148 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. |
| 2136 | Philosophers become as divine and orderly as possible, by studying divinity and order [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Because a philosopher's links are with a realm which is divine and orderly, he becomes as divine and orderly as is humanly possible. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 500d) | |
| A reaction: Can you be too orderly? Without order nothing of any interest (to gods or men) could ever happen. |
| 23767 | The winds of the discussion should decide its destination [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We must let our destination be decided by the winds of the discussion. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 394d) | |
| A reaction: Always loved that one. Had it on the wall of my teaching room. I take it that the aim is to follow reason, rather than the powerful rhetoric of some member of the group. The spirit of philosophy is to avoid prejudgement of your enquiry. |
| 23682 | It would be absurd to be precise about the small things, but only vague about the big things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be absurd to devote all our energies to securing the greatest possible precision and clarity in matters of little consequence, and not to demand the highest precision in the most important things of all. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 504e) | |
| A reaction: I offer this to modern analytic philosophers, who often strike me as having this priority the wrong way round. Their defence, of course, is that the important things depend on the things of little consequence - but they can lose the plot with big things. |
| 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 |
| 2151 | Dialectic is the only method of inquiry which uproots the things which it takes for granted [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic is the only field of inquiry whose quest for certainty causes it to uproot the things it takes for granted in the course of its journey. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 533c) |
| 2154 | The ability to take an overview is the distinguishing mark of a dialectician [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The ability to take an overview is the distinguishing mark of a dialectician. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 537c) |
| 4011 | For Plato, rationality is a vision of and love of a cosmic rational order [Plato, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: In Plato's theory, to be rational is to have a vision of rational order, and to love this order. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 537d) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §4.1 | |
| A reaction: There may be a worrying elitism in this, but it helps to pinpoint the sense in which 'all philosophers are Platonists'. |
| 2093 | You must never go against what you actually believe [Plato] |
| Full Idea: You must never go against what you actually believe. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 350e) |
| 2130 | People often merely practice eristic instead of dialectic, because they don't analyse the subject-matter [Plato] |
| Full Idea: People often think they are practising dialectic when they are practising eristic; this is because of their inability to conduct the enquiry by dividing the subject-matter into its various aspects. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 454a) |
| 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? |
| 8187 | Frege was strongly in favour of taking truth to attach to propositions [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege was strongly in favour of taking truth to attach to propositions, which he called 'thoughts' and regarded as being expressed by sentences. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Truth and the Past 1 | |
| A reaction: Sometimes it is necessary to know the time, the place, and the speaker before one can evaluate the truth of a proposition. Not just indexical words, but the indexical aspect of, say, "the team played badly". |
| 2145 | In mathematics certain things have to be accepted without further explanation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The practitioners of maths take certain things as basic, and feel no further need to explain them. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 510c) |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 18772 | We can treat designation by a few words as a proper name [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The designation of a single object can also consist of several words or other signs. For brevity, let every such designation be called a proper name. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 1 | |
| A reaction: Frege regards names and descriptions as in the same class. Russell, and then Kripke, had things to say about that. |
| 14075 | Proper name in modal contexts refer obliquely, to their usual sense [Frege, by Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: According to Frege, a proper name in a modal context refers obliquely; its reference there is its usual sense. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Allan Gibbard - Contingent Identity V | |
| A reaction: [he cites the fourth page of Frege's 'Sense and Reference'] One can foresee problems with the word 'usual' here. Frege might be offering something better than Kripke does here. |
| 10424 | A Fregean proper name has a sense determining an object, instead of a concept [Frege, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: We could think of a referring expression in Fregean terms as what he calls a proper name (Eigenname): its Sinn (sense) is supposed to determine an object as opposed to a concept as its Bedeutung (referent). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.1 | |
| A reaction: The problem would be that the same expression could precisely indicate an object on one occasion, nearly do so on another, and totally fail on a third. |
| 18773 | People may have different senses for 'Aristotle', like 'pupil of Plato' or 'teacher of Alexander' [Frege] |
| Full Idea: In the case of an actual proper name such as 'Aristotle' opinions as to the sense may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], note), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 1 | |
| A reaction: This note is 'notorious', and was a central target for Kripke's critique. Frege says people's senses may vary on this, and thinks the sense of 'Aristotle' can be accurately expressed. |
| 4978 | The meaning of a proper name is the designated object [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a proper name is the object itself which we designate by using it. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.30) | |
| A reaction: I can't actually make sense of this. How can a physical object be identical with a meaning? What sort of thing is a 'meaning'? Meanings are just 'in the head', I suspect. |
| 10510 | Frege ascribes reference to incomplete expressions, as well as to singular terms [Frege, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: Frege ascribes reference not only to singular terms, but equally to expressions of other kinds (the various kinds of incomplete expressions). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects Ch.3 Intro | |
| A reaction: The incomplete expressions presumably make reference to concepts. Frege may not seem, therefore, to have a notion of reference as what plugs language into reality - except that he is presumably a platonist about concepts. |
| 18937 | If sentences have a 'sense', empty name sentences can be understood that way [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory of 'sense' showed how sentences with empty names can have meaning and be understood. One just has to grasp the sense of the sentence (the thought expressed), and this is available even in the absence of a referent for the name. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 2 | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is that this provides a promising solution to the empty names problem, which certainly never bothered me before I started reading philosophy. Sawyer says co-reference and truth problems remain. |
| 18940 | It is a weakness of natural languages to contain non-denoting names [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Languages have the fault of containing expressions which fail to designate an object. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.40) | |
| A reaction: Wrong, Frege! This is a strength of natural languages! Names are tools. It isn't a failure of your hammer if you can't find any nails. |
| 18939 | In a logically perfect language every well-formed proper name designates an object [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A logically perfect language should satisfy the conditions that every expression grammatically well constructed as a proper name out of signs already introduced shall in fact designate an object. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.41) | |
| A reaction: This seems to cramp your powers of reasoning, if you must know the object to use the name ('Jack the Ripper'), and reasoning halts once you deny the object's existence ('Pegasus'), or you don't know if names co-refer ('Hesperus/Phosphorus'). |
| 9462 | Frege is intensionalist about reference, as it is determined by sense; identity of objects comes first [Frege, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Intensionalism of reference is owing to Frege (in his otherwise extensionalist philosophy of language). Sense determines reference, so intension determines extension. An object must first satisfy identity requirements, and is thus in a set. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Dale Jacquette - Intro to 'Philosophy of Logic' §4 | |
| A reaction: The notion that identity of objects comes first sounds right - you can't just take objects as basic - they have to be individuated in order to be discussed. |
| 18936 | Frege moved from extensional to intensional semantics when he added the idea of 'sense' [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Frege moved from an extensional semantic theory (that countenances only linguistic expressions and their referents) to an intensional theory that invokes in addition a notion of sense. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 2 | |
| A reaction: This was because of Frege's famous 'puzzles', such as the morning/evening star. Quine loudly proclaimed himself an 'extensionalist', implying that he had extensional solutions for Frege's Puzzles. |
| 8726 | Geometry can lead the mind upwards to truth and philosophy [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Geometry can attract the mind towards truth. It can produce philosophical thought, in the sense that it can reverse the midguided downwards tendencies we currently have. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 527b) | |
| A reaction: Hence the Academy gate bore the inscription "Let no one enter here who is ignorant of geometry". He's not necessarily wrong. Something in early education must straighten out some of the kinks in the messy human mind. |
| 9863 | We aim for elevated discussion of pure numbers, not attaching them to physical objects [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Our discussion of numbers leads the soul forcibly upward and compels it to discuss the numbers themselves, never permitting anyone to propose for discussion numbers attached to visible or tangible bodies. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525d) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as very important, because it shows that the platonist view of numbers places little or no importance on counting, inviting the question of whether they could be understood in complete ignorance of the process of counting. |
| 9864 | In pure numbers, all ones are equal, with no internal parts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: With those numbers that can be grasped only in thought, ..each one is equal to every other, without the least difference and containing no internal parts. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 526a) | |
| A reaction: [Two voices in the conversation are elided] Intriguing and tantalising. Does 13 have internal parts, in the platonist view? If so, is it more than the sum of its parts? Is Plato committed to numbers being built from indistinguishable abstract units/ |
| 8727 | Geometry is not an activity, but the study of unchanging knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Geometers talk as if they were actually doing something, and the point of their theorems is to have some effect (like 'squaring'). ...But the sole purpose is knowledge, of things which exist forever, not coming into existence and passing away. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 527a) | |
| A reaction: Modern Constructivism defends the view which Plato is attacking. The existence of real infinities can be doubted simply because we have not got enough time to construct them. |
| 9861 | The same thing is both one and an unlimited number at the same time [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We see the same thing to be both one and an unlimited number at the same time. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525a) | |
| A reaction: Frege makes the same point, that a pair of boots is both two and one. The point is at its strongest in opposition to empirical accounts of arithmetic. However, Mill observes that pebbles can be both 5 and 3+2, without contradiction. |
| 9862 | To become rational, philosophers must rise from becoming into being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers must rise up out of becoming and grasp being, if they are ever to become rational. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525b) | |
| A reaction: I am never quite sure what 'being' means in such contexts, and it seems suffused with mysticism. In Plato's case, it is obviously related to what is unchanging, but why would something lack 'being', just because it underwent change? |
| 21818 | Being depends on the Good, which is not itself being, but superior to being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good is not being, but superior to it in rank and power. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 509b) | |
| A reaction: I was surprised to find that in Plotinus the One is not being, because it is the source of being, and thus superior to being. Then a footnote sent me here, and I realise that Plato thought that the Form of the Good is superior to Being. |
| 2061 | The best things (gods, healthy bodies, good souls) are least liable to change [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The best things (such as a god, a healthy body, or a good soul) are least liable to alteration or change. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 380e) |
| 6562 | Plato's reality has unchanging Parmenidean forms, and Heraclitean flux [Plato, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, the intelligible world - the world of eternal and unchanging forms - is Parmenidean; the world of appearances - the world of flux we inhabit - is Heraclitean. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Parmenides said reality is 'One'; Heraclitus said reality is 'flux'. This is a nice summary of Plato's view, and encapsulates two key influences on Plato, though the mathematical reality of Pythagoras should also be mentioned on the 'forms' side. |
