52 ideas
22289 | Dedekind proved definition by recursion, and thus proved the basic laws of arithmetic [Dedekind, by Potter] |
Full Idea: Dedkind gave a rigorous proof of the principle of definition by recursion, permitting recursive definitions of addition and multiplication, and hence proofs of the familiar arithmetical laws. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 13 'Deriv' |
10183 | An infinite set maps into its own proper subset [Dedekind, by Reck/Price] |
Full Idea: A set is 'Dedekind-infinite' iff there exists a one-to-one function that maps a set into a proper subset of itself. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], §64) by E Reck / M Price - Structures and Structuralism in Phil of Maths n 7 | |
A reaction: Sounds as if it is only infinite if it is contradictory, or doesn't know how big it is! |
22288 | We have the idea of self, and an idea of that idea, and so on, so infinite ideas are available [Dedekind, by Potter] |
Full Idea: Dedekind had an interesting proof of the Axiom of Infinity. He held that I have an a priori grasp of the idea of my self, and that every idea I can form the idea of that idea. Hence there are infinitely many objects available to me a priori. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], no. 66) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 12 'Numb' | |
A reaction: Who said that Descartes' Cogito was of no use? Frege endorsed this, as long as the ideas are objective and not subjective. |
10405 | In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) |
10706 | Dedekind originally thought more in terms of mereology than of sets [Dedekind, by Potter] |
Full Idea: Dedekind plainly had fusions, not collections, in mind when he avoided the empty set and used the same symbol for membership and inclusion - two tell-tale signs of a mereological conception. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], 2-3) by Michael Potter - Set Theory and Its Philosophy 02.1 | |
A reaction: Potter suggests that mathematicians were torn between mereology and sets, and eventually opted whole-heartedly for sets. Maybe this is only because set theory was axiomatised by Zermelo some years before Lezniewski got to mereology. |
10407 | Logical Form explains differing logical behaviour of similar sentences [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: 'Logical Form' is a technical notion motivated by the observation that sentences with a similar surface structure may exhibit quite different logical behaviour. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [Swoyer goes on to give some nice examples] The tricky question is whether each sentence has ONE logical form. Pragmatics warns us of the dangers. One needs to check numerous inferences from a given sentences, not just one. |
9823 | Numbers are free creations of the human mind, to understand differences [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: Numbers are free creations of the human mind; they serve as a means of apprehending more easily and more sharply the difference of things. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], Pref) | |
A reaction: Does this fit real numbers and complex numbers, as well as natural numbers? Frege was concerned by the lack of objectivity in this sort of view. What sort of arithmetic might the Martians have created? Numbers register sameness too. |
10090 | Dedekind defined the integers, rationals and reals in terms of just the natural numbers [Dedekind, by George/Velleman] |
Full Idea: It was primarily Dedekind's accomplishment to define the integers, rationals and reals, taking only the system of natural numbers for granted. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Intro |
17452 | Ordinals can define cardinals, as the smallest ordinal that maps the set [Dedekind, by Heck] |
Full Idea: Dedekind and Cantor said the cardinals may be defined in terms of the ordinals: The cardinal number of a set S is the least ordinal onto whose predecessors the members of S can be mapped one-one. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 5 |
7524 | Order, not quantity, is central to defining numbers [Dedekind, by Monk] |
Full Idea: Dedekind said that the notion of order, rather than that of quantity, is the central notion in the definition of number. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4 | |
A reaction: Compare Aristotle's nice question in Idea 646. My intuition is that quantity comes first, because I'm not sure HOW you could count, if you didn't think you were changing the quantity each time. Why does counting go in THAT particular order? Cf. Idea 8661. |
14131 | Dedekind's ordinals are just members of any progression whatever [Dedekind, by Russell] |
Full Idea: Dedekind's ordinals are not essentially either ordinals or cardinals, but the members of any progression whatever. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §243 | |
A reaction: This is part of Russell's objection to Dedekind's structuralism. The question is always why these beautiful structures should actually be considered as numbers. I say, unlike Russell, that the connection to counting is crucial. |
17611 | We want the essence of continuity, by showing its origin in arithmetic [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: It then only remained to discover its true origin in the elements of arithmetic and thus at the same time to secure a real definition of the essence of continuity. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Continuity and Irrational Numbers [1872], Intro) | |
