18 ideas
| 13560 | A wise man is not subservient to anything [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: I do not call any man wise who is subservient to anything. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §11) | |
| A reaction: At the very least, a wise man should be subservient to a wiser man. |
| 8361 | What is true used to be possible, but it may no longer be so [Wright,GHv] |
| Full Idea: It is not very natural to say of that which is true that it is also possible. ...What is true was possible - but whether it still is a potency of the world is not certain. | |
| From: G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §5) | |
| A reaction: A simple and rather important distinction. Before encountering this, I would certainly have been happy to affirm that the actual is possible, but actually it may not be. The power to create differs from the power to sustain. Could God re-create the world? |
| 13558 | The supreme good is harmony of spirit [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: The highest good is harmony of spirit. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §08) | |
| A reaction: This idea is straight from Plato's Republic. |
| 13559 | I seek virtue, because it is its own reward [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: You ask what I seek from virtue? Virtue herself. For she has nothing better, she is herself her own reward. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §09) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is the source of the popular saying that 'virtue is its own reward'. The trouble is that this doesn't seem a very persuasive thing to say to a sceptic who doubts whether being virtuous is worth the trouble. |
| 13561 | Virtue is always moderate, so excess need not be feared [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: In the case of virtue excess should not be feared, since in virtue resides moderation. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §13) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that all of the virtues are unified in the one achievement of the virtuous state. It leaves the notion of 'virtue' a bit thin in content, though. |
| 13562 | It is shameful to not even recognise your own slaves [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Why, to your shame, are you so careless that you do not know your handful of slaves by sight? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §17) |
| 13564 | There is far more scope for virtue if you are wealthy; poverty only allows endurance [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: What doubt can there be that the wise man has greater scope for displaying his powers if he is rich than if he is poor, since in the case of poverty only one kind of virtue exists - refusal to be bowed down and crushed. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §22) | |
| A reaction: It is against this view that I see Jesus proposing poverty as central to virtue. But then he has the surprising view (to Seneca) that humility is a virtue. What Nietzsche calls the slaves' inversion of values. |
| 13563 | Why does your wife wear in her ears the income of a wealthy house? [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Why does your wife wear in her ears the income of a wealthy house? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §17) |
| 13565 | If wealth was a good, it would make men good [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Wealth is not a good; for it it was, it would make men good. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §24) | |
| A reaction: An immediately attractive argument, but should we assume that anything which is good will enhance our personal goodness? If goodness is a habit, then continual pursuit of wealth is the test case to examine. Seneca is right! |
| 13557 | Unfortunately the majority do not tend to favour what is best [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Human concerns are not so happily arranged that the majority favours the better things. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §02) | |
| A reaction: On the whole Seneca is unimpressed by democracy, as people are rushed into decisions by the crowd, and live to regret them. |
| 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 |
| 8363 | p is a cause and q an effect (not vice versa) if manipulations of p change q [Wright,GHv] |
| Full Idea: What makes p a cause-factor relative to the effect-factor q (rather than vice versa) is the fact that by manipulating p, producing changes in it 'at will', we could bring about changes in q. | |
| From: G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §8) | |
| A reaction: As a solution to the direction-of-causation problem, I suspect that this proposal is begging the question. Will a causal explanation be offered of the action of manipulation? If he mistook his manipulation for a cause when it is actually an effect... |
| 8364 | We can imagine controlling floods by controlling rain, but not vice versa [Wright,GHv] |
| Full Idea: Given our present knowledge of the laws of nature, we can imagine ways of controlling floods by controlling rainfall, but not the other way round. That is should be so, however, is contingent. | |
| From: G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §8) | |
| A reaction: Despite my objections to Idea 8363, this is a good example. It won't establish the metaphysics of the direction of causation, though, because God might control rainfall by controlling floods. Maybe causation is more like a motorway pile-up than dominoes. |
| 8366 | The very notion of a cause depends on agency and action [Wright,GHv] |
| Full Idea: There is an implicit dependence of the very notion of a cause on a concept of agency and action. | |
| From: G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §10) | |
| A reaction: This is because he thinks experimental intervention is the key to the concept of causation (see Ideas 8362 and 8363). Others go further, and say that the concept of causation arises from subjective experience of performing actions. I quite like that. |
| 8362 | We give regularities a causal character by subjecting them to experiment [Wright,GHv] |
| Full Idea: What confers on observed regularities the character of causal or nomic connections is the possibility of subjecting cause-factors to experimental test by interfering with the 'natural' course of events. | |
| From: G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §7) | |
| A reaction: This is von Wright's distinctive proposal, making causation a feature of the culture of science, rather than of ordinary life. But see Idea 2461. Causation is becoming too epistemological for my taste. Either it is a feature of reality, or forget it. |
| 8360 | We must further analyse conditions for causation, into quantifiers or modal concepts [Wright,GHv] |
| Full Idea: We may be able to analyse causation into conditionship relations between events or states of affairs, ...but conditions cannot be regarded as logical primitives, ... and must be analysed into quantifiers, or modal concepts. | |
| From: G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §2) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] A nice illustration of the aim of analytical philosophy - to analyse the elements of reality down to logical primitives. This is the dream of Descartes and Leibniz, continued by Russell and co. Do we still have this aspiration? |
| 8365 | Some laws are causal (Ohm's Law), but others are conceptual principles (conservation of energy) [Wright,GHv] |
| Full Idea: Not all laws are causal 'experimentalist' laws, such as those for falling bodies, or the Gas Law, or Ohm's Law. Some are more like conceptual principles, giving a frame of reference, such as inertia, or conservation of energy, or the law of entropy. | |
| From: G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §9) | |
| A reaction: An interesting and important distinction, whenever one is exploring the links between theories of causation and of laws of nature. If one wished to attack the whole concept of 'laws of nature', this might be a good place to start. |
| 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. |