30 ideas
22744 | Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: If the whole is nothing more than the sum of the parts, the parts will not be parts. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.343) | |
A reaction: Nice. Bricks lying on the ground are not parts of a wall. For them to be parts of a wall there has to be a wall which is not just the bricks. Nihilists like Van Inwagen can deny the wall in ontology, but in thought we need walls. Conceptual dependence. |
23551 | It is necessary for a belief that it be held for a length of time [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: A mental state cannot count as a belief unless it has a reasonable life expectancy. It must be the sort of thing that one is disposed to assert not only now but in the future too. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 2.3) | |
A reaction: There are obvious counterexamples, where a firm belief is strongly formed, only to be dashed by a counterexample (such as a new witness in court) soon afterwards. That said, this idea is obviously correct. |
22748 | Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Some assert that motion is perceived by sense, but others that it is not perceived at all by sense but by the intellect through sensation. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], II.062) | |
A reaction: Descartes' wax argument defends the idea that change is perceived by intellect. The intellect has to distinguish the relative aspect of each motion, such as when someone is walking around on a moving ship. Even sense also need memory. |
23558 | Offering knowledge needs accuracy and sincerity; receiving it needs testimonial justice [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Accuracy and Sincerity sustain trust as regards contributing knowledge to the pool; Testimonial Justice helps sustain trust as regards acquiring knowledge from the pool. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 5.1) | |
A reaction: Fricker's contribution is to show that acquiring knowledge has its own virtues, alongside discovering and communicating it. I take the underlying virtue to be absolute respect for all possible contributors. |
21513 | We can no more expect a precise definition of coherence than we can of the moral ideal [Ewing] |
Full Idea: I think it is wrong to tie down the advocates of the coherence theory to a precise definition. ...It would be altogether unreasonable to demand that the moral ideal should be exhaustively defined, and the same may be true of the ideal of thought. | |
From: A.C. Ewing (Idealism: a critical survey [1934], p.231), quoted by Erik J. Olsson - Against Coherence 7.6 | |
A reaction: I strongly agree. It is not a council of despair. I think the criteria of coherence can be articulated quite well (e.g by Thagard), and the virtues of enquiry can also be quite well specified (e.g. by Zagzebski). Very dissimilar evidence must cohere. |
21497 | If undetailed, 'coherence' is just a vague words that covers all possible arguments [Ewing] |
Full Idea: Without a detailed account, coherence is reduced to the mere muttering of the word 'coherence', which can be interpreted so as to cover all arguments, but only by making its meaning so wide as to rob it of almost all significance. | |
From: A.C. Ewing (Idealism: a critical survey [1934], p.246), quoted by Erik J. Olsson - Against Coherence 2.2 | |
A reaction: I'm a fan of coherence, but it is a placeholder, involving no intrinsic or detailed theory. I just think it points to the reality of how we make judgements, especially practical ones. We can categorise the inputs, and explain the required virtues. |
23553 | Testimonial judgement is not logical, but produces reasons and motivations [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Moral/testimonial judgement is non-inferential, uncodifiable, intrinsically motivating, intrinsically reason-giving, and typically has an emotional aspect. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.3) | |
A reaction: Fricker's compressed summary of her findings about testimony. The first words indicate her belief that assessment of testimony is a moral affair. |
23550 | Burge says we are normally a priori entitled to believe testimony [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: In Tyler Burge's view we have an a priori entitlement for believing what others tell us, other things being equal. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 1.3 n11) | |
A reaction: [Burge 'Content Preservation' 1992] Close to Davidson's Charity (that without a default assumption of truth-speaking language won't work at all). Davidson is right about casual conversation, but for important testimony Burge should be more cautious. |
23552 | We assess testimonial probabilities by the speaker, the listener, the facts, and the circumstances [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: A person should receive the word of his interlocutor in the light of the probability that someone like that would (be able and willing to) to tell someone like him the truth about something like this in circumstances like these. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.2) | |
A reaction: That's a pretty good summary of the rational response to testimony. I can't think of any other factors. |
23555 | Assessing credibility involves the impact of both the speaker's and the listener's social identity [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: For a hearer to identify the impact of identity power in their credibility judgements they must be alert to the impact not only of the speaker's social identity, but also the impact of the own social identity on their credibility judgements. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [why are all sentences in academic writing twice as long as they need to be? - that question is deeper than it looks!] This is a salutary warning. Not just 'what are my prejudices?', but also 'what is this person willing to tell a person like me?'. |
22746 | If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: When we have gone so far as to deprive the length of its breadth altogether, we no longer conceive even the length, but along with the removal of the breadth the conception of the length is also removed. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.392) | |
A reaction: The only explanation of our retaining an understanding of a line even after we have removed its breadth is that we have abandoned experience and conceptualised the line - by idealising it. |
22741 | The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: The incorporeal will never come into existence from body because the nature of the incorporeal does not exist in body. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.225) | |
A reaction: So nothing high could be made of pebbles because pebbles are not high? His argument depends on incorporeality having an intrinsically incorporeal nature. Pebbles have some height which can be extended. |
23554 | Judgements can be unreflective and non-inferential, yet rational, by being sensitive to experience [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Our idea of testimonial sensibility is a spontaneous critical sensitivity permanently in training and adapting to experience. …This gives us a picture of how judgements can be rational yet unreflective, critical yet non-inferential. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.4) | |
A reaction: Love this. I want to connect human reasoning to good judgement by animals, and I offer the word 'sensible' to bridge the gap. Dogs and scientists can be sensible. Fricker spells out more fully what I have in mind, with reference to testimony. |
23557 | To judge agents in remote times and cultures we need a moral resentment weaker than blame [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: I think that identifying forms of moral resentment that fall short of blame but which are agent-directed is the key to achieving appropriate moral response across historical and cultural distance. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Very good. Simple blame for horrible actions performed in remote rather horrible societies is pointless. But switching off moral sensibilities when reading history and anthropology looks like a slippery slope, so 'moral resentment' is nice. |
