58 ideas
| 19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
| A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
| 21489 | Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's system, a super-ordinate discipline provides general laws or principles for subordinate disciplines, which in turn provide concrete examples of those general laws. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 1 'System' | |
| A reaction: Does he really mean that subordinate disciplines have no principles or laws? That can't be right. |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
| 19095 | Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's naturalist view of truth, it is a catch-all for the particular local aims of enquiry - empirical adequacy, predictive power, coherence, simplicity, elegance, explanatory power, a reliable guide to action, fruitfulness, great understanding. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 1 | |
| A reaction: The aims I cited in my thesis on explanation. One given, for me, is that truth is an ideal, which may or may not be attainable, to varying degrees. It is just what thinking aims at. I suspect, though, that these listed items have one thing in common. |
| 19097 | Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce was not in the slightest bit tempted by the thought that a belief is true if it is useful. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 | |
| A reaction: All students of the pragmatic theory of truth should start with this idea, because it rejects the caricature view of pragmatic truth, a view which is easily rebutted. James seems to have been guilty of this sin. |
| 21494 | If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Two related worries about Peirce's account of truth are (from Royce) what are we to make of truth if enquiry never reaches an end, and (from Russell) what are we to make of truth if enquiry ends prematurely? | |
| From: comment on Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'issues' | |
| A reaction: The defence of Peirce must be that the theory is not holistic - referring to the whole Truth about absolutely everything. The discovery of the periodic table seems to me to support Peirce. In many areas basic enquiry has reached an end. |
| 7689 | The modal logic of C.I.Lewis was only interpreted by Kripke and Hintikka in the 1960s [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The modal syntax and axiom systems of C.I.Lewis (1918) were formally interpreted by Kripke and Hintikka (c.1965) who, using Z-F set theory, worked out model set-theoretical semantics for modal logics and quantified modal logics. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A historical note. The big question is always 'who cares?' - to which the answer seems to be 'lots of people', if they are interested in precision in discourse, in artificial intelligence, and maybe even in metaphysics. Possible worlds started here. |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
| 7681 | Logic describes inferences between sentences expressing possible properties of objects [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: It is fundamental that logic depends on logical possibilities, in which logically possible properties are predicated of logically possible objects. Logic describes inferential structures among sentences expressing the predication of properties to objects. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: If our imagination is the only tool we have for assessing possibilities, this leaves the domain of logic as being a bit subjective. There is an underlying Platonism to the idea, since inferences would exist even if nothing else did. |
| 7682 | Logic is not just about signs, because it relates to states of affairs, objects, properties and truth-values [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: At one level logic can be regarded as a theory of signs and formal rules, but we cannot neglect the meaning of propositions as they relate to states of affairs, and hence to possible properties and objects... there must be the possibility of truth-values. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: Thus if you define logical connectives by truth tables, you need the concept of T and F. You could, though, regard those too as purely formal (like 1 and 0 in electronics). But how do you decide which propositions are 1, and which are 0? |
| 21493 | Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP5.567), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'separation' | |
| A reaction: [Dated 1902] Maybe we should identify a huge branch of human learning as Hyptheticals. Professor of Hypotheticals at Cambridge University. The trouble is it would have to include computer games. So why does maths matter more than games? |
| 19102 | Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce takes bivalence not to be a law of logic, but a regulative assumption of enquiry. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 n10 | |
| A reaction: I like this. For most enquiries it's either true or not true, it's either there or it's not there. When you aren't faced with these simple dichotomies (in history, or quantum mechanics) you can relax, and allow truth value gaps etc. |
| 4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
| 7697 | On Russell's analysis, the sentence "The winged horse has wings" comes out as false [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: It is infamous that on Russell's analysis the sentences "The winged horse has wings" and "The winged horse is a horse" are false, because in the extant domain of actual existent entities there contingently exist no winged horses | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the best objection I have heard to Russell's account of definite descriptions. The connected question is whether 'quantifies over' is really a commitment to existence. See Idea 6067. |
| 7701 | Can a Barber shave all and only those persons who do not shave themselves? [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The Barber Paradox refers to the non-existent property of being a barber who shaves all and only those persons who do not shave themselves. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: [Russell spotted this paradox, and it led to his Theory of Types]. This paradox may throw light on the logic of indexicals. What does "you" mean when I say to myself "you idiot!"? If I can behave as two persons, so can the barber. |
