61 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. |
14888 | Wisdom prevents us from being ruled by the moment [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The most important thing about wisdom is that it prevents human beings from being ruled by the moment. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [25]) |
14863 | Unlike science, true wisdom involves good taste [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Inherent in wisdom [sophia] is discrimination, the possession of good taste: whereas science, lacking such a refined sense of taste, gobbles up anything that is worth knowing. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [086]) | |
A reaction: This is blatantly unfair to science, which may lack 'taste', but at least prefers deep theories with wide-ranging explanatory power to narrow local theories. Maybe the line across the philosophical community is the one picking out those with taste? |
14890 | Suffering is the meaning of existence [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Suffering is the meaning of existence. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 32 [67]) | |
A reaction: This doesn't mean that he is advocating suffering. The context of his remark is that the pursuit of truth involves suffering. |
14861 | Philosophy ennobles the world, by producing an artistic conception of our knowledge [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is indispensable for education because it draws knowledge into an artistic conception of the world, and thereby ennobles it. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [052]) | |
A reaction: I take this to be an unusual way of saying that philosophy aims at the unification of knowledge, which is roughly my own view. It has hard for us to keep believing that life could be 'ennobled'. |
14885 | The first aim of a philosopher is a life, not some works [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The philosopher's product is his life (first, before his works). It is his work of art. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [205]) |
14887 | You should only develop a philosophy if you are willing to live by it [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: One should have a philosophy only to the extent that one is capable of living according to this philosophy: so that everything does not become mere words. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [17]) |
14889 | Philosophy is pointless if it does not advocate, and live, a new way of life [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: As long as philosophers do not muster the courage to advocate a lifestyle structured in an entirely different way and demonstrate it by their own example, they will come to nothing. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 31 [10]) | |
A reaction: This is a pretty tough requirement for the leading logicians and metaphysicians of our day, but they must face their marginality. The public will only be interested in philosophers who advocate new ways of living. |
14862 | Philosophy is more valuable than much of science, because of its beauty [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The reason why unprovable philosophizing still has some value - more value, in fact, than many a scientific proposition - lies in the aesthetic value of such philosophizing, that is, in its beauty and sublimity. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [076]) | |
A reaction: I am increasingly inclined to agree. I love wide-ranging and ambitious works of metaphysics, each of which is a unique creation of the human intellect (and with which no other individual will ever entirely agree). A great short paper is also beautiful. |
14878 | It would better if there was no thought [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It would be better if thought did not exist at all. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [004]) |
14881 | Why do people want philosophers? [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Why do human beings even want philosophers? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [019]) | |
A reaction: It is not clear, of course, that they do want philosophers. The standard attitude to them seems to be a mixture of contempt and fear. |
14876 | Philosophy is always secondary, because it cannot support a popular culture [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It is not possible to base a popular culture on philosophy. Thus, with regard to culture, philosophy never can have primary, but always only secondary, significance. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 23 [14]) | |
A reaction: It is the brilliance of Christianity as a set of ideas that it is simple enough to found a popular culture. A complex theology would make that impossible. Luther brought it back to its roots, when the priesthood lost touch with the people. |
14860 | Kant has undermined our belief in metaphysics [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: In a certain sense, Kant's influence was detrimental; for the belief in metaphysics has been lost. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [028]) | |
A reaction: As I understand it, there are two interpretations of Kant, one of which is fairly thoroughly anti-metaphysical, and another which is less so. Also one path leads to idealism and the other doesn't, but I need to research that. |
14859 | If philosophy controls science, then it has to determine its scope, and its value [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The philosophy that is in control of science must also consider the extent to which science should be allowed to develop; it must determine its value! | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [024]) |
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? |
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. |
14880 | Logic is just slavery to language [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Logic is merely slavery in the fetters of language. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [008]) | |
A reaction: I don't think I agree with this, but I still like it. |
