49 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. |
19735 | Wisdom has a higher value than understanding, which has a higher value than knowledge [Greco] |
Full Idea: Intuitively, understanding is more valuable than knowledge and wisdom is more valuable than understanding. | |
From: John Greco (The Value Problem [2011], 'Knowledge') | |
A reaction: Down at the bottom is having an 'inkling' of something, I presume. Not convinced of this. I would rate understanding above knowledge, but wisdom seems rather different. It implies a breadth that does not focus on any particular topic. |
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? |
23853 | Truth is not a object we love - it is the radiant manifestation of reality [Weil] |
Full Idea: Love of truth is not a correct form of expression. Truth is not an object of love. It is not an object at all. …Truth is the radiant manifestation of reality. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: Wow! Love that one! |
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. |
23855 | Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil] |
Full Idea: What is sovereign in this world is determinateness, limit. Eternal Wisdom imprisons this universe in a network, a web of determinations. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growth') | |
A reaction: Love this, because I take 'determination' to be the defining relationship in ontology. It covers both physical causation and abstract necessities. |
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. |
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). |
19734 | If value is practical, knowledge is no better than true opinion [Greco] |
Full Idea: Why should knowledge be more valuable than true opinion, if their practical value is the same? | |
From: John Greco (The Value Problem [2011], Intro) | |
A reaction: We have exam systems and academic titles to bestow social prestige on people who know, not to mention quiz shows. Modern society needs lots of knowledgeable citizens. I'm not sure what intrinsic value knowledge could have. |
19733 | Externalist theories don't explain why knowledge has value [Greco] |
Full Idea: Externalist theories do not give knowledge the sort of value that internalists want knowledge to have. | |
From: John Greco (The Value Problem [2011], Intro) | |
A reaction: [He cites Pritchard 2008] This is not a very strong argument, given the uncertainties and complexities in the idea that we share a 'value'. If the value of knowledge is really instrumental (and loved no less because of that), then externalism could cope. |
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. |
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. |
23848 | The aesthete's treatment of beauty as amusement is sacreligious; beauty should nourish [Weil] |
Full Idea: The aesthete's point of view is sacreligious, not only in matters of religion but even in those of art. It consists in amusing oneself with beauty by handling it and looking at it. Beauty is something to be eaten: it is a food. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Country') | |
A reaction: She is endorsing the 'food' view against the 'handling' view. Beauty should nourish, she says. |
23854 | Beauty is the proof of what is good [Weil] |
Full Idea: When the subject in question is the good, beauty is a rigorous and positive proof. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: Purest platonism! It is incomprehensible to say 'this thing is evil, but it is beautiful'. But there are plenty of things which strike me as beautiful, without connecting that in any way to moral goodness. |
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! |
23837 | Respect is our only obligation, which can only be expressed through deeds, not words [Weil] |
Full Idea: Humans have only one obligation: respect. The obligation is only performed if the respect is effectively expressed in a real, not a fictitious, way; and this can only be done through the medium of Man's earthly needs. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
A reaction: She says man's 'eternal destiny' imposes this obligation. I read this as saying that you should not imagine that you treat people respectfully if you are merely polite to them. Col. Pickering and Eliza Doolittle! Respect is the supreme virtue. |
23844 | The most important human need is to have multiple roots [Weil] |
Full Idea: To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul. …Every human being needs to have multiple roots. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Uprootedness') | |
A reaction: Agree. I think we are just like trees, in that we need roots to grow well, and plenty of space to fully flourish. Identifying those roots is the main task of parents and teachers. |
23838 | The need for order stands above all others, and is understood via the other needs [Weil] |
Full Idea: Order is the first need of all; it evens stands above all needs properly so-called. To be able to conceive it we must know what the other needs are. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Order') | |
A reaction: This may be music to conservative ears, but you should examine Weil's other ideas to see what she has in mind. |
23836 | Obligations only bind individuals, not collectives [Weil] |
Full Idea: Obligations are only binding on human beings. There are no obligations for collectivities, as such. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
A reaction: I take it that 'as such' excludes the institutions created by collectivities, such as parliaments and courts. A nomadic tribe seems to have no duties, as a tribe, apart from mutual obligations among its members. Does this excuse crimes by the tribe? |
23840 | A citizen should be able to understand the whole of society [Weil] |
Full Idea: A man needs to be able to encompass in thought the entire range of activity of the social organism to which he belongs. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Responsibility') | |
A reaction: She is urging the active involvement of citizens in decision making - for which they need appropriate knowledge. |
23843 | Even the poorest should feel collective ownership, and participation in grand display [Weil] |