| 7707 | To grasp being, we must say why something exists, and why there is one world [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: We grasp the concept of being only when we have satisfactorily answered the question why there is something rather than nothing and why there is only one logically contingent actual world. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Conclusion) | |
| A reaction: See Ideas 7688 and 7692 for a glimpse of Jacquette's answer. Personally I don't yet have a full grasp of the concept of being, but I'm sure I'll get there if I only work a bit harder. |
| 7692 | Being is maximal consistency [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Being is maximal consistency. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Ch.2 of Jacquette to see what this is all about, but as it stands it is a lovely slogan, and a wonderful googly/curve ball to propel at Parmenides or Heidegger. |
| 7687 | Existence is completeness and consistency [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: A combinatorial ontology holds that existence is nothing more or less than completeness and consistency, or what is also called 'maximal consistency'. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Jacquette to understand this one! The claim is that existence is to be defined in terms of logic (and whatever is required for logic). I take this to be a bit Platonist (rather than conventionalist) about logic. |
| 7679 | Ontology is the same as the conceptual foundations of logic [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The principles of pure philosophical ontology are indistinguishable ... from the conceptual foundations of logic. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I would take Russell to be an originator of this view. If the young Wittgenstein showed that the foundations of logic are simply conventional (truth tables), this seems to make ontology conventional too, which sounds very odd indeed (to me). |
| 10352 | The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: If this is anti-realism, then I don't like it. If it is realist, then it is probably a bit on the optimistic side (if you think about cultures that are into witchcraft and voodoo). |
| 7678 | Ontology must include the minimum requirements for our semantics [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The entities included in a theoretical ontology are those minimally required for an adequate philosophical semantics. ...These are the objects that we say exist, to which we are ontologically committed. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Worded with exquisite care! He does not say that ontology is reducible to semantics (which is a silly idea). We could still be committed, as in a ghost story, to existence of some 'nameless thing'. Things utterly beyond our ken might exist. |
| 7683 | Logic is based either on separate objects and properties, or objects as combinations of properties [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Logic involves the possibilities of predicating properties of objects in a conceptual scheme wherein either objects and properties are included in altogether separate categories, or objects are reducible to combinations of properties. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: In the first view, he says that objects are just 'logical pegs' for properties. Objects can't be individuated without properties. But combinations of properties would seem to need essences, or else they are too unstable to count as objects. |
| 7684 | Reduce states-of-affairs to object-property combinations, and possible worlds to states-of-affairs [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: We can reduce references to states-of-affairs to object-property combinations, and we can reduce logically possible worlds to logically possible states-of-affairs combinations. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: If we further reduce object-property combinations to mere combinations of properties (Idea 7683), then we have reduced our ontology to nothing but properties. Wow. We had better be very clear, then, about what a property is. I'm not. |
| 13498 | Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It was Peirce and Schröder in the nineteenth century who began a systematic taxonomy of relations. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], 4) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4 |
| 7703 | If classes can't be eliminated, and they are property combinations, then properties (universals) can't be either [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: If classes alone cannot be eliminated from ontology on Quine's terms, and if classes are defined as property combinations, then neither are all properties, universals in the tradition sense, entirely eliminable. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: If classes were totally conventional (and there was no such things as a 'natural' class) then you might admit something to a class without knowing its properties (as 'the thing in the box'). |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: The realism about possibilities, generalities, tendencies and habits that we find in Peirce's later maxim is something that the logical positivists would have been uncomfortable with. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 2 'Concl' | |
| A reaction: Atkin examines the various later statements of the earlier maxim, given here in Idea 21490. Ryle and Quine express the empiricist and logical positivist approach to dispositions. |
| 7685 | An object is a predication subject, distinguished by a distinctive combination of properties [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: To be an object is to be a predication subject, and to be this as opposed to that particular object, whether existent or not, is to have a distinctive combination of properties. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: The last part depends on Leibniz's Law. The difficulty is that two objects may only be distinguishable by being in different places, and location doesn't look like a property. Cf. Idea 5055. |
