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Single Idea 22746

[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 6. Idealisation ]

Full Idea

When we have gone so far as to deprive the length of its breadth altogether, we no longer conceive even the length, but along with the removal of the breadth the conception of the length is also removed.

Gist of Idea

If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length

Source

Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.392)

Book Ref

Sextus Empiricus: 'Against the Physicists/Against the Ethicists', ed/tr. Bury,R.G. [Harvard Loeb 1997], p.187

A Reaction

The only explanation of our retaining an understanding of a line even after we have removed its breadth is that we have abandoned experience and conceptualised the line - by idealising it.

The 20 ideas from 'Against the Physicists (two books)'

22728 Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus]
22730 All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus]
22731 It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus]
22732 The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus]
22734 God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus]
22735 The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus]
22736 God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus]
22737 An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus]
22738 The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus]
22739 God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus]
22740 God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus]
22741 The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus]
22742 Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus]
22744 Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus]
22746 If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus]
22747 A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus]
22748 Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus]
22749 Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus]
22750 Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus]
22751 If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus]