] The problem is generated by appealing to Leibniz's Law. My immediate reaction is that this is the sort of trouble you get into if you include such temporal truths about things as 'properties'. |
| 16233 | Gallois hoped to clarify identity through time, but seems to make talk of it impossible [Hawley on Gallois] |
| Full Idea: A problem for Gallois is that he leaves us no way to talk about questions of genuine identity through time, and thus undercuts one motivation for his own position. | |
| From: comment on André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.8 | |
| A reaction: Gallois seems to need a second theory of identity to support his Occasional Identity theory. Two things need an identity each, before we can say that the two identities coincide. (Time to read Gallois!) |
| 16025 | If things change they become different - but then no one thing undergoes the change! [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: If things really change, there can't literally be one thing before and after the change. However, if there isn't one thing before and after the change, then no thing has really undergone any change. | |
| From: André Gallois (Identity over Time [2011], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Copi for this way of expressing the problem of identity through change] There is an obvious simple ambiguity about 'change' in ordinary English. A change of property isn't a change of object. Painting a red ball blue isn't swapping it. |
| 16026 | 4D: time is space-like; a thing is its history; past and future are real; or things extend in time [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: We have four versions of Four-Dimensionalism: the relativistic view that time is space-like; a persisting thing is identical with its history (so objects are events); past and future are equally real; or (Lewis) things extend in time, with temporal parts. | |
| From: André Gallois (Identity over Time [2011], §2.5) | |
| A reaction: Broad proposed the second one. I prefer 3-D: at any given time a thing is wholly present. At another time it is wholly present despite having changed. It is ridiculous to think that small changes destroy identity. We acquire identity by dying?? |
| 14755 | Gallois is committed to identity with respect to times, and denial of simple identity [Gallois, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Gallois's core claim is that the identity relation holds with respect to times, ...and he must claim that there is no such thing as the relation of identity simpliciter. | |
| From: report of André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.5 | |
| A reaction: Gallois is essentially responding to the statue and clay problem, but it seems a bit drastic to entirely change our concept of two things being identical, such as Hesperus and Phosphorus. 'Identity' seems to have several meanings; let's sort them out. |
| 16231 | Occasional Identity: two objects can be identical at one time, and different at others [Gallois, by Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Gallois' Occasional Identity Thesis is that objects can be identical at one time without being identical at all times. | |
| From: report of André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.4 | |
| A reaction: The analogy is presumably with two crossing roads being identical at one place but not at others. It is a major misunderstanding to infer from Special Relativity that time is just like space. |
| 16027 | If two things are equal, each side involves a necessity, so the equality is necessary [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: The necessity of identity: a=b; □(a=a); so something necessarily = a; so something necessarily must equal b; so □(a=b). [A summary of the argument of Marcus and Kripke] | |
| From: André Gallois (Identity over Time [2011], §3) | |
| A reaction: [Lowe 1982 offered a response] The conclusion seems reasonable. If two things are mistakenly thought to be different, but turn out to be one thing, that one thing could not possibly be two things. In no world is one thing two things! |
| 5506 | If soul was like body, its parts would be separate, without communication [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: If the soul had the nature of the body, it would have isolated members each unaware of the condition of the other;..there would be a particular soul as a distinct entity to each local experience, so a multiplicity of souls would administer an individual. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 4.2.2), quoted by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.15 | |
| A reaction: Of course, the modern 'modularity of mind' theory does suggest that we are run by a team, but a central co-ordinator is required, with a full communication network across the modules. |
| 21827 | The movement of Soul is continuous, but we are only aware of the parts of it that are sensed [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The Soul maintains its unfailing movement; for not all that passes in the soul is, by that fact, perceptible; we know just as much as impinges on the faculty of the sense. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.12) | |
| A reaction: This is a straightforward argument in favour of an unconscious aspect to the mind - and a rather good argument too. No one thinks that our minds ever stop working, even in sleep. |
| 21828 | A person is the whole of their soul [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Man is not merely a part (the higher part) of the Soul but the total. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.12) | |