| 10533 | We can't get a semantics from nouns and predicates referring to the same thing [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege is denying that on a traditional basis we can construct a workable semantics for a language; we can't regard terms like 'wisdom' as standing for the very same thing as the predicate 'x is wise' stands for. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: This follows from Idea 10532, indicating how to deal with the problem of universals. So predicates refer to concepts, and singular terms to objects. But I see no authoritative way of deciding which is which, given that paraphrases are possible. |
| 2142 | The plurality of beautiful things must belong to a single class, because they have a single particular character [Plato] |
| Full Idea: All the things we refer to as pluralities (e.g. beautiful things) we also count as belonging to a single class by virtue of the fact that they have a single particular character. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 507b) |
| 2159 | Craftsmen making furniture refer to the form, but no one manufactures the form of furniture [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The manufacture of beds and tables involves the craftsman looking to the form and then making the furniture. The form itself is not manufactured by anyone. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 596b) |
| 5094 | Plato's Forms are said to have no location in space [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato claims that the Forms are not beyond the heavens, because they are not anywhere. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 203a09 | |
| A reaction: This is an important corrective to caricature accounts of Plato's Forms (encouraged, I'm afraid, by 'Phaedrus'), when critics talk about 'Platonic Heaven'. Forms are not part of space-time. I like the view that they are hypothetical truths. |
| 12043 | Forms are not universals, as they don't cover every general term [Plato, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: Despite a widely misinterpreted passage in the Republic, Plato does not think that there is a Form for every general term; Forms are not what came to be called universals. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Hm. This is a bit of a blow to someone who has catalogued Platonic Forms under 'Universals'. See also Idea 12042, for what Annas thinks Plato may really have had in mind. |
| 17 | A Form applies to a set of particular things with the same name [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We always postulate a single form for each set of particular things, to which we apply the same name. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 596a) | |
| A reaction: This implies that the Forms have a great deal in common with the things, but also hints at the possibility of the Form being quite different from the particular things. |
| 12122 | Plato mistakenly thought forms were totally abstracted away from matter [Bacon on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato lost the real fruit of his opinion, by considering forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Francis Bacon - The Advancement of Learning II.VII.5 | |
| A reaction: This thought is roughly what got me interested in abstraction, on which you will find many ideas in this database. Research into Bacon's thought is hampered by that fact that the logicians have hijacked abstraction in recent philosophy. |
| 5574 | Plato's Forms not only do not come from the senses, but they are beyond possibility of sensing [Plato, by Kant] |
| Full Idea: In Plato's use of the expression 'idea' we can see that he understood by it something that not only could never be borrowed from the senses, but even goes beyond the concepts of the understanding, since nothing in experience could be congruent to it. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason B370 | |
| A reaction: This is why Kant is not a Platonist - because he thinks the limits of our world are the limits of our capacity for possible experience, and Platonic Forms exceed that limit. Personally I am with Plato. I'll never experience a quark either. |
| 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. |
| 4893 | Frege was asking how identities could be informative [Frege, by Perry] |
| Full Idea: A problem which Frege called to our attention is: how can identities be informative? | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §5.2 | |
| A reaction: E.g. (in Russell's example) how is "Scott is the author of 'Waverley'" more informative than "Scott is Scott"? A simple answer might just be that informative identities also tell you of a thing's properties. "The red ball is the heavy ball". |
| 2133 | Knowledge must be of the permanent unchanging nature of things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who can see each thing in itself, in its permanent and unvarying nature, we'll say they have knowledge and are not merely entertaining beliefs. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 479e) |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 2162 | If theory and practice conflict, the best part of the mind accepts theory, so the other part is of lower grade [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When appearance and measure conflict…it is the best part of the mind which accepts measurements and calculations, and the part which opposes them, therefore, must be a low-grade part of the mind. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 603a) |
| 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). |
| 2140 | True belief without knowledge is like blind people on the right road [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Don't people who have a correct belief but no knowledge strike you as exactly like blind people who happen to be taking the right road? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 506c) | |
| A reaction: Good. I love the style of this. Most philosophical points can be made in one concise sentence, and it is only the industry of journals and academe that forces points to be extended so much. |
| 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. |
| 2096 | Is the function of the mind management, authority and planning - or is it one's whole way of life? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Does the mind have a function - say, management, authority and planning? And isn't one's way of life a function of the mind? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353d) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is Plato, not some Darwinian materialist. This strikes me as the correct starting point - what does a mind appear to be for (with or without the help of Darwin)? Plato's proposals seem good (though we could cut 'authority'). |
| 6009 | Psychic conflict is clear if appetite is close to the body and reason fairly separate [Plato, by Modrak] |
| Full Idea: Plato makes psychic conflict intelligible by appeal to a conception of the soul such that the soul is closely connected to the body at the level of appetite and relatively separate from the body at the level of reason. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 339b) by Deborah K.W. Modrak - Classical theories of Mind | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about this at the level of biology or ontology, but at the phenomenal level this is obviously right. Hunger makes consciousness feel like a physical event, but doing arithmetic doesn't seem remotely physical. |
| 6041 | There is a third element to the mind - spirit - lying between reason and appetite [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is the third element of the mind a form of reason, so that there are only two elements to it, reason and appetite? There must be a third element, if spirit ('thumos') can be shown to be distinct - and you can see it in children when they are born. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 441a) | |