A reaction: [He seeks the origin of the theorem that differential calculus deals with continuous magnitude, and he wants an arithmetical rather than geometrical demonstration; the result is his famous 'cut']. |
10572 | A cut between rational numbers creates and defines an irrational number [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: Whenever we have to do a cut produced by no rational number, we create a new, an irrational number, which we regard as completely defined by this cut. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Continuity and Irrational Numbers [1872], §4) | |
A reaction: Fine quotes this to show that the Dedekind Cut creates the irrational numbers, rather than hitting them. A consequence is that the irrational numbers depend on the rational numbers, and so can never be identical with any of them. See Idea 10573. |
14437 | Dedekind's axiom that his Cut must be filled has the advantages of theft over honest toil [Dedekind, by Russell] |
Full Idea: Dedekind set up the axiom that the gap in his 'cut' must always be filled …The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. Let us leave them to others. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Bertrand Russell - Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy VII | |
A reaction: This remark of Russell's is famous, and much quoted in other contexts, but I have seen the modern comment that it is grossly unfair to Dedekind. |
18094 | Dedekind says each cut matches a real; logicists say the cuts are the reals [Dedekind, by Bostock] |
Full Idea: One view, favoured by Dedekind, is that the cut postulates a real number for each cut in the rationals; it does not identify real numbers with cuts. ....A view favoured by later logicists is simply to identify a real number with a cut. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.4 | |
A reaction: Dedekind is the patriarch of structuralism about mathematics, so he has little interest in the existenc of 'objects'. |
18244 | I say the irrational is not the cut itself, but a new creation which corresponds to the cut [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: Of my theory of irrationals you say that the irrational number is nothing else than the cut itself, whereas I prefer to create something new (different from the cut), which corresponds to the cut. We have the right to claim such a creative power. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Letter to Weber [1888], 1888 Jan), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 5.4 | |
A reaction: Clearly a cut will not locate a unique irrational number, so something more needs to be done. Shapiro remarks here that for Dedekind numbers are objects. |
9824 | In counting we see the human ability to relate, correspond and represent [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: If we scrutinize closely what is done in counting an aggregate of things, we see the ability of the mind to relate things to things, to let a thing correspond to a thing, or to represent a thing by a thing, without which no thinking is possible. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], Pref) | |
A reaction: I don't suppose it occurred to Dedekind that he was reasserting Hume's observation about the fundamental psychology of thought. Is the origin of our numerical ability of philosophical interest? |
17612 | Arithmetic is just the consequence of counting, which is the successor operation [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: I regard the whole of arithmetic as a necessary, or at least natural, consequence of the simplest arithmetic act, that of counting, and counting itself is nothing else than the successive creation of the infinite series of positive integers. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Continuity and Irrational Numbers [1872], §1) | |
A reaction: Thus counting roots arithmetic in the world, the successor operation is the essence of counting, and the Dedekind-Peano axioms are built around successors, and give the essence of arithmetic. Unfashionable now, but I love it. Intransitive counting? |
9826 | A system S is said to be infinite when it is similar to a proper part of itself [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: A system S is said to be infinite when it is similar to a proper part of itself. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], V.64) |
18087 | If x changes by less and less, it must approach a limit [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: If in the variation of a magnitude x we can for every positive magnitude δ assign a corresponding position from and after which x changes by less than δ then x approaches a limiting value. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Continuity and Irrational Numbers [1872], p.27), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.7 | |
A reaction: [Kitcher says he 'showed' this, rather than just stating it] |
13508 | Dedekind gives a base number which isn't a successor, then adds successors and induction [Dedekind, by Hart,WD] |
Full Idea: Dedekind's natural numbers: an object is in a set (0 is a number), a function sends the set one-one into itself (numbers have unique successors), the object isn't a value of the function (it isn't a successor), plus induction. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 5 | |
A reaction: Hart notes that since this refers to sets of individuals, it is a second-order account of numbers, what we now call 'Second-Order Peano Arithmetic'. |
18096 | Zero is a member, and all successors; numbers are the intersection of sets satisfying this [Dedekind, by Bostock] |