| A reaction: The soul is psuche, which includes the vegetative soul. The higher part is normally taken to be reason. This seems pretty close to John Locke's view of the matter. |
| 21809 | Our soul has the same ideal nature as the oldest god, and is honourable above the body [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Our own soul is of that same ideal nature [as the oldest god of them all], so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves which we have found soul to be, honourable above the body. For what is body but earth? | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.02) | |
| A reaction: The strongest versions of substance dualism are religious in character, because the separateness of the mind elevates us above the grubby physical character of the world. I'm with Nietzsche on this one - this view is actually harmful to us. |
| 21825 | The soul is outside of all of space, and has no connection to the bodily order [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: We may not seek any point in space in which to seat the soul; it must be set outside of all space; its distinct quality, its separateness, its immateriality, demand that it be a thing alone, untouched by all of the bodily order. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.10) | |
| A reaction: You can't get more dualist than that. He doesn't seem bothered about the interaction problem. He likens such influence to the radiation of the sun, rather than to physical movement. |
| 21826 | The Soul reasons about the Right, so there must be some permanent Right about which it reasons [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good - for reasoning is an enquiry into the rightness and goodness of this rather than that - there must exist some pemanent Right, the source and foundation of this reasoning in our soul. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.11) | |
| A reaction: This is pretty close the Kant's concept of 'the moral order within me', and Plotinus even sees it as rational. Presumably this right is 'permanent' because the revelatlons of reason about it are necessary truths. |
| 7258 | The forefather of modern intuitionism is Richard Price [Price,R, by Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The forefather of modern intuitionism is Richard Price. | |
| From: report of Richard Price (works [1760]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intuitionism |
| 6922 | Ecstasy is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man [Plotinus, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Ecstasy or rapture is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man. | |
| From: report of Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §29 | |
| A reaction: See Bernini's statue of St Theresa. Personally I find this very unappealing because of its utter irrationality, but what is the 'highest' human psychological state? Doing mental arithmetic? Doing what is morally right? Dignity under pressure? |
| 21814 | How can multiple existence arise from the unified One? [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The problem endlessly debated is how, from such a unity as we have declared the One to be, does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity, dyad or number? | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06) | |
| A reaction: This was precisely Aristotle's objection to the One of Parmenides, and especially the problem of the source of movement (which Plotinus also notices). |
| 21816 | Soul is the logos of Nous, just as Nous is the logos of the One [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The soul is an utterance [logos] and act of the Intellectual-Principle [Nous], as that is an utterance and act of the One. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06) | |
| A reaction: Being only comes into the picture at the secondary Nous stage. Nous is the closest to the modern concept of God. |
| 21815 | Because the One is immobile, it must create by radiation, light the sun producing light [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Given this immobility of the Supreme ...what happened then? It must be a circumradiation, which may be compared to the brilliant light encircling the sun and ceaselessly generating from that unchanging substance, | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06) | |
| A reaction: This is the answer given to the problem raised in Idea 21814. The sun produces energy, without apparent movement. Not an answer that will satisfy a physicist, but an interesting answer. |
| 21808 | Soul is author of all of life, and of the stars, and it gives them law and movement [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Soul is the author of all living things, ...it has breathed life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, the divine stars in the sky; ...it is the principle distinct from all of these to which it gives law and movement and life. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.02) | |
| A reaction: This seems to derive from Anaxagoras, who is mentioned by Plotinus. The soul he refers to his not the same as our concept of God. Note the word 'law', which I am guessing is nomos. Not, I think, modern laws of nature, but closer to guidelines. |
| 21811 | Even the soul is secondary to the Intellectual-Principle [Nous], of which soul is an utterance [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle [Nous]; reason uttered is an image of reason stored within the soul, and similarly soul is an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.03) | |
| A reaction: It then turns out that Nous is secondary to the One, so there is a hierarchy of Being (which only enters at the Nous stage). |