display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 5842 | Philosophical discussion involves dividing subject-matter into categories [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Self-discipline and avoidance of pleasure makes people most capable of philosophical discussion, which is called 'discussion' (dialegesthai - sort out) because people divide their subject-matter into categories. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.5.12 | |
| A reaction: This could be the original slogan for analytical philosophy, as far as I am concerned. I don't think philosophy aims at complete and successful analysis (cf. Idea 2958), but at revealing the structure and interconnection of ideas. This is wisdom. |
| 648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates began the quest for something universal in addition to the radical flux of perceptible particulars, with his definitions. But he rightly understood that universals cannot be separated from particulars. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1086b |
| 22436 | Logicians don't paraphrase logic into language, because they think in the symbolic language [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The logician does not even need to paraphrase the vernacular into his logical notation, for he has learned to think directly in his logical notation, or even (which is the beauty of the thing) to let it think for him. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: See Williamson's love of logic (and his book on modal metaphysics). This idea embodies the dream of hardcore Frege-Russellian analytic philosophers. I wish someone had told me when I studied logic that the target was to actually think symbolically. |