Full Idea: Dedekind's idea is that the set of natural numbers has zero as a member, and also has as a member the successor of each of its members, and it is the smallest set satisfying this condition. It is the intersection of all sets satisfying the condition. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.4 |
18841 | Categoricity implies that Dedekind has characterised the numbers, because it has one domain [Rumfitt on Dedekind] |
Full Idea: It is Dedekind's categoricity result that convinces most of us that he has articulated our implicit conception of the natural numbers, since it entitles us to speak of 'the' domain (in the singular, up to isomorphism) of natural numbers. | |
From: comment on Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 9.1 | |
A reaction: The main rival is set theory, but that has an endlessly expanding domain. He points out that Dedekind needs second-order logic to achieve categoricity. Rumfitt says one could also add to the 1st-order version that successor is an ancestral relation. |
14130 | Induction is proved in Dedekind, an axiom in Peano; the latter seems simpler and clearer [Dedekind, by Russell] |
Full Idea: Dedekind proves mathematical induction, while Peano regards it as an axiom, ...and Peano's method has the advantage of simplicity, and a clearer separation between the particular and the general propositions of arithmetic. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §241 |
8924 | Dedekind originated the structuralist conception of mathematics [Dedekind, by MacBride] |
Full Idea: Dedekind is the philosopher-mathematician with whom the structuralist conception originates. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], §3 n13) by Fraser MacBride - Structuralism Reconsidered | |
A reaction: Hellman says the idea grew naturally out of modern mathematics, and cites Hilbert's belief that furniture would do as mathematical objects. |
9153 | Dedekindian abstraction talks of 'positions', where Cantorian abstraction talks of similar objects [Dedekind, by Fine,K] |
Full Idea: Dedekindian abstraction says mathematical objects are 'positions' in a model, while Cantorian abstraction says they are the result of abstracting on structurally similar objects. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence §6 | |
A reaction: The key debate among structuralists seems to be whether or not they are committed to 'objects'. Fine rejects the 'austere' version, which says that objects have no properties. Either version of structuralism can have abstraction as its basis. |
14592 | Some abstract things have a beginning and end, so may exist in time (though not space) [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Many things that seem to be abstract also seem to have a beginning (and ending) in time, such as a language like Urdu. It may be tempting to say that such things exist in time but not in space, but where exactly? | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 1.1) | |
A reaction: A few distinctions might be needed. Urdu-speaking is an ability of certain people. We abstract from that their 'language'. There is nothing there apart from that ability. It has no more abstract existence than the 'weather'. |
10421 | Supervenience is nowadays seen as between properties, rather than linguistic [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Supervenience is sometimes taken to be a relationship between two fragments of language, but it is increasingly taken to be a relationship between pairs of families of properties. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.17) | |
A reaction: If supervenience is a feature of the world, rather than of our descriptions, then it cries out for explanation, just as any other regularities do. Personally I would have thought the best explanation of the supervenience of mind and body was obvious. |
14594 | Ontologists seek existence and identity conditions, and modal and epistemic status for a thing [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Four things philosophers often want to know about a given sort of entity are: its existence conditions, its identity conditions, its modal status, and its epistemic status. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 3) | |
A reaction: I prefer 'modal profile' to 'modal status'. The 'existence conditions' sound rather epistemic. Why does the existence of anything require 'conditions' other than just existing? I suspect identity is irrelevant if humans aren't around. |
10410 | Anti-realists can't explain different methods to measure distance [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Anti-realists theories of measurement (like operationalism) cannot explain how we can use different methods to measure the same thing (e.g. lengths and distances in cosmology, geology, histology and atomic physics). | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Swoyer says that the explanation is that measurement aims at objective properties, the same in each of these areas. Quite good. |
10399 | If a property such as self-identity can only be in one thing, it can't be a universal [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Some properties may not be universals, if they can only be exemplified by one thing, such as 'being identical with Socrates'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000]) | |
A reaction: I think it is absurd to think that self-identity is an intrinsic 'property', possessed by everything. That a=a is a convenience for logicians, meaning nothing in the world. And it is relational. The sharing of properties is indeed what needs explanation. |
10416 | Can properties have parts? [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Can properties have parts? | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6.4) | |
A reaction: If powers are more fundamental than properties, with the latter often being complexes of the underlying powers, then yes they do. But powers don't. Presumably whatever is fundamental shouldn't have parts. Why? |
14595 | Can properties exemplify other properties? [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Can properties themselves exemplify properties? | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 3) | |
A reaction: Since I espouse a rather strict causal view of true properties, and lump the rest into the category of 'predicates', I am inclined to answer 'no' to this. Most people would disagree. 'Bright red' seems to be an example. But it isn't. |
10417 | There are only first-order properties ('red'), and none of higher-order ('coloured') [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: 'Elementarism' is the view that there are first-order properties, but that there are no properties of any higher-order. There are first-order properties like various shades of red, but there is no higher-order property, like 'being a colour'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Bergmann 1968] Interesting. Presumably the programme is naturalistic (and hence congenial to me), and generalisations about properties are conceptual, while the properties themselves are natural. |
10413 | The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6) | |
A reaction: The necessity (in all possible worlds) covers renates and cordates. It is hard to see how one could assert the necessity without some deeper explanation. What makes us deny that actually coextensive renates and cordates have different properties? |
10402 | Various attempts are made to evade universals being wholly present in different places [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: The worry that a single thing could be wholly present in widely separated locations has led to trope theory, to the claim that properties are not located in their instances, or to the view that this treats universals as if they were individuals. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
A reaction: I find it dispiriting to come to philosophy in the late twentieth century and have to inherit such a ridiculous view as that there are things that are 'wholly present' in many places. |
10400 | Conceptualism says words like 'honesty' refer to concepts, not to properties [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Conceptualists urge that words like 'honesty', which might seem to refer to properties, really refer to concepts. A few contemporary philosophers have defended conceptualism, and recent empirical work bears on it, but the view is no longer common. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.1) | |
A reaction: ..and that's all Swoyer says about this very interesting view! He only cites Cocchiarella 1986 Ch.3. The view leaves a lot of work to be done in explaining how nature is, and how our concepts connect to it, and arise in response to it. |
10403 | If properties are abstract objects, then their being abstract exemplifies being abstract [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If properties are abstract objects, then the property of being abstract should itself exemplify the property of being abstract. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Swoyer links this observation with Plato's views on self-predication, and his Third Man Argument (which I bet originated with Aristotle in the Academy!). Do we have a regress of objects, as well as a regress of properties? |
9825 | A thing is completely determined by all that can be thought concerning it [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: A thing (an object of our thought) is completely determined by all that can be affirmed or thought concerning it. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], I.1) | |
A reaction: How could you justify this as an observation? Why can't there be unthinkable things (even by God)? Presumably Dedekind is offering a stipulative definition, but we may then be confusing epistemology with ontology. |
14593 | Quantum field theory suggests that there are, fundamentally, no individual things [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Quantum field theory strongly suggests that there are (at the fundamental level) no individual, particular things. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 2.1) | |
A reaction: When people introduce quantum theory into ontological discussions I reach for my shotgun, but it does rather look as if things turn to mush at the bottom level. |
10406 | One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Zalta 1983 4.2, and Forrest 1986] I think we are dealing with nothing more than imagined possibilities, which are inferred from our understanding of the underlying 'powers' of the actual world (expressed as 'properties'). |
10404 | Extreme empiricists can hardly explain anything [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Extreme empiricists wind up unable to explain much of anything. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the major problem for empiricism, but I am not sure why inference to the best explanation should not be part of a sensible empirical approach. Thinking laws are just 'descriptions of regularities' illustrates the difficulty. |