Full Idea: Participation in collective possessions is important. Where real civic life exists, each feels he has a personal ownership in the public monuments, gardens, ceremonial pomp and circumstances; sumptuousness is thus place within the reach of the poorest. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Collective') | |
A reaction: OK with gardens. Dubious about fobbing the poor off with pomp. Monuments are a modern controversy, when they turn out to commemorate slavery and colonial conquest. I agree with her basic thought. |
23846 | Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil] |
Full Idea: Culture - as we know it - is an instrument manipulated by teachers for manufacturing more teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
A reaction: Lot of truth in this. We tend to view our greatest successes in students who become academics and teachers. Culture is very much seen as something which must be 'transmitted' to each new generation. |
23839 | A lifelong head of society should only be a symbol, not a ruler [Weil] |
Full Idea: Wherever a man is placed for life at the head of a social organism, he ought to be a symbol and not a ruler, as is the case with the King of England. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Obedience') | |
A reaction: Nice to hear a radical French thinker endorsing an ancient British tradition! She may not be endorsing a lifelong head of state. Lifelong rulers are the main agents of totalitarianism. |
23842 | Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil] |
Full Idea: A democracy where public life is made up of strife between political parties is incapable of preventing the formation of a party whose avowed aim is the overthrow of that democracy. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Opinion') | |
A reaction: We have seen this around 2020 in the USA and the UK. Freedom is compulsory? Weil hates political parties (as did Rousseau). |
23847 | Socialism tends to make a proletariat of the whole population [Weil] |
Full Idea: What is called Socialism tends to force everybody without distinction into the proletarian condition. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
A reaction: For example, Weil favours maximising private house ownership, rather than communally owned housing. She is describing wholesale nationalisation. I would incline towards nationalisation only of all basic central services. |
23845 | The capitalists neglect the people and the nation, and even their own interests [Weil] |
Full Idea: The capitalists have betrayed their calling by criminally neglecting not only the interests of the people, not only those of the nation, but even their own. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
A reaction: It is certainly true that the dedicated capitalist has little loyalty either to the people or to the nation. She doesn't spell out their failure of self-interest. I guess it produces a way of life they don't really want, deep down. |
23841 | By making money the sole human measure, inequality has become universal [Weil] |
Full Idea: By making money the sole, or almost the sole, motive of all actions, the sole, or almost the sole, measure of all things, the poison of inequality has been introduced everywhere. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Equality') | |
A reaction: Presumably this dates right back to the invention of money, and then increases with the endless rise of capitalism. |
23835 | People have duties, and only have rights because of the obligations of others to them [Weil] |
Full Idea: A right is effectual only in relation to its corresponding obligation, springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from others who consider themselves under an obligation to him. In isolation a man only has duties, and only others have rights. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
A reaction: This seems correct, and obviously refutes the idea that people have intrinsic natural rights. However, it may be our sense of what nature requires which gives rise to the obligations we feel towards others. |
23852 | To punish people we must ourselves be innocent - but that undermines the desire to punish [Weil] |
Full Idea: In order to have the right to punish the guilty, we ought first of all to purify ourselves of their crimes. …But once this is accomplished we shall no longer feel the least desire to punish, or as little as possible and with extreme sorrow. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: Elsewhere she endorses punishment, as a social necessity, and a redemption for the wicked. This idea looks like a bit of a change of heart. She may be thinking of Jesus on the mote in someone's eye. |
23850 | The soldier-civilian distinction should be abolished; every citizen is committed to a war [Weil] |
Full Idea: The distinction between soldiers and civilians, which the pressure of circumstances has already almost obliterated, should be entirely abolished. Every individual in the population owes his country the whole of his strength, resources and life itself. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
A reaction: Written in London in 1943. The year carpet bombing seriously escalated. The facts of warfare can change the ethics. |
23851 | Education is essentially motivation [Weil] |
Full Idea: Education - whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself - consists in creating motives. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: I can't disagree. Intellectual motivation is simply what we find interesting, and there is no formula for that. A teacher can teach a good session, and only 5% of the pupils find it interesting. A bad session could be life-changing for one student. |
11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |
23849 | Religion should quietly suffuse all human life with its light [Weil] |
Full Idea: The proper function of religion is to suffuse with its light all secular life, public or private, without in any way dominating it. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
A reaction: Even for the non-religious there is something attractive about some view of the world which 'suffuses our lives with light'. It probably describes medieval Christendom, but that contained an awful lot of darkness. |