| A reaction: This is Plato's famous tripartite doctrine of the soul, though in other dialogues he says that there is only reason and appetite. The suspicion is that he fixed the soul having three parts, to match the three parts of his republic's social structure. |
| 2127 | The mind has parts, because we have inner conflicts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If someone is thirsty but something is making the mind resist the pull of its thirst, isn't this bound to be a different part of the mind from the thirsty part? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) | |
| A reaction: For Descartes there is one mind pulled by appetite and the 'natural light'. For Hume they don't seem to be 'parts' of anything. For Fodor there is an integrated team of modules. I like Fodor, and good integration is virtue. |
| 1737 | The soul seems to have an infinity of parts [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: There seem in a way to be an infinity of parts of the soul, and not only those that some have given, distinguishing the reasoning, spirited and desiderative parts, or with others the rational and irrational. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) by Aristotle - De Anima 432a25 | |
| A reaction: This seems a nice response to Plato's proposal that the psuché has two or three parts. He could have said that the soul was a unity, and has no parts, but the proposal of infinite parts seems much closer to the modern neurological view of the mind. |
| 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. |
| 18752 | 'The concept "horse"' denotes a concept, yet seems also to denote an object [Frege, by McGee] |
| Full Idea: The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can be the subject of a sentence, and ought to denote an object. But it clearly denotes the concept "horse". Yet Fregean concepts are said to be 'incomplete' objects, which led to confusion. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Vann McGee - Logical Consequence 4 | |
| A reaction: This is the notorious 'concept "horse"' problem, which was bad news for Frege's idea of a concept. |
| 22318 | Frege failed to show when two sets of truth-conditions are equivalent [Frege, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Frege's account suffered from a lack of precision about when two sets of truth-conditions should count as equivalent. (Wittgenstein aimed to rectify this defect). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 50 Intro |
| 4980 | The meaning (reference) of a sentence is its truth value - the circumstance of it being true or false [Frege] |
| Full Idea: We are driven into accepting the truth-value of a sentence as constituting what it means (refers to). By the truth-value I understand the circumstance that it is true or false. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Sounds bizarre, but Black's translation doesn't help. The notion of what the whole sentence refers to (rather than its sense) is a very theoretical notion. 'All true sentences refer to the truth' sounds harmless enough. |
| 9180 | Holism says all language use is also a change in the rules of language [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege thought of a language as a game played with fixed rules, there being all the difference in the world between a move in the game and an alteration of the rules; but, if holism is correct, every move in the game changes the rules. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege's Distinction of Sense and Reference p.248 | |
| A reaction: Rules do shift over time, so there must be some mechanism for that - the rules can't sit in sacrosanct isolation. People play games with the language itself, as well as using it to play other games. |
| 4981 | The reference of a word should be understood as part of the reference of the sentence [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I have transferred the relation between the parts and the whole of the sentence to its reference, by calling the reference of the word part of the reference of the sentence, if the word itself is part of the sentence. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Since Frege says the reference of a true sentence is simply to truth, words have reference insofar as they make contributions to attempts at stating truths. |
| 15597 | Frege's Puzzle: from different semantics we infer different reference for two names with the same reference [Frege, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Frege's Puzzle: If two sentences convey different information, they have different semantic roles, so the names 'Cicero' and 'Tully' are semantically different, in which case they are referentially different - but they are not referentially different. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Kit Fine - Semantic Relationism 2.A | |
| A reaction: [this is my summary of Fine's summary] Given the paradox, the question is which of these premisses should be challenged. Fregeans reject their being referentially different. Referentialists reject the different semantic roles. |
| 17002 | Frege's 'sense' is ambiguous, between the meaning of a designator, and how it fixes reference [Kripke on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege should be criticised for using the term 'sense' in two senses. He takes the sense of a designator to be its meaning; and he also takes it to be the way its reference is determined. …They correspond to two ordinary uses of 'definition'. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: Stalnaker quotes this, but seems unconvinced that Frege is guilty. If the 'meaning' largely consists of a way of determining a reference, Frege would be in the clear. |
| 18778 | Every descriptive name has a sense, but may not have a reference [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It may perhaps be granted that every grammatically well-formed expression representing a proper name always has a sense. But this is not to say that to this sense there also corresponds a reference. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 3.1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this concerns fictional names such as 'Pegasus'. It seems to be good simple evidence for the distinction between sense and reference. |
| 7805 | Frege started as anti-realist, but the sense/reference distinction led him to realism [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: In the Grundlagen of 1884 Frege was an anti-realist, but in Grundgesetze of 1893 he is a realist, who has profited by his interim discovery of the sense/reference distinction. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by José A. Benardete - Logic and Ontology | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of the new realist philosophy which seems to be growing out of Kripke and co's causal theory of reference. The very notion of reference is realist (hence Russell's realism). |
| 4976 | The meaning (reference) of 'evening star' is the same as that of 'morning star', but not the sense [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The meaning (reference) of 'evening star' is the same as that of 'morning star', but not the sense. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.27) | |
| A reaction: Max Black translates 'bedeutung' as 'meaning', but nowadays everyone calls it 'reference'. This is Frege's crucial distinction, which greatly clarified analytical philosophy. Nevertheless, is it a sharp distinction? E.g. referring to a fictional name? |
