145 ideas
| 13773 | For the truth you need Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, not his one-drachma course [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: If I'd attended Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, I could tell you the truth about names straightway, but as I've only heard the one-drachma course, I don't know the truth about it. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Cratylus 384b |
| 7421 | A philosopher is one who cares about what other people care about [Socrates, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Socrates asks people 'Are you caring for yourself?' He is the man who cares about the care of others; this is the particular position of the philosopher. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom p.287 | |
| A reaction: Priests, politicians and psychiatrists also care quite intensely about the concerns of other people. Someone who was intensely self-absorbed with the critical task of getting their own beliefs right would count for me as a philosopher. |
| 1649 | Socrates opened philosophy to all, but Plato confined moral enquiry to a tiny elite [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: To confine, as Plato does in 'Republic' IV-VII, moral inquiry to a tiny elite, is to obliterate the Socratic vision which opens up the philosophic life to all. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.18 | |
| A reaction: This doesn't mean that Plato is necessarily 'elitist'. It isn't elitist to point out that an activity is very difficult. |
| 5842 | Philosophical discussion involves dividing subject-matter into categories [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Self-discipline and avoidance of pleasure makes people most capable of philosophical discussion, which is called 'discussion' (dialegesthai - sort out) because people divide their subject-matter into categories. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.5.12 | |
| A reaction: This could be the original slogan for analytical philosophy, as far as I am concerned. I don't think philosophy aims at complete and successful analysis (cf. Idea 2958), but at revealing the structure and interconnection of ideas. This is wisdom. |
| 648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates began the quest for something universal in addition to the radical flux of perceptible particulars, with his definitions. But he rightly understood that universals cannot be separated from particulars. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1086b |
| 5082 | Reason grasps generalities, while the senses grasp particulars [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Reason grasps generalities, while the senses grasp particulars. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 189a06) | |
| A reaction: This does not seem to be entirely true. Sherlock Holmes reasons towards the particular. Nevertheless, we see what he means. Reason deals with universals, and reason derives principles and patterns from the particulars. |
| 164 | It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Phaedrus 272c |
| 1647 | In Socratic dialogue you must say what you believe, so unasserted premises are not debated [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' rule of "say only what you believe"….excluded debate on unasserted premises, thereby distinguishing Socratic from Zenonian and earlier dialectics. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.14 |
| 115 | Socrates was pleased if his mistakes were proved wrong [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: I'm happy to have a mistaken idea of mine proved wrong. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 458a |
| 22099 | The method of Socrates shows the student is discovering the truth within himself [Socrates, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates tended to prefer the method of questioning, for this made it clear that the student was discovering the truth within himself. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 7 | |
| A reaction: Sounds like it will only facilitate conceptual analysis, and excludes empirical knowledge. Can you say to Socrates 'I'll just google that'? |
| 5844 | Socrates always proceeded in argument by general agreement at each stage [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: When Socrates was setting out a detailed argument, he used to proceed by such stages as were generally agreed, because he thought that this was the infallible method of argument. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.16 | |
| A reaction: This sounds right, and shows how strongly Socrates perceived philosophy to be a group activity, of which I approve. It seems to me that philosophy is clearly a spoken subject before it is a written one. The lonely speculator comes much later. |
| 11389 | Socrates sought essences, which are the basis of formal logic [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not surprising that Socrates sought essences. His project was to establish formal reasoning, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b22 | |
| A reaction: This seems to reinforce the definitional view of essences, since definitions seem to be at the centre of most of Socrates's quests. |
| 639 | Socrates developed definitions as the basis of syllogisms, and also inductive arguments [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates aimed to establish formal logic, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. He developed inductive arguments and also general definitions. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b |
| 13270 | Are a part and whole one or many? Either way, what is the cause? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is a difficulty about part and whole, ...whether the part and the whole are one or more than one, and in what way they can be one or many, and, if they are more than one, in what way they are more than one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 185b11), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.3 | |
| A reaction: He only states the problem here, but doesn't pursue it. I take the real question of mereology to be what makes a many into a one. I don't see a problem with a many being simultaneously a one. |
| 9790 | Geometry studies naturally occurring lines, but not as they occur in nature [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Geometry studies naturally occurring lines, but not as they occur in nature. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a09) | |
| A reaction: What a splendid remark. If the only specimen you could find of a very rare animal was maimed, you wouldn't be particularly interested in the nature of its injury, but in the animal. |
| 22962 | Two is the least number, but there is no least magnitude, because it is always divisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The least number, without qualification, is the two. …but in magnitude there is no least number, for every line always gets divided. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 220a27) | |
| A reaction: Showing the geometrical approach of the Greeks to number. Two is the last number because numbers are for counting, and picking out one thing is not counting. |
| 18090 | Without infinity time has limits, magnitudes are indivisible, and numbers come to an end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there is, unqualifiedly, no infinite, it is clear that many impossible things result. For there will be a beginning and an end of time, and magnitudes will not be divisible into magnitudes, and number will not be infinite. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206b09), quoted by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 1.8 | |
| A reaction: This is a commitment to infinite time, and uncountable real numbers, and infinite ordinals. Dedekind cuts are implied. Nice. |
| 22929 | Aristotle's infinity is a property of the counting process, that it has no natural limit [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle infinity is not so much a property of some set of objects - the numbers - as of the process of counting, namely of its not having a natural limit. This is 'potential' infinite | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 06 'Illusion' | |
| A reaction: I increasingly favour this view. Mathematicians have foisted fictional objects on us, such as real infinities, limits and zero, because it makes their job easier, but it makes discussion of the natural world very obscure. |
| 22930 | Lengths do not contain infinite parts; parts are created by acts of division [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says that a length does not already contain, waiting to be discovered, an infinite number of parts; such parts only come into existence once they are defined by an act of division. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 07 'Two' | |
| A reaction: If that is true of infinite parts then it must also be true of finite parts. So a cake has no parts at all until it is cut. That could play merry hell with discussions of mereology. Wholes are ontologically prior to parts. |
| 18833 | A continuous line cannot be composed of indivisible points [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: No continuum can be composed of indivisibles: e.g. a line cannot be composed of points, the line being continuous and the points indivisibles. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 231a23), quoted by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 7.4 | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt observes that ' the basic problem is to say what the ultimate parts of a continuum are, of they are not points'. Early modern philosophers had lots of proposals. |
| 9974 | Ten sheep and ten dogs are the same numerically, but it is not the same ten [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there are ten sheep and ten dogs, the number is the same (because it does not differ by a numerical difference), but it is not the same ten (because the objects it is predicated of are different - dogs in one instance, horses in the other). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 224a2-14) | |
| A reaction: Mega! Abstract objects are unique, and can't be 'added' to themselves. I think we need 'units' here, because 2+2 adds four units, so each 2 refers to something different. '2' must refer to something other than itself. |
| 5105 | The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221b36) | |
| A reaction: This must make Aristotle sympathetic to Platonism in mathematics, even though he rejects the full theory of Forms. Such a view is not uncommon among modern philosophers. Presumably the incommensurability is true in all possible worlds? 'In'? |
| 16115 | Change is the implied actuality of that which exists potentially [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Change is the actuality of that which exists potentially, in so far as it is potentially this actuality. Thus, the actuality of a thing's capacity for alteration, in so far as it is a capacity for alteration, is alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 201a10) | |
| A reaction: Not very informative, until you add Idea 16114, telling us that potentiality is best seen as 'power'. Then we have 'all change is the active expression of powers', which strikes me as rather interesting. |
| 22960 | The sophists thought a man in the Lyceum is different from that man in the marketplace [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The sophists assume that being Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum is different from being Coriscus-in-the-marketplace. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b19) | |
| A reaction: This is what has now been called 'Cambridge change', which is merely change in relations, with no intrinsic change. It is laughed at, but it is a phenomenon worth pointing out, as long as it is not mislabelled, or misunderstood. |
| 17262 | Aristotle's formal and material 'becauses' [aitiai] arguably involve grounding [Aristotle, by Correia/Schnieder] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's distinction between four different kinds of aitia ('becauses'?) arguably involves the recognition of grounding in the formal and material aitia. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24) by Correia,F/Schnieder,B - Grounding: an opinionated introduction 2 | |
| A reaction: Insofar as the other two (efficient and final) involve explanation, one might say that they too involve a different sort of grounding. Is a statue 'grounded' in the sculptor, or in the purpose of the statue? |
| 16656 | The separation from here to there is not the same as the separation from there to here [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Even though two separated things have a single interval between them, still the separation from here to there is not one and the same as the separation from there to here. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 202b19) | |
| A reaction: His example is the road from Athens to Thebes. Since we tend to quantify distances between places more than Aristotle did, we are less impressed by this distinction, which seems a bit subjective. Aristotle seems to be thinking of vectors. |
| 16644 | The features of a thing (whether quality or quantity) are inseparable from their subjects [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to separate [affections/accidents], both in respect of quantity and of quality - of quantity, because there is no minimum magnitude, and of quality, because affections are inseparable. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 188a11) | |
| A reaction: This is an aspect of his famous view that universals, if there are such, are inherent in objects, and can't float free. It was important for scholastic philosophers, who need accidents to float free for the doctrine of Transubstantiation. |
| 5117 | Heavy and light are defined by their tendency to move down or up [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the nature of light and heavy things to tend in certain directions, and this is what it is to be light or heavy; to be light is defined by an upwards tendency, and to be heavy is defined by a downwards tendency. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 255b14) | |
| A reaction: The discredited 'teleological' view of gravity, and yet if we define 'heavy' in Newtonian terms we are in danger of circularity, and of proposing laws which are bafflingly imposed from outside. Hence the 'New Essentialists' prefer Aristotle's view. |
| 1652 | Socrates did not consider universals or definitions as having separate existence, but Plato made Forms of them [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates did not regard the universals or the objects of definitions as separate existents, while Plato did separate them, and called this sort of entity ideas/forms. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b30 |
| 17041 | Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants, and the simple elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants and simple bodies like earth, fire, air, and water. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b09) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, he seems to include lives, and elements, but nothing in between, like planets or stones. |
| 16172 | Substance is not predicated of anything - but it still has something underlying it, that originates it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The only thing which is not predicated of some underlying thing is substance, while everything is predicated of it. But the same goes for substances too: there is something underlying them too, which they come from. Plants from seeds, for example. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b01) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I presume 'substance' here is 'ousia'. Aristotle's quest is to pin down 'that which lies under', but this shows that if he identified it, he wouldn't have located what is ultimate. The explanation of a plant extends beyond the plant. |
| 16623 | We only infer underlying natures by analogy, observing bronze of a statue, or wood of a bed [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The underlying nature is an object of knowledge, by an analogy. For as bronze is to a statue, wood to a bed, or matter and the formless before receiving form to any thing which has form, so is the underlying nature of substance, the 'this' or existent. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191a08) | |
| A reaction: Scholastics were perfectly aware of this cautious approach. It is only the critics who jeer at Aristotelians for claiming to know all about the essences of things. Essence is like the Unmoved Mover, inferred but unknown. |
| 16174 | A nature is related to a substance as shapeless matter is to something which has a shape [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What it is to be shapeless is different from what it is to be bronze. …An underlying nature is related to substance as, in general, matter (which is to say, something shapeless), before it gains shape, is to something with shape. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b39-) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting take on the modern problem that the bronze seems to be a separate 'object' from the statue. If bronze is amorphous stuff, it has no shape, presumably because it has no significant shape. |
| 17043 | Form, not matter, is a thing's nature, because it is actual, rather than potential [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Form is a more plausible candidate for being nature than matter is because we speak of a thing as what it actually is at the time, rather than what it then is potentially. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b07) | |
| A reaction: Note that matter remains potential, even when it is part of an actual thing. This seems to be the obvious point that a statue isn't potentially anything else, but its clay is potentially other objects. Does Aristotle think clay is thereby less real? |
| 16970 | A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In many cases, the last three of the causes [aition] come to the same thing. What a thing is and its purpose are the same, and the original source of change is, in terms of form, the same as these two. After all, it is a man who generates a man. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24) | |
| A reaction: One of the few illuminating remarks about what the 'form' in hylomorphism is supposed to do. This may be the key to virtue ethics - that the form of man, which we learn elsewhere is the psuché, is also man's drive and man's very purpose. |
| 16104 | Unity of the form is just unity of the definition [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Being one in form is just another way of saying one 'in definition'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190a16) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be highly significant in understanding Aristotle. The crucial notion of form is tied to the way in which we understand the world, and does not refer to some independent fact about how it might really be. |
| 11255 | In feature-generation the matter (such as bronze) endures, but in generation it doesn't [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: There is a fundamental distinction between feature-change and generation. ..Materials such as bronze cannot by themselves explain why they are the particular material things they are. But matter which generates things does not endure. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: This very nice distinction is rather undermined by our modern understanding of generation, but it still might work at a lower level. Transmuting an element by bombarding it is different from reshaping the stuff. |
| 16791 | There is no whole except for the parts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is no whole over and above the parts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 210a16) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau says Aristotle contradicts this at Met. 1041b12, where the syllable is more than its elements. |
| 9071 | We first sense whole entities, and then move to particular parts of it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We have to progress from the general to the particular, because whole entities are more intelligible to the senses, and anything general is a kind of whole, in the sense that it includes a number of things which we could call its parts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a22) | |
| A reaction: This is the first step in the process of abstraction, which Aristotle describes further in Posterior Analytics. It is common sense that a child will be aware of a horse before it is aware of its hoof, or its colour, or its strength. |
| 13804 | A property is essential iff the object would not exist if it lacked that property [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A property P is an essential property of an object x iff x could not exist and lack P, that is, as they say, iff x has P at every world at which x exists. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: This immediately places the existence of x outside the normal range of its properties, so presumably 'existence is not a predicate', but that dictum may be doubted. As it stands this definition will include trivial and vacuous properties. |
| 13805 | Properties are trivially essential if they are not grounded in a thing's specific nature [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Essential properties may be trivial or nontrivial. It is characteristic of P's being trivially essential to x that x's possession of P is not grounded in the specific nature of x. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is where my objection to the modal view of essence arises. How is he going to explain 'grounded' and 'specific nature' without supplying an entirely different account of essence? |
| 13808 | A relation is essential to two items if it holds in every world where they exist [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A relation R is essential to x and y (in that order) iff Rxy holds at every world where x and y both exist. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I find this bizarre. Not only does this seem to me to have nothing whatever to do with essence, but also the relation might hold even though it is a purely contingent matter. All rabbits are a reasonable distance from the local star. Essence of rabbit? |
| 13806 | Trivially essential properties are existence, self-identity, and de dicto necessities [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The main groups of trivially essential properties are (a) existence, self-identity, or their consequences in S5; and (b) properties possessed in virtue of some de dicto necessary truth. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: He adds 'extraneously essential' properties, which also strike me as being trivial, involving relations. 'Is such that 2+2=4' or 'is such that something exists' might be necessary, but they don't, I would say, have anything to do with essence. |
| 16972 | The four explanations are the main aspects of a thing's nature [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle sees as the main types of aitia (explanation) those that are also to be construed as the main aspects of the physis (nature) of anything. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this suggests that having rejected the Four Causes in favour of the Four Explanations, we might even consider them as the Four Natures, which ties explanation very closely to essence. |
| 5084 | A thing's nature is what causes its changes and stability [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of a thing is a certain principle and cause of change and stability in the thing. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b20) | |
| A reaction: A helpful contribution to the discussion, as most thinkers just boggle when asked to specify the core of something's identity. Aristotle's proposal links identity to causation, which is very appealing to a physical account of all of reality. Cf 5086. |
| 13807 | A property is 'extraneously essential' if it is had only because of the properties of other objects [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: P is 'extraneously essential' to x iff it is possessed by x at any world w only in virtue of the possession at w of certain properties by other objects. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would say that these are the sorts of properties which have nothing to do with being essential, even if they are deemed to be necessary. |
| 13809 | One might be essentialist about the original bronze from which a statue was made [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: In the case of artefacts, there is an essentialism about original matter; for instance, it would be said of any particular bronze statue that it could not have been cast from a totally different quantity of bronze. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: Forbes isn't endorsing this, and it doesn't sound convincing. He quotes the thought 'I wish I had made this pot from a different piece of clay'. We might corrupt a statue by switching bronze, but I don't think the sculptor could do so. |
| 16173 | Coming to be is by shape-change, addition, subtraction, composition or alteration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things that come to be without further qualification do so either by change of shape (a statue) or by addition (growing things) or by subtraction (a carving) or by composition (a house) or by alteration (things changing their matter). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Aristotle observes that in each case there is clearly some 'underlying thing'. |
| 17042 | Natural things are their own source of stability through change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The obvious difference between natural and non-natural things is that each of the natural ones contains within itself a source of change and of stability, in respect of either movement or increase and decrease or alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b14) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Aristotle places so much emphasis on lives, though elements also have persistence in a similar way. We now have atoms and molecules as well. |
| 16691 | A day, or the games, has one thing after another, actually and potentially occurring [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When we say 'it is day' or 'it is the games', one thing after another is always coming into existence. …There are Olympic Games, both in the sense that they may occur and that they are actually occurring. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206a22) | |
| A reaction: This is, according the Pasnau, the origin of the scholastic concept of an 'entia successiva'. I haven't seen much discussion of this in modern metaphysics, but in what sense does a day exist? |
| 16574 | Coming-to-be may be from nothing in a qualified way, as arising from an absence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We agree that nothing can be said without qualification to come from what is not, …but it may in a qualified sense. For a thing comes to be from a privation, which in its own nature is not-being - this not surviving as a constituent in the result. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191b13) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems to say that genuine creation from nothing at all is impossible. |
| 11254 | Matter is potentiality [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle conceives of matter (hulé) as potentiality. ...He has a process-based notion of matter. ...It is something which has the power ('dunamis') to generate a thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis says that 'dunamis' is usually translated as 'potentiality', but he prefers to translate it as 'power'. I take this to be highly significant in connecting Aristotle to modern scientific essentialism. |
| 13110 | Intrinsic cause is prior to coincidence, so nature and intelligence are primary causes, chance secondary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A cause in its own right is prior to a coincidental cause. So spontaneity and chance are posterior to intelligence and nature. Hence however much spontaneity is the cause of the universe, intelligence and nature are more primary causes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Aristotle's final word on chance - that it is a genuine sort of causation, but only a secondary one. I take 'nature' to refer to the powers of essences. Aristotle does not accept meetings in the market as uncaused events. |
| 13106 | Maybe there is no pure chance; a man's choices cause his chance meetings [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some people find there is no such thing as a chance event. ..If someone chanced to come into the city square and met someone he wanted to meet but had not expected, they say the cause was his wanting to go and do business in the square. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 195b39) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle spends the book discussing the problem. There is a clear candidate for an uncaused event here, in the chance meeting of two people. See Idea 13108. |
