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Ideas for 'Necessary Existents', 'reports' and 'Culture and Value'

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2 ideas

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
Diogenes said a plucked chicken fits Plato's definition of man [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Plato defined man as a two-footed featherless animal, so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the school, and said, 'This is Plato's man'.
     From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6
     A reaction: You have to be very serious about your philosophy to enact your counterexamples, rather than just suggest them. Which university will actually reconstruct the Trolley Problem?
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
The Cynics rejected what is conventional as irrational, and aimed to live by nature [Taylor,R on Diogenes of Sin.]
     Full Idea: The Cynics were convinced of the purely conventional foundation of Athenian values, which meant they had no rational foundation at all. They therefore rejected them in favour of what is correct and worthwhile by nature.
     From: comment on Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8
     A reaction: This shows how the Cynics are key players in the progress of the nomos-physis debate, which keeps resurfacing as relativism vs absolutism, cognitivism vs non-cognitivism, and even romanticism vs classicism. The trouble is, convention is natural!