| 4977 | In maths, there are phrases with a clear sense, but no actual reference [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The expression 'the least rapidly convergent series' has a sense but demonstrably there is no reference, since a less rapidly convergent series (for any given series) can always be found. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.28) | |
| A reaction: A nice example. 'The second Kennedy assassin' has a clear meaning, but does it have a reference? The meaning 'points at' a possible reference. We yet discover an identity. |
| 4979 | We are driven from sense to reference by our desire for truth [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The striving for truth drives us always to advance from the sense to the thing meant (the reference). | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.33) | |
| A reaction: As in, we want to know the reference of 'the person who shot Kennedy'. I always perk up if truth is mentioned in a discussion of language, because it reminds us of the point of the whole thing. In 'Is he the best man?' I have the reference, not the truth. |
| 15155 | Expressions always give ways of thinking of referents, rather than the referents themselves [Frege, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, expressions always contribute ways of thinking of their referents, rather than the referents themselves, to the thoughts expressed by sentences. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Scott Soames - Philosophy of Language 1.16 | |
| A reaction: I have some sympathy for Frege. It always strikes me as daft to think that if I say 'my dustbin is empty', the dustbin becomes 'part' of my sentence. Sentences don't contain large plastic objects. |
| 11126 | 'Sense' gives meaning to non-referring names, and to two expressions for one referent [Frege, by Margolis/Laurence] |
| Full Idea: Frege notes that an expression without a referent ('Pegasus') needn't lack a meaning, since it still has a sense, and the same referent (Eric Blair) can be associated with different expressions (George Orwell) because they convey different senses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by E Margolis/S Laurence - Concepts 1.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice neat summary of the value of Frege's introduction of the sense/reference distinction, which seems to me to be virtually undeniable (a rare event in modern philosophy). |
| 8164 | Frege was the first to construct a plausible theory of meaning [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege was the first to construct a plausible theory of meaning, that is, a theory of how a human language functions. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Frege had an advantage because he was the first to distinguish sense from reference, and hence to identify the subject-matter of the theory. Essentially Frege's theory is that of truth-conditions. |
| 9817 | Earlier Frege focuses on content itself; later he became interested in understanding content [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Earlier Frege was interested solely in the content of our statements, not in our grasp of that content. His notion of 'sense' from 1891 onwards, has to do with understanding; the sense of an expression is something we grasp. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: The important point must be that the later theory depends on the earlier, so we can hardly give theories of understanding, if we don't have a view about what it is that is understood. |
| 8171 | Frege divided the meaning of a sentence into sense, force and tone [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege distinguished three components of the meaning of a sentence: sense, force and tone; he used no single term for 'linguistic meaning' in general. ...The sense is only what bears on the truth or falsity of what the sentence expresses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 3 | |
| A reaction: Modern theories of meaning seem to assume that there is one item called 'meaning' which needs to be explained, but presumably this is 'strict and literal meaning', leaving the rest to pragmatics. |
| 4954 | Frege uses 'sense' to mean both a designator's meaning, and the way its reference is determined [Kripke on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege should be criticised for using the term 'sense' in two senses. For he takes the sense of a designator to be its meaning; and he also takes it to be the way its reference is determined. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: This criticism doesn't surprise me, as heroic pioneers like Frege seem to have been extremely unclear about what they were claiming. Kripke has helped, but we still need some great mind to step in and sort out the mess. |
| 7304 | Frege explained meaning as sense, semantic value, reference, force and tone [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Frege analysed the intuitive notion of meaning in terms of the notions of sense, semantic value, reference, force and tone. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], Pref) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language Pref | |
| A reaction: This suggests that there are two approaches to the explanation of meaning: either a simple identity with some other mental fact, or an analysis (as here) into a range of components. I remain open-minded on that. |
| 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. |
| 5945 | The 'Republic' is a great work of rhetorical theory [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The 'Republic' is the greatest single achievement of ancient rhetorical theory. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: A lovely inversion of our normal reading of Plato! Is the real aim of philosophy the making of good speeches? Is the great aim to display the true beauty of the human mind, as the Olympics display the beauty of the body? |
| 23316 | For Plato and Aristotle there is no will; there is only rational desire for what is seen as good [Plato, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Neither Plato nor Aristotle has a notion of the will. …Willing is a form of desire which is specific to reason. If reason perceives something as good, it wills or desires it. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 577e) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 1 | |
| A reaction: [Frede cites 577e, Aris. 413c8, 1113a15-, 1136b6] How do they explain the apparent decisions of non-rational animals? No modern neuroscientist thinks there is a physical object called a person's 'will'. |
| 16 | We avoid evil either through a natural aversion, or because we have acquired knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Unless a man is born with a heaven-sent aversion to wrong-doing, or acquires the knowledge to refrain from it, he will never do right of his own free will. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 366c) | |
| A reaction: This is the territory explored so carefully by Aristotle (after he had read Republic!). It is hard to see what the knowledge could be, other than awareness of consequences. |
| 16565 | Without the surface decoration, poetry shows only appearances and nothing of what is real [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If you strip a poet's works of their musical colorings and take them by themselves, I think you know what they look like. …We say that a maker of an image - an imitator - knows nothing about that which is but only about its appearance. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 601a) | |
| A reaction: Knowing the appearances well is more than most people can manage, and aspirations to know the true reality may be an idle dream. Poets are, I presume, welcome in the Cave. |
| 2160 | Representation is two steps removed from the truth [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The province of representation is indeed two steps removed from the truth. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 602c) |