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. |
14869 | If some sort of experience is at the root of matter, then human knowledge is close to its essence [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: If pleasure, displeasure, sensation, memory, reflex movements are all part of the essence of matter, then human knowledge penetrates far more deeply into the essence of things. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [161]) | |
A reaction: I don't think Nietzsche is thinking of monads at this point, but his idea certainly applies to them. Leibniz rested his whole theory on the close analogy between how minds work and how matter must also work. |
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. |
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. |
14875 | Belief matters more than knowledge, and only begins when knowledge ceases [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The human being starts to believe when he ceases to know. …Knowledge is not as important for the welfare of human beings as is belief. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 21 [13]) | |
A reaction: The first idea is now associated with Williamson (and Hossack). The second is something like the pragmatic view of belief espoused by Ramsey. |
14866 | It always remains possible that the world just is the way it appears [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Against Kant we can still object, even if we accept all his propositions, that it is still possible that the world is as it appears to us. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [125]) | |
A reaction: This little thought at least seems to be enough to block the slide from phenomenalism into total idealism. The idea that direct realism can never be ruled out, even if it is false, is very striking. |
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). |
14872 | Our knowledge is illogical, because it rests on false identities between things [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Every piece of knowledge that is beneficial to us involves an identification of nonidentical things, of things that are similar, which means that it is essentially illogical. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [236]) | |
A reaction: I take the thought to be that no two tigers are alike, but we call them all 'tigers' and merge them into a type, and then all our knowledge is based on this distortion. A wonderful idea. I love particulars You should love particulars. |
14879 | The most extreme scepticism is when you even give up logic [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Even skepticism contains a belief: the belief in logic. The most extreme position is hence the abandoning of logic. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [008]) | |
A reaction: Some might say that flirting with non-classical logic (as in Graham Priest) is precisely travelling down this road. You could also be sceptical about meaning in language, so you couldn't articulate your abandonment of logic. |
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. |
14873 | If we find a hypothesis that explains many things, we conclude that it explains everything [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The feeling of certainty is the most difficult to develop. Initially one seeks explanation: if a hypothesis explains many things, we draw the conclusion that it explains everything. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [238]) | |
A reaction: As so often, a wonderful warning from Nietzsche to other philosophers. They love to latch onto a Big Idea, and offer it as the answer to everything (especially, dare I say it, continental philosophers). |
14868 | Our primary faculty is perception of structure, as when looking in a mirror [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The primary faculty seems to me to be the perception of structure, that is, based upon the mirror. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [153]) | |
A reaction: The point about the mirror makes this such an intriguingly original idea. Personally I like very much the idea that structure is our prime perception. See Sider 2011 on structure. |
14870 | We experience causation between willing and acting, and thereby explain conjunctions of changes [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The only form of causality of which we are aware is that between willing and acting - we transfer this to all things, and thereby explain the relationship between two changes that always occur together. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [209]) | |
A reaction: This is a rather Humean view, of projecting our experience onto the world, but it may be that we really are experiencing real causation, just as it occurs between insentiate things. |
14867 | It is just madness to think that the mind is supernatural (or even divine!) [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: To view 'spirit', the product of the brain, as supernatural. Even to deify it. What madness! | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [127]) | |
A reaction: When I started philolosophy I was obliged to take mind-body dualism very seriously, but I have finally managed to drag myself to the shores of this lake of madness, where Nietzsche awaited with a helping hand. |
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. |
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. |
22687 | Maybe literary assessment is evaluating the artist as a suitable friend [Gaut] |
Full Idea: An approach in Hume (elaborated by Wayne Booth) holds that literary assessment is akin to an act of befriending, for one assesses the author of a work as a suitable friend. | |
From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Some') | |
A reaction: I like the idea that art exploits our normal range of social emotions and attitudes, so I think this has some truth, but some of the best artists are so out of my league as to not even be candidates for friendship. Dostoevsky? Webster? Caravaggio? |
22686 | Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity [Gaut] |
