9 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| Full Idea: Thales was the first thinker in the west to believe that the arché (the basis of things) was intelligible. | |
| From: comment on Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.138 |
| 8507 | Some think of reality as made of things; I prefer facts or states of affairs [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers (like Devitt) think of reality as made up of things. Others, like me, think of it as made up of facts or states of affairs. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Against 'Ostrich Nominalism' [1980], §3) | |
| A reaction: Devitt is a follower of Quine on this. Personally I rather like 'processes'. Unanalysed things with predication (Quine) don't look promising. I currently favour things with active powers, which give rise to properties. See Shoemaker and Ellis. |
| 8506 | Particulars and properties are distinguishable, but too close to speak of a relation [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: I favour the Realist view that while we can distinguish the particularity of a particular from its properties, but the two 'factors' are too intimately together to speak of a relation between them. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Against 'Ostrich Nominalism' [1980], §3) | |
| A reaction: Is Armstrong being a bit of an ostrich here? We could talk of part-whole relationships, or internal relations, or set membership, or coinciding objects, or bundles. We certainly ought to have a go. Armstrong approaches Quine here! |
| 8505 | Refusal to explain why different tokens are of the same type is to be an ostrich [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: A philosophical account of a general sort is required of what it is for different tokens to be of the same type. To refuse to give such an account is to be a metaphysical ostrich. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Against 'Ostrich Nominalism' [1980], §1) | |
| A reaction: This defines Ostrich Nominalism (a label Armstrong aims at Quine). I certainly sympathise with Armstrong. If there is no more to a class (a type) than just having members (tokens), nothing is explain. What is natural, essential, intensional etc.? |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules everything. | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.2.9 |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Thales says water is the first principle (which is why he declared the earth is on water); perhaps he concluded this from seeing that all food is moist. | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE], A12) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 983b12 |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Thales seems, from what is recorded of him, to have supposed that the soul is something productive of movement, if he really said that the magnet has soul because it produces movement in iron. | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by Aristotle - De Anima 405a20 |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When asked whether a man who did wrong could escape the notice of the gods, Thales is said to have replied: 'No, not even if he thinks wrong.' | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.Th.9 |
| 7482 | Resurrection developed in Judaism as a response to martyrdoms, in about 160 BCE [Anon (Dan), by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The idea of resurrection in Judaism seems to have first developed around 160 BCE, during the time of religious martyrdom, and as a response to it (the martyrs were surely not dying forever?). It is first mentioned in the book of Daniel. | |
| From: report of Anon (Dan) (27: Book of Daniel [c.165 BCE], Ch.7) by Peter Watson - Ideas | |
| A reaction: Idea 7473 suggests that Zoroaster beat them to it by 800 years. |