| 2163 | Artists should be excluded from a law-abiding community, because they destroy the rational mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We are right to refuse admission to artists in any community which is going to respect convention, because he destroys the rational mind and feeds the irrational - it is like destroying good citizens by giving ruffians power. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 605b) |
| 2135 | Truth is closely related to proportion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Truth is closely related to proportion. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 486d) |
| 2141 | I suggest that we forget about trying to define goodness itself for the time being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that we forget about trying to define goodness itself for the time being. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 506e) | |
| A reaction: This was a source of some humour in the ancient world (in the theatre). Goodness is like some distant glow, which can never be approached in order to learn of its source. |
| 1869 | The good cannot be expressed in words, but imprints itself upon the soul [Plato, by Celsus] |
| Full Idea: Plato points to the truth about the highest good when he says that it cannot be expressed in words, but rather comes from familiarity - like a flash from the blue, imprinting itself upon the soul. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Celsus - On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) VII | |
| A reaction: It is reasonable to be drawn to something inexpressible, such as an appealing piece of music, but not good philosophy to build a system around something so obscure. |
| 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! |
| 4115 | Plato found that he could only enforce rational moral justification by creating an authoritarian society [Williams,B on Plato] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, the problem of making the ethical into a force was the problem of making society embody rational justification, and that problem could only have an authoritarian solution. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch. 2 | |
| A reaction: Plato's citizens were largely illiterate. We can be more carrot and less stick. |
| 4547 | Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value [Nietzsche on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 518d) by Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power (notebooks) §572 | |
| A reaction: A most interesting comment. It epitomises the Nietzschean reading of Plato, in which the will to power leads the sense of value, which in turn creates the metaphysics. |
| 2094 | A thing's function is what it alone can do, or what it does better than other things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The function of anything is what it alone can do, or what it can do better than anything else. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353a) | |
| A reaction: I take this concept to be the lynchpin of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Note that it arises earlier, in Plato. Perhaps he should say what it is 'meant to do'. |
| 2095 | If something has a function then it has a state of being good [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Anything which has been endowed with a function also has a state of being good. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353b) | |
| A reaction: 'ought' from 'is'? |
| 2129 | Goodness is mental health, badness is mental sickness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Goodness is a state of mental health, bloom and vitality; badness is a state of mental sickness, deformity and infirmity. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 444e) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the closeness of goodness to health for the Greeks. The key point is that health is a deeply natural concept, which bridges the fact-value divide. |
| 12 | If we were invisible, would the just man become like the unjust? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Glaucon: with a ring of invisibility 'the just man would differ in no way from the unjust'. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 360c) | |
| A reaction: I think a highly altruistic person would behave well with the ring, but I'm sure Glaucon would claim that these habits would wear off after a while. But I doubt that. |
| 2168 | Clever criminals do well at first, but not in the long run [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Clever criminals are exactly like those runners who do well on the way up the track, and then flag on the way back. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 613b) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is some concept of natural justice lurking behind this comparison. Apart from the money, though, it is hard to imagine any professional criminal leading a flourishing life. |
| 2137 | The main aim is to understand goodness, which gives everything its value and advantage [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The most important thing to try to understand is the character of goodness, because this is where anything which is moral (or whatever) gets its value and advantages from. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505a) | |
| A reaction: I think I'm with Aristotle on this. I understand a good lunch or a good person, but pure goodness just seems to be an empty placeholder. A vote in favour. |
| 2139 | Every person, and every activity, aims at the good [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Good is something which everyone is after, and is the goal of all their activities. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505d) | |
| A reaction: An obvious danger of tautology. If a blood crazed army is 'after' a massacre of some sort, that seems to qualify. What proportion is needed for 'everyone'? |
| 2143 | Good has the same role in the world of knowledge as the sun has in the physical world [Plato] |
| Full Idea: As goodness stands in the intelligible realm to intelligence and the things we know, so in the visible realm the sun stands to sight and the things we see. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 508c) | |
| A reaction: The claim seems to be that only goodness makes the world intelligible, but that strikes as closer to mysticism than to objective observation. |
| 2147 | The sight of goodness leads to all that is fine and true and right [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The sight of goodness shows that it is responsible for everything that is right and fine,…and it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge. It is necessary for intelligent conduct of private and public affairs. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 517c) | |
| A reaction: As so often with Plato, I am baffled by such a claim. I sometimes see things in the world which strike me as right or fine, but I cannot conceive of a separate 'sight of goodness'. |
| 4007 | For Plato we abandon honour and pleasure once we see the Good [Plato, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, once we see the Good, we cease to be fascinated by and absorbed in the search for honour and pleasure as we were before. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505d) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §3.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the quasi-religious aspect of the Good - that it is more like a vision than a reason |
| 2144 | Goodness makes truth and knowledge possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is goodness which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 508e) | |