22747 | A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: If a ship moves forward and a man carries a rod backwards on it, then it is possible for an object to move without quitting its place. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], II.056) | |
A reaction: [summary of a verbose paragraph] The point is that you cannot define movement as change of place (contrary to Russell's proposal!). The concept of a place seems to be relative. Walking on a treadmill. |
22749 | Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: It is absurd to say that when the Universe is destroyed time does not exist; for the statement that it was destroyed once and that it is being destroyed are indicative of times. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], II.188) | |
A reaction: Intriguing. He takes it that a proposition can be true even though nothing exists. This is not merely an affirmation of the tensed A-series view of time, but he even offers tenses as evidence that the A-series is correct. That time could cease was a view. |
22750 | Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Time cannot be indivisible, since it is divided into past, present and future. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], II.193) | |
A reaction: Does the fact that you can name the parts of something prove that it is divisible? Do electrons have left and right-hand sides? |
22742 | Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Socrates either dies when existing, or when not existing. …He does not die when he exists, for he is alive, and he does not die when he has died, for then he will be dying twice, which is absurd. So then, Socrates does not die. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.269) | |
A reaction: A nice dramatisation of a major dilemma. The present moment is just the boundary between the past and the future, and so has no magnitude, and hence nothing can occur during the present. Perhaps my favourite philosophical dilemma. |
22751 | If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: If the present is the limit of the past, and the limit of the past has passed away together with that of which it is the limit, the present no longer exists. And if the present begins the future, which doesn't exist, the present does not yet exist. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], II.201) | |
A reaction: If I mark a line on the ground where the wall will begin, the limit seems prior to the object. The gun starts the race, but is not part of it. That said, I cannot think of any more mysterious entity than the present moment. It isn't a line or a bang. |
22739 | God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: God cannot have a notion of suffering if he has not experience it. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.163) | |
A reaction: Christians like to portray God as suffering because of his son's horrible death. We can imagine experiences we have never had, and presumably God is better at that than we are. |
22730 | All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: All men have one common preconception about God, according to which he is a blessed creature and imperishable and perfect in happiness and receptive of nothing evil. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.033) | |
A reaction: He observes this after he has pointed the enormous variety of religious beliefs. He offers this unanimity as a reason to believe that it is true. |
22738 | The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: If the Divine is all-virtuous, it possesses all the virtues. But it does not possess the virtues of continence and fortitude unless there are certain things which are hard for God to abstain from and hard to endure. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.151) | |
A reaction: Courage would also be unnecessary, we assume. Good people are not tempted to steal, and hence do not need to resist it. It is a mistake to attribute human virtues to the Divine. Humans lack the virtues of a good frog. |
22734 | God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Arguments for God have four modes: from universal agreement, from the orderly arrangement of the universe, from the absurd consequences of denying God, and from undermining the opposing arguments. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.060) | |
A reaction: [compressed] The loss of status of the argument from universal agreement has had a huge influence. We now realise that a very wide consensus is no guarantee of truth in anything. |
22736 | God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: If God has sensation he is altered, …so he is receptive of change, including change for the worse. If so, he is also perishable, but that is absurd; therefore it is absurd also to claim that God exists. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.146) | |
A reaction: [compressed] It is certainly paradoxical to think that God is eternal and unchanging, but also capable of perception and thought, which necessitate change. Some theological ingenuity is needed to explain this. |
22740 | God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: If the Divine exists it either has or has not virtue. If it has not it is base and unhappy, which is absurd. But if it has it, there will exist something which is better than God, just as a virtue of a horse is better than the horse itself. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.176) | |
A reaction: It is obviously better to think of a virtue as some mode of a thing, rather than as a separate attachment. This is an ontological argument, because it is inferred from the concept of God. |
22735 | The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: They say that the substance of existing things being of itself motionless and shapeless must be put in motion and shape by some cause. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.075) | |
A reaction: Interestingly, Sextus doesn't seem to think that the existence of the original substance also needs a cause. This substance sounds like a relative of Aristotle's Prime Matter. The source of motion isn't really a 'design' argument. |
22732 | The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: It is said that …the idea that God is eternal and imperishable and perfect in happiness was introduced by way of transference from mankind. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.045) | |
A reaction: This view is found in Hume, and in Feuerbach. I presume 'transference' means extrapolation and idealisation. If God exists, we may have no option but to think of God anthropomorphically. |
22728 | Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: It is asserted that those who first led mankind …invented gods as watchers of all the sinful and righteous acts of men, so that none should dare to do wrong even in secret. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.016) | |
A reaction: Sextus is a sceptic about everything, so this scepticism about the gods is nothing special. I'm not sure if this is why the gods were invented, but it seems to be the main role assigned to God by the Christian church, as the basis of religious morality. |
22737 | An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: The Divine is not incorporeal, since that is inanimate and insensitive and incapable of any action; nor is it a body, since that is subject to change and perishable; so the Divine does not exist. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.151) | |
A reaction: I find this quite persuasive. An incorporeal God has to be ascribed magical powers in order to interact with what is corporeal. A corporeal God is subject to entropy and all the depredations of the physical world. |
22731 | It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: To suppose that lakes and rivers, and whatsoever else is of a nature to be useful to us, are gods surpasses the height of lunacy. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.040) | |
A reaction: He also points out the what is useful to us decays and changes. Sextus lived in a time when monotheism was becoming dominant. |