| 13108 | Chance is a coincidental cause among events involving purpose and choice [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Clearly chance is a coincidental cause in the sphere of events which have some purpose and are the subject of choice. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 197a05) | |
| A reaction: This is the culmination of his discussion of going to the market place and happening to meet your debtor (196b33). We must now decide whether a 'coincidental cause' is a true case of causation. |
| 13810 | The source of de dicto necessity is not concepts, but the actual properties of the thing [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: It is widely held that the source of de dicto necessity is in concepts, ..but I deny this... even with simple de dicto necessities, the source of the necessity is to be found in the properties to which the predicates of the de dicto truth refer. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: It is normal nowadays to say this about de re necessities, but this is more unusual. |
| 8331 | To know something we need understanding, which is grasp of the primary cause [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The point of our investigation is to acquire knowledge, and a prerequisite for knowing [eidenai] anything is understanding why it is as it is - in other words, grasping its primary cause. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b18) | |
| A reaction: He then proceeds to identify four types of cause (Idea 8332). I can't think of a better account of knowledge. If we want to know that cigarettes cause cancer, we must get beyond the statistical correlation, and grasp the physical mechanisms. |
| 5080 | We know a thing if we grasp its first causes, principles and basic elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We think we know a thing only when we have grasped its first causes and principles and have traced it back to its elements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a12) | |
| A reaction: A nice Aristotelian analysis. It is hard to see what else you need to know about a thunderstorm, once you know what causes it, the principles which guide its operation, and the elements of which it is composed. But doesn't Aristotle seek its purpose…? |
| 11250 | Four Explanations: the essence and form; the matter; the source; and the end [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle gives us four explanations (or causes) of things: the essence (to ti estin, to ti en einai) and the form (he morphe, to eidos); the matter (hule); the source of change and generation (to kinoun); and the end (telos) at which change is directed. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis presents these as primarily the Four Explanations, rather than under the better-known label of the 'Four Causes'. It is interesting that essence and form are lumped in together, under what is normally labelled the 'formal cause'. |
| 12045 | Aristotle's four 'causes' are four items which figure in basic explanations of nature [Aristotle, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: The four so-called 'causes' are the different types of item which figure in what Aristotle thinks are the four fundamental types of explanation of nature. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This interpretation now seems to be standard among modern scholars. The word 'aitia' translates as 'explanation', but it is important to remember that it also translates as 'cause'. Aristotelian explanations are essentially causal. |
| 16969 | Science refers the question Why? to four causes/explanations: matter, form, source, purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the natural scientist refers the question 'Why?' to this set of four causes [aition] - matter, form, source of change, purpose - he will be explaining things in the way a natural scientist should. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a23) | |
| A reaction: This is even more conclusive than Idea 16968 in showing that we have the Four Modes of Explanation, not the so-called Four Causes. |
| 16968 | There are as many causes/explanations as there are different types of why-question [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are causes [aition] and there are as many of them as we have been saying, since there are just as many different kinds of question covered by the question 'Why?'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a16) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to split the questions into 'what is it?' and 'what initiated the change?'. This, along with Idea 16969, is Exhibit A for saying Aristotle has the Four Explanations, not the Four Causes (which are so famous). |
| 13109 | Chance is inexplicable, because we can only explain what happens always or usually [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Chance is inexplicable, because explanations can only be given for things that happen either always or usually, but the province of chance is things which do not happen always or usually. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 197a19) | |
| A reaction: This seems wrong. We can explain perfectly well a chance meeting in the market place - it is just that the explanation is not of much use in making future predictions. But we may avoid the market place because of the danger of chance meetings. |
| 1650 | For Socrates our soul, though hard to define, is our self [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: For Socrates our soul is our self - whatever that might turn out to be. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.55 | |
| A reaction: The problem with any broad claim like this is that we seem to be able to distinguish between essential and non-essential aspects of the self or of the soul. |
| 23252 | Socrates first proposed that we are run by mind or reason [Socrates, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It would seem that historically the decisive step was taken by Socrates in conceiving of human beings as being run by a mind or reason.. …He postulated an entity whose precision nature and function then was a matter of considerable debate. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.19 | |
| A reaction: This is, for me, a rather revelatory idea. I am keen on the fact the animals make judgements which are true and false, and also that we exhibit rationality when walking across uneven ground. So pure rationality is a cultural construct! |
| 9789 | You can't abstract natural properties to make Forms - objects and attributes are defined together [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Those who say there are Forms abstract natural properties, even though they are less separable than mathematical properties. This is clear if you try to define both the objects themselves and their attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b36) | |
| A reaction: (Compare Idea 9788) This is Frege's black and white cats, where you cannot abstract the black without thinking of the cat, but Aristotle thinks mathematical abstraction is more feasible. |
| 9788 | Mathematicians study what is conceptually separable, and doesn't lead to error [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Mathematicians abstract properties which are conceptually separable from the world of change. It makes no difference if you treat them as separate, in the sense that it does not result in error. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b33) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a crucial point to make against Frege (if Aristotle is right). Frege hates abstractionism precisely because it is psychological, and hence admits subjective error, instead of objective truth. Does 'pure' abstraction avoid error? |
| 5107 | Predicates are substance, quality, place, relation, quantity and action or affection [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The categories of predication are substance, quality, place, relation, quantity and action or affection. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 225b06) | |
| A reaction: A note says this omits time from the 'familiar list' of eight predicates. |
| 199 | The common belief is that people can know the best without acting on it [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Most people think there are many who recognise the best but are unwilling to act on it. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 352d |
| 195 | No one willingly commits an evil or base act [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: I am fairly certain that no wise man believes anyone sins willingly or willingly perpetrates any evil or base act. | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 345e |
| 1653 | Socrates did not accept the tripartite soul (which permits akrasia) [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Xenophon indirectly indicates that he does not associate Socrates in any way with the tripartite psychology of the 'Republic', for within that theory akrasia would be all too possible. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.102 |
| 5843 | People do what they think they should do, and only ever do what they think they should do [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: There is no one who knows what they ought to do, but thinks that they ought not to do it, and no one does anything other than what they think they ought to do. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.6 | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates' well-known rejection of the possibility of weakness of will (akrasia - lit. 'lack of control'). Aristotle disagreed, and so does almost everyone else. Modern smokers seem to exhibit akrasia. I have some sympathy with Socrates. |
| 5253 | Socrates was shocked by the idea of akrasia, but observation shows that it happens [Aristotle on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought it a shocking idea that when a man actually has knowledge in him something else should overmaster it, ..but this is glaringly inconsistent with the observed facts. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1145b24 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems very confident, but it is not at all clear (even to the agent) what is going on when apparent weakness of will occurs (e.g. breaking a diet). What exactly does the agent believe at the moment of weakness? |
| 5839 | For Socrates, wisdom and prudence were the same thing [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Socrates did not distinguish wisdom from prudence, but judged that the man who recognises and puts into practice what is truly good, and the man who knows and guards against what is disgraceful, are both wise and prudent. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.3 | |
| A reaction: Compare Aristotle, who separates them, claiming that prudence is essential for moral virtue, but wisdom is pursued at a different level, closer to the gods than to society. |
| 5867 | For Socrates, virtues are forms of knowledge, so knowing justice produces justice [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought that the virtues were all forms of knowledge, and therefore once a man knew justice, he would be a just man. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1216b07 | |
| A reaction: The clearest possible statement of Socrates' intellectualism. Aristotle rejected the Socrates view, but I find it sympathetic. Smokers who don't want to die seem to be in denial. To see the victims is to condemn the crime. |
| 5069 | Socrates was the first to base ethics upon reason, and use reason to explain it [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates was the first significant thinker to try basing ethics upon reason, and to try uncovering its natural principles solely by the use of reason. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. It seems to me that Socrates overemphasised reason, presumably because it was a novelty. Hence his view that akrasia is impossible, and that virtue is simply knowledge. Maybe action is not just rational, but moral action is. |
| 5836 | All human virtues are increased by study and practice [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: If you consider the virtues that are recognised among human beings, you will find that they are all increased by study and practice. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 2.6.41 | |
| A reaction: 'Study' is the intellectualist part of this remark; the reference to 'practice' fits with Aristotle view that virtue is largely a matter of good habits. The next question would be how theoretical the studies should be. Philosophy, or newspapers? |
| 5840 | The wise perform good actions, and people fail to be good without wisdom [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: It is the wise who perform truly good actions, and those who are not wise cannot, and, if they try to, fail. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.6 | |
| A reaction: The essence of Socrates' intellectualism, with which Aristotle firmly disagreed (when he assert that only practical reason was needed for virtuous actions, rather than wisdom or theory). Personally I side more with Socrates than with Aristotle on this. |
| 20042 | We assign the cause of someone's walking when we say why they are doing it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is he going for a walk? We say 'to be healthy', and having said that we have assigned the cause. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b33-5) | |
| A reaction: Stout gives this as the predecessor of Anscombe's account of intentions. The thought is that the explanation of the act is its purpose. Such teleology is more plausible than the Aristotelian teleology about non-human events. |
| 185 | Socrates despised good looks [Socrates, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates despises good looks to an almost inconceivable extent. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Plato - The Symposium 216e |
| 5070 | Socrates conservatively assumed that Athenian conventions were natural and true [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' moral philosophy was essentially conservative. He assumed that the principles the Athenians honoured were true and natural, so there was little possibility of conflict between nature and convention in his thinking. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: Taylor contrasts Socrates with Callicles, who claims that conventions oppose nature. This fits with Nietzsche's discontent with Socrates, as the person who endorses conventional good and evil, thus constraining the possibilities of human nature. |
| 5838 | A well-made dung basket is fine, and a badly-made gold shield is base, because of function [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: A dung-basket is fine, and a golden shield contemptible, if the one is finely and the other badly constructed for carrying out its function. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.6 | |
| A reaction: This is the basis of a key idea in Aristotle, that virtue (or excellence) arises directly from function. I think it is the most important idea in virtue theory, and seems to have struck most Greeks as being self-evident. |
| 5837 | Things are both good and fine by the same standard [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Things are always both good and fine by the same standard. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.5 | |
| A reaction: This begs many questions, but perhaps it leads to what we call intuitionism, which is an instant ability is perceive a fine action (even in an enemy). This leads to the rather decadent view that the aim of life is the production of beauty. |
| 5110 | Goodness is when a thing (such as a circle) is complete, and conforms with its nature [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Goodness is a kind of completion: it is when something becomes as good as it may be that we say that it is complete, because that is when it pre-eminently conforms with its nature. A circle is complete when it is as good a circle as there could be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 246a12) | |
| A reaction: This, in turn, is said by Aristotle to result from the telos (purpose) of the thing. This won't eliminate the problem of relativism, unless we say that something cannot have an evil 'nature'. Was the Black Death good, by this definition? |
| 3017 | The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance [Socrates, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: There is only one good, namely knowledge, and there is only one evil, namely ignorance. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.4.14 | |
| A reaction: Ignorance of how to commit evil sounds quite good. |
| 1646 | Socrates was the first to put 'eudaimonia' at the centre of ethics [Socrates, by Vlastos] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' true place in the development of Greek thought is that he is the first to establish the eudaimonist foundation of ethical theory, which became the foundation of the schools which sprang up around him. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.10 | |
| A reaction: I suspect that he was the first to fully articulate a widely held Greek belief. The only ethical question that they asked was about the nature of a good human life. |
| 1663 | By 'areté' Socrates means just what we mean by moral virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates uses the word 'areté' to mean precisely what we mean by moral virtue. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.200 |
| 5111 | All moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasure and pain [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasure and pain. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 247a08) | |
| A reaction: Not to be misunderstood. The 'intellectual virtues' are different, for one thing. And he is not implying hedonism, but that moral virtue concerns our judgements and habits in relation to pleasure and pain. What do we count as acceptable pleasures? |
| 4323 | Socrates is torn between intellectual virtue, which is united and teachable, and natural virtue, which isn't [PG on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates worries about the unity and teachability of virtue because he is torn between virtue as intellectual (unified and teachable) and virtue as natural (plural and unteachable). | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: Admittedly virtue could be natural but still unified and teachable, but Socrates clearly had a dilemma, and this seems to make sense of it. |
| 8003 | Socrates agrees that virtue is teachable, but then denies that there are teachers [Socrates, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Socrates' great point of agreement with the sophists is his acceptance of the thesis that areté is teachable. But paradoxically he denies that there are teachers. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is part of Socrates's presentation of himself as 'not worthy'. Virtue would be teachable, if only anyone knew what it was. He's wrong. Lots of people have a pretty good idea of virtue, and could teach it. The problem is in the pupils. |
| 126 | We should ask what sort of people we want to be [Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: What sort of person should one be? | |
| From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 487e |
| 4111 | Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement [Socrates, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Which links with Aristotle's high place for 'phronesis' (prudence?). The essence of Socrates' intellectualism. Robots and saints make very different judgements, though. |
| 7808 | Socrates made the civic values of justice and friendship paramount [Socrates, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In Socrates' thought, the expressly civic values of justice and friendship became paramount. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the key move in ancient ethics, away from heroism, and towards the standard Aristotelian social virtues. I say this is the essence of what we call morality, and the only one which can be given a decent foundational justification (social health). |
| 23907 | Courage is scientific knowledge [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Socrates thought that courage is scientific knowledge. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1230a06 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle himself says that reason produces courage, but he also says it arises from natural youthful spirits. I favour the view that there is a strong rational component in true courage. |
| 7585 | Socrates emphasises that the knower is an existing individual, with existence his main task [Socrates, by Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The infinite merit of the Socratic position was precisely to accentuate the fact that the knower is an existing individual, and that the task of existing is his essential task. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Søren Kierkegaard - Concluding Unscientific Postscript 'Inwardness' | |
| A reaction: Always claim Socrates as the first spokesman for your movement! It is true that Socrates is always demanding the views of his interlocutors, and not just abstract theories. See Idea 1647. |
| 5841 | Obedience to the law gives the best life, and success in war [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: A city in which the people are most obedient to the laws has the best life in time of peace and is irresistible in war. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.4.15 | |
| A reaction: This is a conservative view, with the obvious problem case of bad laws, but in general it seems to me clearly right. This is why it is so vital that nothing should be done to bring the law into disrepute, such as petty legislation or prosecution. |
| 1661 | Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Socrates was the first Greek to grasp the truth that if someone has done a nasty thing to me, this does not give the slightest moral justification for doing anything nasty to him. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.190 |
| 5846 | A lover using force is a villain, but a seducer is much worse, because he corrupts character [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: The fact that a lover uses not force but persuasion makes him more detestable, because a lover who uses force proves himself a villain, but one who uses persuasion ruins the character of the one who consents. | |
| From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Symposium 8.20 | |
| A reaction: A footnote says that this distinction was enshrined in Athenian law, where seduction was worse than rape. This is a startling and interest contrast to the modern view, which enshrines rights and freedoms, and says seduction is usually no crime at all. |
| 5092 | Nature is a principle of change, so we must understand change first [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nature is the subject of our enquiry, and nature is a principle of change, so if we do not understand the process of change, we will not understand nature either. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 200b12) | |
| A reaction: This is a very distinctively Greek attitude which doesn't seem to concern us much, but perhaps it should. Movement is just as fundamental as forces, particles and the rest that physicist talk about. Why do particles respond to forces? |
| 5085 | 'Nature' refers to two things - form and matter [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: 'Nature' refers to two things - that is, both to form and to matter. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a12) | |
| A reaction: The 'New Essentialism' (e.g. book by Brian Ellis) seems to imply that matter is basic, and that form is the result of the essence of matter. They seem to have parted company with Aristotle. Does he think matter is created on Thursday, and form on Friday? |
| 5113 | Nothing natural is disorderly, because nature is responsible for all order [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nothing natural - nothing due to nature - is disorderly, because in all things nature is responsible for order. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 252a11) | |
| A reaction: This sounds dangerously tautological. What is responsible for disorder? If a forest is smashed up by an earthquake, 'order' doesn't sound like a good description of the result. It is certainly no more orderly than if people smash the forest. |
| 5089 | Nature has purpose, and aims at what is better. Is it coincidence that crops grow when it rains? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is wrong with the idea that nature does not act purposively, and does not do things because they are better? The proper analogy is the idea that it is sheer coincidence that the crops grow when it rains. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198b16) | |
| A reaction: In this context, it simply never occurred to Aristotle to give a causal explanation instead of a purposive one. Or that he had got it the wrong way round - growth of crops is 'for the better' only because we eat them, but are we 'for the better'? |
| 5091 | Teeth and crops are predictable, so they cannot be mere chance, but must have a purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things such as teeth and crops turn out as they do either always or usually, whereas no chance or spontaneous event does. ..So, given that these things cannot be accidents or spontaneous events, they must have some purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 199b33) | |
| A reaction: This is a good argument, and Darwin's theory does not destroy it. We have no idea why there is order, regularity and pattern in nature. Aristotle does not leap to a divine explanation. The 'purpose' of things might be non-conscious. |
| 5086 | The nature of a thing is its end and purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of a thing is its end and purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a29) | |
| A reaction: Cf 5084. This is the teleologists' manifesto, but it is very hard to find out why Aristotle took this view. He seems to offer it as self-evident. What would he have made of the proposal that there is no ultimate purpose to anything? |
| 5087 | A thing's purpose is ambiguous, and from one point of view we ourselves are ends [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: From one point of view we too are ends. What a thing is for is ambiguous. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a35) | |
| A reaction: A really interesting concession from the great teleologist. This opens up what I think of as the 'existentialist' possibility - that we can invent our own purposes. If there are two types of 'telos', which one matters for morality? |
| 5108 | Is ceasing-to-be unnatural if it happens by force, and natural otherwise? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If what happens by force is unnatural, then forced ceasing-to-be is unnatural, and is opposed to natural ceasing to be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 230a29) | |
| A reaction: This is an important matter for Aristotle, who needs a concept of 'unnatural' behaviour for his ethics. Our law enshrines the idea of 'death by natural causes'. But 'force' needs discussion. Why is a hitman unnatural, and lightning natural? |
| 5093 | Continuity depends on infinity, because the continuous is infinitely divisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In defining continuity one is almost bound to rely on the notion of infinity; it is because the continuous is what is infinitely divisible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 200b18) | |
| A reaction: Parmenides and the Achilles Paradox lie behind this view, and the fact that Aristotle was opposed to the view that some things are indivisible ('atomism'). Nice point, though - that space and time immediately imply the infinite. |
| 5095 | The heavens seem to be infinite, because we cannot imagine their end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The region beyond the heavens seems to be infinite because it does not give out in our thoughts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 203b25) | |
| A reaction: An interesting case of inconceivability (of a limit) implying impossibility. But it is undeniable that the outer limit of the cosmos is unimaginable for us. Is there a 'Road Closed' sign? |
| 16762 | Matter desires form, as female desires male, and ugliness desires beauty [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What desires the form is matter, as the female the male, and the ugly the beautiful. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192a22) | |
| A reaction: Wow! This is a very active view of matter. The drive in nature (the 'conatus' in Spinoza) can be discerned in all sorts of levels. It is Nietzsche's will to power. It seems to be the opposite of entropy. |
| 17464 | When Aristotle's elements compound they are stable, so why would they ever separate? [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to understand what would induce a compound to dissociate into its elements on Aristotle's theory, which seems entirely geared to showing how a stable equilibrium results from mixing. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Weisberg/Needham/Hendry - Philosophy of Chemistry 1.1 |
| 11252 | The 'form' of a thing explains why the matter constitutes that particular thing [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: By the form of a thing, such as a changing human being, Aristotle means that which explains why the matter of this particular thing constitutes the thing that it constitutes: a particular human being. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: If Politis is right then clearly the so-called 'formal cause' is much better understood as the 'formal explanation'. The Greek word for cause/explanation is 'aitia'. |
| 11253 | A 'material' cause/explanation is the form of whatever is the source [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: In the 'material cause/explanation', it is especially important to emphasise Aristotle's view that it is not simply the parent that generates the offspring, but the form of the parent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 |
| 13107 | Causes produce a few things in their own right, and innumerable things coincidentally [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A cause may be a cause either in its own right or coincidentally. The cause in its own right of a house is house-building ability, but a house may coincidentally be caused by something pale or educated. ..There could be infinite coincidental causes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 196b25) | |
| A reaction: If we seriously want to identify THE cause of an event, this distinction seems useful, even though a cause 'in its own right' is a rather loose locution. It leads on to analyses of necessary and sufficient conditions. |
| 8332 | The four causes are the material, the form, the source, and the end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The first type of cause is that from which a thing is made (bronze of a statue); the second type is the form or pattern (ratio 2:1 for the octave); the third is the source (the deviser of a plan); the fourth type is the end (as health causes walking). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b23-) | |
| A reaction: [Compressed quotation] These four became known as the Material Cause, the Formal Cause, the Efficient Cause, and the Final Cause. For a statue they are the bronze, the shape, the sculptor, and the beauty. We now focus on the Efficient Cause. |
| 9787 | Scientists must know the essential attributes of the things they study [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It would be strange for a natural scientist to know what the sun and the moon are, but to be completely ignorant about their necessary attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b27) | |
| A reaction: This nicely captures the common sense idea of essentialism - that we must know the essential features of things, and ignore the incidental ones (like sunspots, or phases of the moon). |
| 5114 | If movement can arise within an animal, why can't it also arise in the universe? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Movement can arise within a motionless animal out of the object itself, rather than being due to some external agent. But why should this not also be true of the universe? | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 252b24) | |
| A reaction: A nice objection to the Unmoved Mover concept of God. Unfortunately it is ruined by the modern realisation that an animal is never 'motionless', because brain activity is continuous, and ceases only with death. |
| 5116 | When there is unnatural movement (e.g. fire going downwards) the cause is obvious [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Examples of unnatural movements are something earthy moving upwards and fire moving downwards. …When they are moved unnaturally it is obvious what they are moved by, but this is not obvious in the case of their natural movements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 254b21) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle always struggles when he tries to give an account of 'unnatural' events. It is hard to see how it is unnatural when a wind blows a flame down, or volcanoes blow earth up. There is hardly a natural distinction of causes which are 'obvious'. |
| 20063 | Motion fulfils potentiality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Motion is the fulfilment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 201a10-11), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Two' | |
| A reaction: We might put that as 'all motion is the fulfilment of a natural power'. But that gives the source of motion, and not its intrinsic nature. |
| 5099 | The universe as a whole is not anywhere [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The universe as a whole is not anywhere. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 212b14) | |
| A reaction: This is what we pay philosophers for! Point out all the things which are staring us in the face, but we have never actually noticed. 'Everything that exists must have a location'? Can this truism really be false? |
| 5097 | If everything has a place, this causes an infinite regress, because each place must have place [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If place is an existing thing, then it will exist somewhere. For Zeno's puzzle needs explaining: if every existing thing is in place, an infinite regress occurs, because there will clearly have to be a place for place. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 209a23) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the basic dilemma with space. If it exists independently, it requires a location, but if it doesn't exist, how can anything have a location? Neither Newton, Leibniz nor Einstein seem to have solved the dilemma. |
| 5098 | Place is not shape, or matter, or extension between limits; it is the limits of a body [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Place must be one of four things: shape, or matter, or some kind of extension between the limits of the container, or the limits themselves. …The first three can evidently be ruled out…so it must be the limit of the containing body. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 211b06) | |
| A reaction: As it stands this doesn't have much intuitive appeal. It is rather difficult to define a 'limit' without making some reference to 'space' and 'place'. One must read this chunk of Aristotle to see his drift. |
| 20920 | If there were many cosmoses, each would have its own time, giving many times [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there were a plurality of heavens, in the same way the movement of each of them would be a time, so that many times would coexist. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b3) | |
| A reaction: I take it that for Aristotle this is an absurdity, but for a modern cosmologist this is a real possibility. So which one is fastest? Can God rank them according to speed? |
| 22967 | It is unclear whether time depends on the existence of soul [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One might find it a difficult question, whether if there were no soul there would be time or not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223a22) | |
| A reaction: If only we could arrange a meeting with Kant. Personally I take it to be simple - obviously time passed before minds emerged in the universe. Our whole modern account of reality realies on it. His problem is that only souls count things. |
| 5106 | Would there be time if there were no mind? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It might be wondered whether or not there would be time if there were not mind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223a21) | |
| A reaction: I like his caution. Some people leap to the conclusion that time is a product of mind. Personally (with my strongly realist tendencies) I don't believe it. |
| 22885 | For Aristotle time is not a process but a means for measuring processes [Aristotle, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle time is not a process: It is a kind of 'number' or unit that can be used to describe processes in nature, analagous to the way ordinary numbers can be used to count things. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Aristotle's' | |
| A reaction: Bardon cites this when discussing Aristotle on Zeno's paradoxes. If the equivalent idea of length is that length is merely rulers for measuring it, this sounds like a bad idea. But if processes occur in time, how could time be a process? |
| 8590 | Time does not exist without change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time does not exist without change. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b32) | |
| A reaction: His reasons are epistemological, and are nicely attacked by Shoemaker, in 'Time without Change'. There is something intuitively wrong about Aristotle's claim. If reality freezes, then 'how long was it frozen?' is a quite reasonable question. |
| 5104 | Time is an aspect of change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is not change, but it is an aspect of change. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219a09) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of a better definition of time. Intuition says that time could continue when all change stopped (the 'frozen worlds' thought experiment), so that we can distinguish time from the change that gave rise to it (or the idea of it). |
| 22965 | Time measures rest, as well as change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Since time is the measure of change, it will be measure of rest also. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221b07) | |
| A reaction: The thought seems to be that change leads us to a system of temporal measurement, which is then available fro measurement periods of rest. But totally eventless time would be a problem. Aristotle had no clocks. |
| 22959 | Time is not change, but the number we associate with change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is a number of change in respect of the before and after. So time is not change but in the way in which change has a number. We discern the greater and the less by number, and greater and less change by time. Hence time is a kind of number. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b01) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle's firmest assertion of the nature of time. It seems to be false to say that we need number in order to discern size (e.g. seeing who was given the biggest slice of cake). Surely we discern time before we measure it? |
| 22964 | Change only exists in time through its being temporally measure [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time measures at once the change and the being of change, and this is what it is, for the change, to be in time, viz. its being's being measured. …This is what it is to be in time: their being's being measured by time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221a05) | |
| A reaction: Among other things, this would presumably mean that animals are unaware of change, which seems unlikely. He may have a relaxed and intuitive (rather than precise) concept of 'measured'. |
| 22956 | How can time exist, when it is composed of what has ceased to be and is yet to be? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some of time has been and is not, some of it is to be and is not yet. …But it would seem to be impossible that what is composed of things that are not should participate in being. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 217b33) | |
| A reaction: This is his opening remark in the discussion of time, and he seems to be endorsing it, since he thinks of time as a form of measurement of change. |
| 5102 | If all of time has either ceased to exist, or has not yet happened, maybe time does not exist [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some suspicion arises that time does not exist, since some of it has happened and does not exist, and some of it is in the future and does not yet exist. It appears impossible for anything that consists of things that do not exist to exist itself. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 217b34) | |
| A reaction: This generates the popular paradox that Socrates cannot die, because no moment exists when his death could occur. It may be (as David Marshall has pointed out) that we do not experience the present, but only a vivid memory of the immediate past. |
| 5103 | Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is not change … but time is not without change, for without any change (or any noticeable change) in our minds, time does not seem to pass. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b19) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle has spotted what seems to be a key problem in understanding time, which is disentangling what occurs in nature from what occurs in our consciousness. The extreme views (naïve realism about time, or the view that it is imaginary) both seem wrong. |
| 22961 | The present moment is obviously a necessary feature of time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is manifest that if time were not, the now would not be either, and if the now were not, time would not be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b33) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be Aristotle's commitment to the A-series view, which needs a moving present moment. Despite Einstein and B-series eternalism, I remain in agreement with Aristotle. B-series fans struggle like theologians to explain 'now'. |
| 22916 | Unlike time, change goes at different rates, and is usually localised [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says time could not be the same thing as change, for first change can go at different rates, but not so time, and secondly change is confined to a part of space whereas time is universal. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b11-) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 02 'As Change' | |
| A reaction: The observation that the speed of change varies seems to need a belief in uniform time. Le Poidevin doubts Aristotle's objections, because the theory concerns change in general, and not particular instances of it. |
| 16693 | Time has parts, but the now is not one of them, and time is not composed of nows [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time has parts, some of which have been, others of which are going to be, but no part of it is. The now is not a part, because a part is a measure of the whole, which must be composed of parts. Time, however, does not seem to be composed of nows. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a05), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.1 | |
| A reaction: As good an expression as you will ever find of the baffling nature of time. Only the past and the future seem substantial enough to exist. Only the now can be real, and yet it seems to be a nothing. In Phys IV.14 time is mind-dependent. |
| 22958 | Nows can't be linked together, any more than points on a line [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We take it that it is impossible for the nows to be adjoining one another, as it is for a point to be adjoining a point. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a18) | |
| A reaction: This implies that instants are abstractions, rather than physical realities. Aristotle rejects atoms, so presumably sees prime matter as the underlying uniter of matter. Insistence on linking the smallest parts leads to modern physics. |
| 22963 | We measure change by time, and time by change, as they are interdefined [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Not only do we measure change by time, but time by change also, because they are defined by one another. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 220b14) | |
| A reaction: He defends the idea that time is the 'number' of change, but this idea should sound a warning bell. He rejects the idea that time IS change. It is seems instrumentalist to make the existence of time depend on its measurement. |
| 22968 | Circular motion is the most obvious measure of time, and especially the celestial sphere [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Uniform circular motion is most of all a measure, because the number of this is most easily known. …This is why time is thought to be the motion of the [celestial] sphere, because the other changes are measured by this one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223b14) | |
| A reaction: This makes the year the basic unit of time for the human race. Apparently minutes only became of interest when railway timetables appeared in the 1850s. |
| 22957 | We can't tell whether the changing present moment is one thing, or a succession of things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to see whether the now, which appears to be the boundary between past and future, remains always one and the same or is different from time to time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a08) | |
| A reaction: [also 219b13] Presumably the A-series view suggests that each present moment is different, but Broad's moving spotlight analogy gives the impression of a single present instant moving through time. If the present is one, what sort of thing is it? |
| 22966 | The present moment is a link (of past to future), and also a limit (of past and of future) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The now is a link of time, for it links together past and future time, and is a limit of time, since it is a beginning of one and an end of the other. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 222a10) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear how a limit (such as the boundary between two overlapping bits of paper) can also be a 'link'. He noticed the problem in Idea 22958. |
| 5083 | Do things come to be from what is, or from what is not? Both seem problematical. [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Early thinkers made the mistake of claiming that nothing comes to be or ceases to be, on the grounds that for anything to come to be it would have to come either from what is or from what is not, but that neither of these is possible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191a27) | |
| A reaction: Nothing in modern physics has (I think) solved this problem. On the one hand we have the conservation of energy, and on the other the Big Bang. Some talk of 'quantum fluctuations' triggering coming-to-be. Hm. |
| 5119 | The source of all movement must be indivisible and have no magnitude [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We proved that there cannot be an infinite magnitude, and that it is impossible for something finite to have infinite power, but the first agent of movement causes eternal movement for an infinite time, so it must be indivisible and have no parts or size. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 267b19) | |
| A reaction: Note that Aristotle is already attributing 'infinite power' to this special thing. It is more than just a first domino to fall over. Its having no size quickly takes it outside of space, and makes it a 'spirit'. We are watching the construction of God. |
| 1657 | Socrates holds that right reason entails virtue, and this must also apply to the gods [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to Socrates' rationalist programme in theology to assume that the entailment of virtue by wisdom binds gods no less than men. He would not tolerate one moral standard for me and another for gods. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.164 |
| 1662 | A new concept of God as unswerving goodness emerges from Socrates' commitment to virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| Full Idea: Undeviating beneficent goodness guides Socrates' thought so deeply that he applies it even to the deity; he projects a new concept of god as a being that can cause only good, never evil. | |
| From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.197 |