10408 | Intensions are functions which map possible worlds to sets of things denoted by an expression [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Intensions are functions that assign a set to the expression at each possible world, ..so the semantic value of 'red' is the function that maps each possible world to the set of things in that world that are red. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I am suddenly deeply alienated from this mathematical logicians' way of talking about what 'red' means! We need more psychology, not less. We call things red if we imagine them as looking red. Is imagination a taboo in analytical philosophy? |
10409 | Research suggests that concepts rely on typical examples [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Recent empirical work on concepts says that many concepts have graded membership, and stress the importance of phenomena like typicality, prototypes, and exemplars. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [He cites Rorsch 1978 as the start of this] I say the mind is a database, exactly corresponding to tables, fields etc. Prototypes sound good as the way we identify a given category. Universals are the 'typical' examples labelling areas (e.g. goat). |
9189 | Dedekind said numbers were abstracted from systems of objects, leaving only their position [Dedekind, by Dummett] |
Full Idea: By applying the operation of abstraction to a system of objects isomorphic to the natural numbers, Dedekind believed that we obtained the abstract system of natural numbers, each member having only properties consequent upon its position. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Michael Dummett - The Philosophy of Mathematics | |
A reaction: Dummett is scornful of the abstractionism. He cites Benacerraf as a modern non-abstractionist follower of Dedekind's view. There seems to be a suspicion of circularity in it. How many objects will you abstract from to get seven? |
9827 | We derive the natural numbers, by neglecting everything of a system except distinctness and order [Dedekind] |
Full Idea: If in an infinite system, set in order, we neglect the special character of the elements, simply retaining their distinguishability and their order-relations to one another, then the elements are the natural numbers, created by the human mind. | |
From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], VI.73) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This is the classic abstractionist view of the origin of number, but with the added feature that the order is first imposed, so that ordinals remain after the abstraction. This, of course, sounds a bit circular, as well as subjective. |
9979 | Dedekind has a conception of abstraction which is not psychologistic [Dedekind, by Tait] |
Full Idea: Dedekind's conception is psychologistic only if that is the only way to understand the abstraction that is involved, which it is not. | |
From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind IV | |
A reaction: This is a very important suggestion, implying that we can retain some notion of abstractionism, while jettisoning the hated subjective character of private psychologism, which seems to undermine truth and logic. |
10401 | The F and G of logic cover a huge range of natural language combinations [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: All sorts of combinations of copulas ('is') with verbs, adverbs, adjectives, determiners, common nouns, noun phrases and prepositional phrases go over into the familiar Fs and Gs of standard logical notation. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This is a nice warning of how misleading logic can be when trying to understand how we think about reality. Montague semantics is an attempt to tackle the problem. Numbers as adjectives are a clear symptom of the difficulties. |
10420 | Maybe a proposition is just a property with all its places filled [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Some say we can think of a proposition as a limiting case of a property, as when the two-place property '___ loves ___' can become the zero-placed property, or proposition 'that Sam loves Darla'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.6) | |
A reaction: If you had a prior commitment to the idea that reality largely consists of bundles of properties, I suppose you might find this tempting. |
10412 | If laws are mere regularities, they give no grounds for future prediction [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If laws were mere regularities, then the fact that observed Fs have been Gs would give us no reason to conclude that those Fs we haven't encountered will also be Gs. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I take this simple point to be very powerful. No amount of regularity gives grounds for asserting future patterns - one only has Humean habits. Causal mechanisms are what we are after. |
10411 | Two properties can have one power, and one property can have two powers [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If properties are identical when they confer the same capacities on their instances, different properties seem able to bestow the same powers (e.g. force), and one property can bestow different powers (attraction or repulsion). | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Interesting, but possibly a misunderstanding. Powers are basic, and properties are combinations of powers. A 'force' isn't a basic power, it is a consequence of various properties. Relational behaviours are also not basic powers, which are the source. |
3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stilpo asked a man whether Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and when he said yes, said,"But this statue of Athena by Phidias is the child of Phidias, so it is not a god." | |
From: report of Stilpo (fragments/reports [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.10.5 |