| 7699 | Numbers, sets and propositions are abstract particulars; properties, qualities and relations are universals [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Roughly, numbers, sets and propositions are assumed to be abstract particulars, while properties, including qualities and relations, are usually thought to be universals. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: There is an interesting nominalist project of reducing all of these to particulars. Numbers to patterns, sets to their members, propositions to sentences, properties to causal powers, relations to, er, something else. |
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 7691 | The actual world is a consistent combination of states, made of consistent property combinations [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The actual world is a maximally consistent state-of-affairs combination involving all and only the existent objects, which in turn exist because they are maximally consistent property combinations. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: [This extends Idea 7688]. This seems to invite the standard objections to the coherence theory of truth, such as Ideas 5422 and 4745. Is 'maximal consistency' merely a test for actuality, rather than an account of what actuality is? |
| 16376 | The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The possible is necessarily general…..It is only actuality, the force of existence, which bursts the fluidity of the general and produces a discrete unit. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 13.1 | |
| A reaction: [Papers 4 1967:147] This was quoted by Prior, and is often cited. Recanati is interested in the notion of a singular thought being tied to actuality, by generating a mental file. |
| 7688 | The actual world is a maximally consistent combination of actual states of affairs [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The actual world can be defined as a maximally consistent combination of actual states of affairs, or maximally consistent states-of-affairs combination. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A key part of Jacquette's program of deriving ontological results from the foundations of logic. Is the counterfactual situation of my pen being three centimetres to the left of its current position a "less consistent" situation than the actual one? |
| 7695 | Do proposition-structures not associated with the actual world deserve to be called worlds? [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Many modal logicians in their philosophical moments have raised doubts about whether structures of propositions not associated with the actual world deserved to be called worlds at all. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A good question. Consistency is obviously required, but we also need a lot of propositions before we would consider it a 'world'. Very remote but consistent worlds quickly become unimaginable. Does that matter? |
| 7694 | We must experience the 'actual' world, which is defined by maximally consistent propositions [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Conventional modal semantics, in which all logically possible worlds are defined in terms of maximally consistent proposition sets, has no choice except to allow that the actual world is the world we experience in sensation, or that we inhabit. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Jacquette dislikes this because he is seeking an account of ontology that doesn't, as so often, merely reduce to epistemology (e.g. Berkeley). See Idea 7691 for his preferred account. |
| 5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
| 19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4 | |
| A reaction: [I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from] |
| 11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
| 3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
| 12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
| 7706 | If qualia supervene on intentional states, then intentional states are explanatorily fundamental [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: If qualia supervene on intentional states, then intentionality is also more explanatorily fundamental than qualia. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 7272 for opposite view. Maybe intentional states are large mental objects of which we are introspectively aware, but which are actually composed of innumerable fine-grained qualia. Intentional states would only explain qualia if they caused them. |
| 7704 | Reduction of intentionality involving nonexistent objects is impossible, as reduction must be to what is actual [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: If intentionality sometimes involves a relation to nonexistent objects, like my dreamed-of visit to a Greek island, then such thoughts cannot be explained physically or causally, because only actual physical entities and events can be mentioned. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: Unimpressive. Thoughts of a Greek island will obviously reduce to memories of islands and Greece and travel brochures. Memory clearly retains past events in the present, and hence past events can be part of the material used in reductive accounts. |
| 23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
| 7702 | The extreme views on propositions are Frege's Platonism and Quine's extreme nominalism [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The extreme ontological alternatives with respect to the metaphysics of propositions are a Fregean Platonism (his "gedanken", 'thoughts'), and a radical nominalism or inscriptionalism, as in Quine, where they are just marks related to stimuli. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would want something between the two - that propositions are brain events of a highly abstract kind. I say that introspection reveals pre-linguistic thoughts, which are propositions. A proposition is an intentional state. |
| 11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
| 6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
| A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |