display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
224 | When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato] |
Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e) |
6950 | You can be rational with undetected or minor inconsistencies [Harman] |
Full Idea: Rationality doesn't require consistency, because you can be rational despite undetected inconsistencies in beliefs, and it isn't always rational to respond to a discovery of inconsistency by dropping everything in favour of eliminating that inconsistency. | |
From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being correct, and is (I am beginning to realise) a vital contribution made to our understanding by pragmatism. European thinking has been too keen on logic as the model of good reasoning. |
6954 | A coherent conceptual scheme contains best explanations of most of your beliefs [Harman] |
Full Idea: A set of unrelated beliefs seems less coherent than a tightly organized conceptual scheme that contains explanatory principles that make sense of most of your beliefs; this is why inference to the best explanation is an attractive pattern of inference. | |
From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.5.2) | |
A reaction: I find this a very appealing proposal. The central aim of rational thought seems to me to be best explanation, and I increasingly think that most of my beliefs rest on their apparent coherence, rather than their foundations. |
232 | Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Opposites are as unlike as possible. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159a) |
8937 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic. | |
From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Pref 71 | |
A reaction: It is a long way from the analytic tradition of philosophy to be singling out a classic text for its 'artistic' achievement. Eventually we may even look back on, say, Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity' and see it in that light. |