| A reaction: If we take truth to be the hallmark of successful thinking, then I have no idea what this means. I can't see how truth would disappear in an amoral cosmos. |
| 2164 | Bad is always destructive, where good preserves and benefits [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Badness always manifests in destruction and corruption, while goodness always manifests in preservation and benefit. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 608e) | |
| A reaction: Suspicions of tautology in this one. Can we have any concepts of good or bad which are not linked to desirable or undesirable outcomes? |
| 2138 | Pleasure is commonly thought to be the good, though the more ingenious prefer knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The usual view of goodness is that it is pleasure, while there's also a more ingenious view that it is knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505b) | |
| A reaction: Pleasure clearly has an attraction for everyone (even puritans), and is thus a plausible natural candidate. Is this pure or instrumental knowledge? Hard to justify the former. |
| 2070 | Even people who think pleasure is the good admit that there are bad pleasures [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who define good as pleasure are clearly confused, and are compelled to admit that there are bad pleasures, so that the same thing is both good and bad. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505c) | |
| A reaction: The issue is whether the pleasure can be disentangled from the action. 'It was a hideous murder, but at least the murderer enjoyed it'. Sounds wrong to me. |
| 2157 | Nice smells are intensive, have no preceding pain, and no bad after-effect [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Nice smells have no preceding feeling of pain, they are very intense, and they leave no distress when they are over. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 584b) | |
| A reaction: A nice example for extreme puritans to contemplate. Objections to enjoying nice smells seem almost inconceivable. Puritans will, I suppose, say 'slippery slope'. |
| 2134 | Philosophers are concerned with totally non-physical pleasures [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A person concerned with learning is concerned with purely mental pleasure, having nothing to do with pleasures reaching the mind through the body - assuming the person is a genuine philosopher. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 485d) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to find any argument which can demonstrate that mental pleasures are superior to physical ones. Mill notably failed to do it. |
| 2156 | There are three types of pleasure, for reason, for spirit and for appetite [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Each of the three mental categories (reason, spirit, appetite) has its own particular pleasure, so that there are three kinds of pleasure. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 580d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why the types of pleasure are distinguished by mental faculties, rather than by the variety of sources of the pleasure. |
| 2158 | Pleasure-seekers desperately seek illusory satisfaction, like filling a leaky vessel [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure-seekers desperately and violently seek satisfaction in unreal things for a part of themselves which is also unreal - a leaky vessel they're trying to fill. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 586b) | |
| A reaction: Plato dreams of some enduring 'satisfaction' which never fades. He should have attended more to Heraclitus, and less to Parmenides. |
| 2123 | Excessive pleasure deranges people, making the other virtues impossible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Self-discipline and excessive pleasure cannot go together, because pleasure deranges people just as much as distress. Excessive pleasure cannot partner any of the other virtues. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 402e) | |
| A reaction: This invites an examination of the word 'excessive', which seems too subjective. Aristotle says any good is improved by the addition of pleasure. Pleasure can certainly derange people. |
| 2166 | We should behave well even if invisible, for the health of the mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There's nothing better for the mind than morality, and a person ought to behave morally whether or not he owns Gyges' ring. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 612b) |
| 2097 | Isn't it better to have a reputation for goodness than to actually be good? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Unless I gain a reputation for morality, my actually being moral will do me no good, but an immoral person who has managed to get a reputation for morality is said to have a wonderful life. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365b) |
| 19946 | Morality is a compromise, showing restraint, to avoid suffering wrong without compensation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The origin and nature of morality is a compromise between the ideal of doing wrong without paying for it, and the worst situation, which is having wrong done to one while lacking the means of exacting compensation. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 359a) | |
| A reaction: This idea is from Glaucon, and is not endorsed by Socrates. Hobbes thought it was right, though he emphasised safety. Game theory makes this approach to moraliy much more plausible. |
| 5 | Justice is merely the interests of the stronger party [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Thrasymachus: Justice or right is simply what is in the interest of the stronger party. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 338c) | |
| A reaction: Not sure whether this is cynicism about the brutal realities of life, or cynicism about the very concept of justice. |
| 7 | Surely you don't return a borrowed weapon to a mad friend? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If one borrowed a weapon from a friend who subsequently went out of his mind and then asked for it back, surely one ought not to return it? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 331c) | |
| A reaction: Only a Kantian would think of disagreeing with this obvious truth. There is no promise here, but an implicit moral commitment. Such things should always have an all-things-being-equal clause. |
| 8 | Is right just the interests of the powerful? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Thrasymachus: right is the interest of the established government. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 339a) | |
| A reaction: To believe this you would have to believe the powerful control not what is judged to be right, but also the ordinary language which expresses such judgements. Marxism explains that. |
| 15 | Sin first, then sacrifice to the gods from the proceeds [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The thing to do is to sin first and sacrifice afterwards from the proceeds. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365e) | |
| A reaction: A bit like Graham Greene's Catholicism. One Greek view of the gods seems to be that they are quite myopic and naïve. |
| 5944 | For Plato, virtue is its own reward [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The 'Republic' is the first sustained philosophical defence of the idea that virtue is its own reward. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], Ch.9) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment | |
| A reaction: Sceptics might say that at the heart of his claim is the idea that the virtuous life is the best means of achieving long-term pleasure (as opposed to short-sighted hedonism). What is it about people which could make virtue attractive to them? |