Full Idea: The formal objects which individuate the aesthetic attitude may be narrowly aesthetic, as beauty, and its subspecies, such as grace and elegance, or more broadly by other formalist criteria, such as Beardley's unity, complexity and intensity. | |
From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Objections 1') | |
A reaction: I'm not sure about unity or complexity, but intensity was endorsed by Henry James. Intensity doesn't sound very 'formal'. 'Beauty' doesn't seem the right word for the wonderful 'King Lear', or even for Jane Austen novels. |
22690 | 'Moralism' says all aesthetic merits are moral merits [Gaut] |
Full Idea: The view that the only aesthetic merit of works are ethical ones is known as 'moralism'. | |
From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], n 1) | |
A reaction: [He says this view was demolished by R.W.Beardsmore in 1971] Gaut contrasts this with his own carefully modulated 'ethicism'. Moralism predominated in the eighteenth century, but now looks clearly wrong (or naïve). |
22684 | Good ethics counts towards aesthetic merit, and bad ethics counts against it [Gaut] |
Full Idea: I defend 'ethicism', which says that ethically admirable attitudes count toward the the aesthetic merit of a work, and ethically reprehensible attitudes count against its aesthetic merit. | |
From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
A reaction: He recognises that morally admirable works can explore unethical behaviour, and also that identifying the 'attitude' of a work is not simple. The ethics are not necessary. 'Triumph of the Will' is a classic test case. I disagree with Gaut. |
22689 | If we don't respond ethically in the way a work prescribes, that is an aesthetic failure [Gaut] |
Full Idea: Our having reason not to respond in the way prescribed (because it is unethical) is a failure of the work …so that is an aesthetic failure, which is an aesthetic defect. | |
From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Merited') | |
A reaction: A key argument for Gaut's theory of 'ethicism' about literature. If 'Triumph of the Will' gets the right response from Nazi sympathisers, that is probably all aesthetic success. Jane Austen hasn't failed if she is rejected as bourgeois. |
22685 | Good art does not necessarily improve people (any more than good advice does) [Gaut] |
Full Idea: Ethicism does not entail the causal thesis that good art ethically improves people, …any more than it follows that earnest ethical advice improves people. | |
From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
A reaction: How successful were sermons, in the great days of Christianity? It seems hard to disagree with Gaut's point. |
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! |
14884 | The shortest path to happiness is forgetfulness, the path of animals (but of little value) [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: If happiness were the goal, then animals would be the highest creatures. Their cynicism is grounded in forgetfulness: that is the shortest path to happiness, even if it is a happiness with little value. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [143]) | |
A reaction: I would be reluctant to describe an apparently contented cow as 'happy'. Is a comatose person happy? Maybe happiness is fulfilling one's nature, like a monkey swinging through trees? |
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. |
14886 | Education is contrary to human nature [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Education runs contrary to the nature of a human being. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [06]) | |
A reaction: Tell me about it! |
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 |
14883 | We should evaluate the past morally [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: For the past I desire above all a moral evaluation. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [096]) | |
A reaction: There is a bit of a contradiction with Idea 14819, of only a few years later. He was always interested in a historical approach to morality, but I'm not sure if his ethics gives a decent basis for moral assessments of remote historical eras. |
14882 | Protest against vivisection - living things should not become objects of scientific investigation [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Protest against vivisection of living things, that is, those things that are not yet dead should be allowed to live and not immediately be treated as an object for scientific investigation. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [027]) | |
A reaction: Wow. How many other people had come up with this idea in 1873? |
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. |
14865 | We do not know the nature of one single causality [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: We do not know the nature of one single causality. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [121]) |
14871 | Laws of nature are merely complex networks of relations [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: All laws of nature are only relations between x, y and z. We define laws of nature as relations to an x, y, and z, each of which in turn, is known to us only in relation to other x's, y's and z's. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [235]) | |
A reaction: This could be interpreted in Armstrong's terms, as only identifying the x's, y's and z's by their universals, and then seeing laws as how those universal relate. I suspect, though, that Nietzsche has a Humean regularity pattern in mind. |
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). |
14864 | The Greeks lack a normative theology: each person has their own poetic view of things [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The Greeks lack a normative theology: everyone has the right to deal with it in a poetic manner and he can believe whatever he wants. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [110]) | |
A reaction: There is quite a lot of record of harshness towards atheists, and the trial of Socrates seems to have been partly over theology. However, no proper theological texts have come down, or records of the teachings of the priests. |