8 ideas
| 7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
| A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
| 15102 | S4 says there must be some necessary truths (the actual ones, of which there is at least one) [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: S4 says there must be some necessary truths, because the actual necessary truths must be necessary. (It says if there are some actual necessary truths then that is so - but the S4 axiom is an actual necessary truth, if true). | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (On the Source of Necessity [2010], 2) |
| 15103 | Blackburn fails to show that the necessary cannot be grounded in the contingent [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: I conclude that Blackburn has not shown that any grounding of the necessary in the contingent (the Contingency Horn of his dilemma) is doomed to failure. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (On the Source of Necessity [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: [You must read the article for details of Cameron's argument!] He goes on to also reject the Necessity Horn (that there is a regress if necessities must rely on necessities). |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 15104 | The 'moving spotlight' theory makes one time privileged, while all times are on a par ontologically [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: What seems so wrong about the 'moving spotlight' theory is that here one time is privileged, but all the times are on a par ontologically. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (On the Source of Necessity [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: The whole thing is baffling, but this looks like a good point. All our intuitions make presentism (there's only the present) look like a better theory than the moving spotlight (that the present is just 'special'). |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |
| 7909 | The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
| A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory. |
| 7908 | At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
| A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff. |