56 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. |
| 6887 | Linguistic philosophy approaches problems by attending to actual linguistic usage [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Linguistic philosophy gives careful attention to actual linguistic usage as a method of dealing with problems of philosophy, resulting in either their solution or dissolution. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.318) | |
| A reaction: This approach is now deeply discredited and unfashionable, and, I think (on the whole), rightly so. Philosophy should aim a little higher in (say) epistemology than merely describing how people use words like 'know' and 'believe' and 'justify'. |
| 6881 | Analytic philosophy studies the unimportant, and sharpens tools instead of using them [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Critics of analytic philosophers accuse them of excessive attention to relatively unimportant matters, and of being more interested in sharpening tools than in using them. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.111) | |
| A reaction: The last part is a nice comment. Both criticisms seem to me to contain some justice, but recently things have improved (notably in the new attention paid by analytical philosophy to metaphysics). In morality analytic philosophy seems superior. |
| 5439 | The 'hermeneutic circle' says parts and wholes are interdependent, and so cannot be interpreted [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: The 'hermeneutic circle' consists in the fact that an interpretation of part of a text requires a prior understanding of the whole, and the interpretation of the whole requires a prior understanding of its parts. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.247) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a benign circle, solved the way Aristotle solves the good man/good action circle. You make a start somewhere, like a child learning to speak, and work your way into the circle. Not really a problem. |
| 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 |
| 9959 | 'Real' definitions give the essential properties of things under a concept [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: A 'real definition' (as opposed to a linguistic one) is a statement which gives the essential properties of the things to which a given concept applies. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
| A reaction: This is often seen as old-fashioned, Aristotelian, and impossible to achieve, but I like it and aspire to it. One can hardly be precise about which properties are 'essential' to something, but there are clear cases. Your 'gold' had better not be brass. |
| 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? |
| 9961 | 'Contextual definitions' replace whole statements, not just expressions [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Usually in a definition the definiens (definition) can replace the definiendum (expression defined), but in a 'contextual definition' only the whole statement containing the definiens can replace the whole statement containing the definiendum. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
| A reaction: These definitions are crucial to Frege's enterprise in the 'Grundlagen'. Logicians always want to achieve definition with a single neat operation, but in ordinary language we talk around a definition, giving a variety of possibilities (as in teaching). |
| 9958 | Recursive definition defines each instance from a previous instance [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: An example of a recursive definition is 'y is an ancestor of x' is defined as 'y is a parent of x, or y is a parent of an ancestor of x'. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
| A reaction: From this example I guess that 'ancestor' means 'friend'. Or have I misunderstood? I think we need to define 'grand-parent' as well, and then offer the definition of 'ancestor' with the words 'and so on...'. Essentially, it is mathematical induction. |
| 9960 | A stipulative definition lays down that an expression is to have a certain meaning [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: A stipulative definition lays down that a given linguistic expression is to have a certain meaning; this is why they cannot be said to be correct or incorrect. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
| A reaction: These are uncontroversial when they are explicitly made in writing by a single person. The tricky case is where they are implicitly made in conversation by a community. After a century or two these look like facts, their origin having been lost. |
| 9957 | Ostensive definitions point to an object which an expression denotes [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Ostensive definitions explain what an expression means by pointing to an object, action, event, etc. denoted by the expression. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], 'definition') | |
| A reaction: These will need some context. If I define 'red' simply by pointing to a red square, you might conclude that 'red' means square. If I point to five varied red objects, you have to do the work of spotting the common ingredient. I can't mention 'colour'. |
| 6219 | The fallacy of composition is the assumption that what is true of the parts is true of the whole [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of composition is an inference relying on the invalid principle that whatever is true of every part is also true of the whole; thus, we cannot assume that because the members of a committee are rational, that the committee as a whole is. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.102) | |
| A reaction: This is a very common and very significant fallacy, which is perpetrated by major philosophers like Aristotle (Idea 31), unlike most of the other informal fallacies. |
| 6888 | Fuzzy logic is based on the notion that there can be membership of a set to some degree [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Fuzzy logic is based upon fuzzy set-theory, in which the simple notion of membership of a set is replaced by a notion of membership to some degree. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.214) | |
| A reaction: The idea that something could be to some degree a 'heap of sand' sounds plausible, but Williamson and Sorensen claim that the vagueness is all in us (i.e. it is epistemological), and not in the world. This will scupper fuzzy logic. |
| 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. |
| 6877 | Entailment is logical requirement; it may be not(p and not-q), but that has problems [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Entailment is the modern word saying that p logically follows from q. Its simplest definition is that you cannot have both p and not-q, but this has the problem that if p is impossible it will entail every possible proposition, which seems unacceptable. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.169) | |
| A reaction: The word 'entail' was introduced by G.E. Moore in 1920, in preference to 'imply'. It seems clear that we need terms for (say) active implication (q must be true if p is true) and passive implication (p must be false if q is false). |
| 6880 | Strict implication says false propositions imply everything, and everything implies true propositions [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Strict implication [not(p and not-q)] carries the paradoxes that a false proposition (p) implies any proposition (q), and a true proposition (q) is materially implied by any proposition (p). | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.270) | |
| A reaction: This seems to show that we have two drastically different notions of implication; one (the logician's) is boring and is defined by a truth table; the other (the ordinary interesting one) says if you have one truth you can deduce a second. |
| 6879 | 'Material implication' is defined as 'not(p and not-q)', but seems to imply a connection between p and q [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: 'Material implication' is a term introduced by Russell which is defined as 'the conjunction of p and not-q is false', but carries a strong implication that p implies q, and so there must be some kind of connection between them, which is misleading. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.270) | |
| A reaction: Mautner says statements of the form 'if p then q' are better called 'conditionals' than 'material implications'. Clearly there is a need for more precise terminology here, as the underlying concepts seem simple enough. |
| 6878 | A person who 'infers' draws the conclusion, but a person who 'implies' leaves it to the audience [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: 'Implying' is different from 'inferring', because a person who infers draws the conclusion, but a person who implies leaves it to the audience to draw the conclusion. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.279) | |
| A reaction: I had always taken it just that the speaker does the implying and the audience does the inferring. Of course a speaker may not know what he or she is implying, but an audience must be aware of what it is inferring. |
| 6889 | Vagueness seems to be inconsistent with the view that every proposition is true or false [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Vagueness is of great philosophical interest because it seems to be inconsistent with the view that every proposition is true or false. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.585) | |
| A reaction: This would explain why Williamson and Sorensen are keen to argue that vagueness is an epistemological (rather than ontological) problem. In ordinary English we are happy to say that p is 'sort of true' or 'fairly true'. |
| 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. |
| 6890 | Quantifiers turn an open sentence into one to which a truth-value can be assigned [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: In formal logic, quantifiers are operators that turn an open sentence into a sentence to which a truth-value can be assigned. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.464) | |
| A reaction: The standard quantifiers are 'all' and 'at least one'. The controversy is whether quantifiers actually assert existence, or whether (as McGinn says) they merely specify the subject matter of the sentence. I prefer the latter. |
| 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. |
| 6882 | Counterfactuals presuppose a belief (or a fact) that the condition is false [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: A conditional is called counterfactual because its use seems to presuppose that the user believes its antecedent to be false. Some insist that the antecedent must actually be false. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to favour the stricter second version. "If I am on Earth then I have weight" hardly sounds counterfactual. However, in "If there is a God then I will be saved" it is not clear whether it is counterfactual, so it had better be included. |
| 6886 | Counterfactuals are not true, they are merely valid [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: One view of counterfactuals says they are not true, but are merely valid. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
| A reaction: This makes counterfactuals a branch of logic rather than of metaphysics. I find the metaphysical view more exciting as they are part of speculation and are beyond the capacity of computers (which I suspect they are). |
| 6885 | Counterfactuals are true if in every world close to actual where p is the case, q is also the case [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Another view of counterfactuals (Lewis, Pollock, Stalnaker) is that they are true if at every possible world at which it is the case that p, and which is otherwise as similar as possible to the actual world, it is also the case that q. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
| A reaction: This seems a good way if putting if, like Lewis, you actually believe in the reality of possible worlds, because then you are saying a counterfactual is made true by a set of facts. Otherwise it is not clear what the truth-maker is here. |
| 6884 | Counterfactuals say 'If it had been, or were, p, then it would be q' [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: A counterfactual conditional (or 'counterfactual') is a proposition or sentence of the form 'If it had been the case that p, then it would have been the case that q', or 'If it were the case that p, then it would be the case that q'. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.114) | |
| A reaction: The first statement refers to the past, but the second (a subjunctive) refers to any situation at any time. We know more about inferences that we could have made in the past than we do about what is inferable at absolutely any time. |
| 6883 | Maybe counterfactuals are only true if they contain valid inference from premisses [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: One view of counterfactuals (Chisholm, Goodman, Rescher) is that they are only true if there is a valid logical inference from p and some other propositions of certain kinds (controversial) to q. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.115) | |
| A reaction: The aspiration that counterfactual claims should reduce to pure logic sounds a bit hopeful to me. Logic is precise, but assertions about how things would be is speculative and imaginative. |
| 5449 | Essentialism is often identified with belief in 'de re' necessary truths [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Many writers identify essentialism with the belief in 'de re' necessary truths | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.179) | |
| A reaction: I like essentialism, but I cautious about this. If I accept that I have an essential personal identity as I write this, but that it could change over time, the same principle might apply to other natural essences. |
| 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. |
| 6898 | Fallibilism is the view that all knowledge-claims are provisional [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Fallibilism is the view, proposed by Peirce, and found in Reichenbach, Popper, Quine etc that all knowledge-claims are provisional and in principle revisable, or that the possibility of error is ever-present. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.194) | |
| A reaction: I think of this as footnote to all thought which reads "Note 1: but you never quite know". Personally I would call myself a fallibilist, and am surprise at anyone who doesn't. The point is that this does not negate 'knowledge'. I am fairly sure 2+3=5. |
| 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. |
| 6452 | 'Sense-data' arrived in 1910, but it denotes ideas in Locke, Berkeley and Hume [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: The term 'sense-data' gained currency around 1910, through writings of Moore and Russell, but it seems to denote at least some of the things referred to as 'ideas of sense' (Locke), or 'ideas' and 'sensible qualities' (Berkeley), or 'impressions' (Hume). | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.518) | |
| A reaction: See also Hobbes in Idea 2356 for an even earlier version. It looks as if the concept of sense-data is almost unavoidable for empiricists, and yet most modern empiricists have rejected them. You still have to give an account of perceptual illusions. |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 4783 | Observing lots of green x can confirm 'all x are green' or 'all x are grue', where 'grue' is arbitrary [Mautner, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Observing green emeralds can confirm 'all emeralds are green' or 'all emeralds are grue', where 'grue' is an arbitrary predicate meaning 'green until t and then blue'. Thus predictions are arbitrary, depending on how the property is described. | |
| From: report of Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.225) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as the sort of sceptical nonsense that is concocted by philosophers who are enthralled to language instead of reality. It does draw attention to an expectation of stability in induction, both in language and in nature. |
| 4782 | 'All x are y' is equivalent to 'all non-y are non-x', so observing paper is white confirms 'ravens are black' [Mautner, by PG] |
| Full Idea: If observing a white sheet of paper confirms that 'all non-black things are non-ravens', and that is logically equivalent to 'all ravens are black' (which it is), then the latter proposition is confirmed by irrelevant observations. | |
| From: report of Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.105) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me more significant than the 'grue' paradox. If some observations can be totally irrelevant (except to God?), then some observations are much more relevant than others, so relevance is a crucial aspect of induction. |
| 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. |
| 11127 | If concepts just are mental representations, what of concepts we may never acquire? [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: We might say that the concept just is the mental representation, ...but there are concepts that human beings may never acquire. ...But if concepts are individuated by their possession conditions this will not be a problem. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Rationale and Maxims in Study of Concepts [2005], p.169), quoted by E Margolis/S Laurence - Concepts 1.3 | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I understand the notion of a concept we (or any other creature) may never acquire. They no more seem to exist than buildings that were never even designed. |
| 6899 | The references of indexicals ('there', 'now', 'I') depend on the circumstances of utterance [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Indexicals are expressions whose references depend on the circumstances of utterance, such as 'here', 'now', 'last month' 'I', 'you'. It was introduced by Peirce; Reichenbach called them 'token-reflexive', Russell 'ego-centric particulars'. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.272) | |
| A reaction: Peirce's terminology seems best. They obviously create great problems for any theory of reference which is rather theoretical and linguistic, such as by the use of descriptions. You can't understand 'Look at that!' without practical awareness. |
| 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. |
| 6896 | Double effect is the distinction between what is foreseen and what is intended [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of double effect is that there is a moral distinction between what is foreseen by an agent as a likely result of an action, and what is intended. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.150) | |
| A reaction: Abortion for a pregnancy threatening the mother's life. What always intrigues me is the effects which you didn't foresee because you couldn't be bothered to think about them. How much obligation do you have to try to foresee events? |
| 6897 | Double effect acts need goodness, unintended evil, good not caused by evil, and outweighing [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: It is suggested the double effect act requires 1) the act is good, 2) the bad effect is not intended, and is avoided if possible, 3) the bad effect doesn't cause the good result, 4) the good must outweigh the bad side effect. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.151) | |
| A reaction: It is suggested that these won't work for permissibility of an action, but they might be appropriate for blameworthiness. Personally I am rather impressed by the four-part framework here, whatever nitpicking objections others may have found. |
| 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! |
| 5452 | 'Essentialism' is opposed to existentialism, and claims there is a human nature [Mautner] |
| Full Idea: In philosophical anthropology, the view that there is a human nature or essence is called 'essentialism'. It became current in 1946 as a contrast to Sartre's existentialist view. | |
| From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.179) | |
| A reaction: Being a fan of Aristotle, I incline towards the older view, but you cannot get away from the fact that the human brain has similarities to a Universal Turing Machine, and diverse cultures produce very different individuals. |
| 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). |