Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man' and 'Aspects of Scientific Explanation'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / c. Becoming
229 The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato]
     Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d)
     A reaction: This seems to be rhetorical, rather a precise theory, given that the One is said to be eternal and unchanging. The One is not just what we call 'reality'.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / f. Primary being
21821 Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus]
     Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many.
     From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08
     A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
6550 Reduction requires that an object's properties consist of its constituents' properties and relations [Sellars]
     Full Idea: The 'Principle of Reducibility' says if an object is a system of objects, then every property of the object must consist in the fact that its constituents have such and such qualities and such and such relations
     From: Wilfrid Sellars (Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man [1962], p.27), quoted by William Lycan - Consciousness
     A reaction: This sounds to me a more promising attitude to reduction than all this talk of Ernest Nagel's 'Bridge Laws'. If we ask HOW a higher level property arises because of a lower level property, we can describe a mechanism rather than a law.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality
221 Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato]
     Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c)
     A reaction: These seems to thoroughly pre-empt Plato's Theory of Forms a century before he created it. Which shows (as Simone Weil says) that Plato was just part of a long tradition.