| 2155 | True goodness requires mental unity and harmony [Plato] |
| Full Idea: True goodness requires mental unity and harmony. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 554e) |
| 2126 | A good community necessarily has wisdom, courage, self-discipline and morality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A good community has everything which is good, so it necessarily has wisdom, courage, self-discipline and morality. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 427e) |
| 23562 | If the parts of our soul do their correct work, we will be just people, and will act justly [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Each one of us in whom each part is doing its own work will himself be just and do his own. …So it is appropriate for the rational part to rule …and for the spirited part to obey. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 441d) | |
| A reaction: 'Do his own' must mean play his own part in society correctly, because his internal faculties are also correctly focused on their role. So balancing the three parts in persons and society is not just an analogy, but one leads to the other. See 443e. |
| 2092 | Simonides said morality is helping one's friends and harming one's enemies [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Simonides claims that morality is doing good to one's friends and harm to one's enemies. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 332d) |
| 19889 | People need society because the individual has too many needs [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Society originates because the individual is not self-sufficient, but has many needs which he cannot supply himself. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 369b) | |
| A reaction: Notice that Plato has the liberal individualist approach to problem, of starting with isolated individuals, and asking why they need to gang together. This is despite the dependency of children, and the proximity of extended families. |
| 19890 | All exchanges in a community are for mutual benefit [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In the community all mutual exchanges are made on the assumption that the parties to them stand to gain. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 369c) | |
| A reaction: The sole purpose of his society appears to be trading, either of goods or of services. The assumption is that if each individual were self-sufficient there would be no society, which strikes me as unlikely. Aristotle offers a better picture. |
| 10 | After a taste of mutual harm, men make a legal contract to avoid it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Once people experience committing wrong and suffering it, they see the disadvantages are unavoidable and the benefits unobtainable, ...so they enter into a contract, guaranteeing no permitting or receiving wrong, ...and they then make laws and decrees. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 359a) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the earliest statement of the social contract idea. Here it both sets up the state and creates morality. This is Glaucon speaking, and is NOT endorsed by Socrates. |
| 23561 | People doing their jobs properly is the fourth cardinal virtue for a city [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The power that consists in everyone's doing his own work rivals wisdom, moderation, and courage in its contribution to the virtue of the city. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 433d) | |
| A reaction: Making conscientious the fourth cardinal virtue. Well said! My maxim for the modern world is that nearly all human misery consists of either bad health or other people not doing their jobs properly. You know I'm right. |
| 2149 | Reluctant rulers make a better and more unified administration [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The less keen the would-be rulers of a community are to rule, the better and less divided the administration of that community are bound to be. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 520d) |
| 2132 | Only rule by philosophers of integrity can keep a community healthy [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Unless communities have philosophers as kings, or the people who are currently called kings and rulers practise philosophy with enough integrity, there can be no end to political troubles. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 473d) |
| 2131 | Is there anything better for a community than to produce excellent people? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is anything better for a community than for it to engender women and men who are exceptionally good? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 456e) |
| 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. |
| 2148 | To gain knowledge, turn away from the world of change, and focus on true goodness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: To gain knowledge we must turn the mind away from the world of becoming, until it becomes capable of bearing the sight of real being and reality at its most bright, which we are saying is goodness. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 518c) |
| 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 |
| 2152 | Dialectic is the highest and most important part of the curriculum [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic occupies the highest position and forms, as it were, the copestone of the curriculum. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 534e) |
| 2153 | Compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 536e) |
| 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. |
| 2630 | If Plato's God is immaterial, he will lack consciousness, wisdom, pleasure and movement, which are essential to him [Cicero on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato holds God to be without a body, immaterial; but this is an incomprehensible idea. Such a god would inevitably lack any consciousness, any wisdom and any pleasure (…or motion), all of which are bound up in our idea of God. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.30 |
| 14 | If the gods are non-existent or indifferent, why bother to deceive them? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there are no gods or if they care nothing for human affairs, why should we bother to deceive them? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365d) | |
| A reaction: There is incipient deism here, as well as atheism. |
| 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). |
| 2165 | Something is unlikely to be immortal if it is imperfectly made from diverse parts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Something is unlikely to be immortal if it's a compound, formed imperfectly from diverse parts. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 611b) |
| 13 | Is the supreme reward for virtue to be drunk for eternity? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: (the poets think) 'the supreme reward of virtue was to be drunk for eternity'. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 363d) | |
| A reaction: A perceptive thought. Most people consider the best life to contain endless fun and physical pleasure, so a boozy bawdy holiday in the sunshine ticks all the boxes. |
| 2120 | God is responsible for the good things, but we must look elsewhere for the cause of the bad things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: God and God alone must be held responsible for the good things, but responsibility for bad things must be looked for elsewhere, and not attributed to God. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 379c) |