6 ideas
| 22820 | Early Romantics sought a plurality of systems, in a quest for freedom [Hösle] |
| Full Idea: It was an early Romantic idea that there is necessarily a plurality of systems in which individuality is expressed; for a complete system would destroy freedom. | |
| From: Vittorio Hösle (A Short History of German Philosophy [2013], 7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why you are free because you are locked into system that differs from that of other people. True freedom seems to be either no system, or continually remaking one's own system. Why is such freedom valuable? Freedom v truth? |
| 5987 | Alcmaeon was the first to say the brain is central to thinking [Alcmaeon, by Staden, von] |
| Full Idea: Alcmaeon apparently was the first Greek to assign central cognitive and biological functions to the brain. | |
| From: report of Alcmaeon (fragments/reports [c.490 BCE]) by Heinrich von Staden - Alcmaeon | |
| A reaction: The name of Alcmaeon should be remembered with honour. This was 200 years before Aristotle, who still hadn't worked it out. I presume Alcmaeon inferred the truth from head injuries, which is overwhelming evidence, if you notice it. |
| 4988 | Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true. | |
| From: comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9 | |
| A reaction: If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory. |
| 4987 | Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced [Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: Eliminative materialism says our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena is a radically false theory, so defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced (rather than reduced). | |
| From: Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see what you could replace the idea of a 'belief' with in ordinary conversation. We may reduce beliefs to neuronal phenomena, but we can't drop the vocabulary of the macro-phenomena. The physics of weather doesn't eliminate 'storms'. |
| 22819 | In the 18th century history came to be seen as progressive, rather than cyclical [Hösle] |
| Full Idea: The turning point in the history of the philosophy of history occurs in the eighteenth century, when the ancient cyclical model of Vico is superseded by the idea of progress. | |
| From: Vittorio Hösle (A Short History of German Philosophy [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: He says that Hegel merely inherited this progressive view, rather than creating it. I'm not sure how widely held the cyclical view was. I don't recognise it in Shakespeare. Science and technology must have suggested progress. |
| 24043 | Soul must be immortal, since it continually moves, like the heavens [Alcmaeon, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Alcmaeon says that the soul is immortal because it resembles immortal things and that this affection belongs to it because it is always in movement, like divine things, such the moon, the sun, the stars and the whole heaven. | |
| From: report of Alcmaeon (fragments/reports [c.490 BCE], DK 24) by Aristotle - De Anima 405a30 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Fish and rivers seem to be continually moving too. Presumably we are like gods, but then Greek gods seem awfully like humans. I don't know the history of belief in immortality; an interesting topic. |