display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
21347 | If Simmias is taller than Socrates, that isn't a feature that is just in Simmias [Plato] |
Full Idea: When you say Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, so you mean there is in Simmias both tallness and shortness? - I do. ...But surely he is not taller than Socrates because he is Simmias but because of the tallness he happens to have? | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102b-c) | |
A reaction: He adds that both people must be cited. This appears to be what we now call a rejection relative height as an 'internal' relation, which is it would presumably be if it was a feature of one or of both men. |
4083 | If mental properties are emergent they add a new type of causation, and physics is not complete [Crane] |
Full Idea: Whatever the causal process is, it remains true that if emergentism is true, the completeness of physics is false; there are some effects which would not have come about if mental things were absent from the world. | |
From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.18) | |
A reaction: Emergentism looks to me like an incoherent concept, unless it is another word for dualism. |
4082 | The distinction between 'resultant' properties (weight) and 'emergent' properties is a bit vague [Crane] |
Full Idea: The distinction between 'resultant' properties like weight, and 'emergent' properties like colour, seems intuitive enough, but on examination it is very hard to make precise. | |
From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.18) | |
A reaction: It is no coincidence that the examples are of primary and secondary qualities. If 'the physical entails the mental' then all mental properties are resultant. |
4079 | Properties are causes [Crane] |
Full Idea: Properties are causes. | |
From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.17) | |
A reaction: We can't detect properties if they lack causal powers. This may be a deep confusion. Properties are what make causal powers possible, but that isn't what properties are? |
360 | We must have a prior knowledge of equality, if we see 'equal' things and realise they fall short of it [Plato] |
Full Idea: We must have some previous knowledge of equality, before the time when we saw equal things, but realised that they fell short of it. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 075a) |
1 | There is only one source for all beauty [Plato] |
Full Idea: If anything is beautiful other than beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason but because it participates in that beautiful. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 100c) | |
A reaction: The Greek word will be 'kalon' (beautiful, fine, noble). Like Aristotle, I find it baffling that such diversity could have a single source. Beautiful things have diverse aims. |
368 | Other things are named after the Forms because they participate in them [Plato] |
Full Idea: The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they participate in the forms. | |
From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102a) |