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Full Idea
It would seem that historically the decisive step was taken by Socrates in conceiving of human beings as being run by a mind or reason.. …He postulated an entity whose precision nature and function then was a matter of considerable debate.
Gist of Idea
Socrates first proposed that we are run by mind or reason
Source
report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.19
Book Ref
'Rationality in Greek Thought', ed/tr. Frede,M /Striker,G [OUP 1999], p.19
A Reaction
This is, for me, a rather revelatory idea. I am keen on the fact the animals make judgements which are true and false, and also that we exhibit rationality when walking across uneven ground. So pure rationality is a cultural construct!
Related Idea
Idea 23248 Early empiricists said reason was just a useless concept introduced by philosophers [Galen, by Frede,M]
| 23252 | Socrates first proposed that we are run by mind or reason [Socrates, by Frede,M] |
| 23307 | Aristotle makes belief a part of reason, but sees desires as separate [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| 72 | Assume our reason is in two parts, one for permanent first principles, and one for variable things [Aristotle] |
| 23311 | Aristotle sees reason as much more specific than our more everyday concept of it [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| 4017 | Descartes created the modern view of rationality, as an internal feature instead of an external vision [Descartes, by Taylor,C] |
| 19221 | Everybody overrates their own reasoning, so it is clearly superficial [Peirce] |
| 2899 | The fanatical rationality of Greek philosophy shows that they were in a state of emergency [Nietzsche] |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| 9591 | The human intellect has not been, and cannot be, fully formalized [Nagel/Newman] |
| 23438 | Full rationality must include morality [Foot] |
| 7611 | Rationality is one part of our conception of human flourishing [Putnam] |
| 6651 | People are wildly inaccurate in estimating probabilities about an observed event [Lowe] |
| 6652 | 'Base rate neglect' makes people favour the evidence over its background [Lowe] |
| 6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |