53 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. |
1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
14415 | A ground must be about its truth, and not just necessitate it [Merricks] |
Full Idea: A ground does not merely necessitate its truth. A ground is also what its truth is appropriately about. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.II) |
14408 | Truthmaker needs truths to be 'about' something, and that is often unclear [Merricks] |
Full Idea: It is not always obvious what (if anything) a truth is about, in the sense of 'about' relevant to Truthmaker and truth-supervenient-on-being. Prior says 'Queen Anne is dead' is not about Queen Anne, and may be about the Earth. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.III) | |
A reaction: A very nice and rather subtle objection to the Truthmaker thesis. Specifying the truthmaker for a given truth looks like a doddle in simple cases, but clearly it can become extremely elusive in other cases. |
14395 | If a ball changes from red to white, Truthmaker says some thing must make the change true [Merricks] |
Full Idea: If a single ball goes from being red to being white, Truthmaker implies that something exists which makes it true that the second thing follows the first. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.V) |
14398 | Truthmaker says if an entity is removed, some nonexistence truthmaker must replace it [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Truthmaker makes it impossible simply to remove an entity. One must always replace it with something else; namely, a truthmaker for the claim that that entity does not exist. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4.I-3) | |
A reaction: This is a particularly strong and persuasive argument from Merricks against the truthmaker view. Clearly the truthmaker for non-existence can't be there when it exists, and the destruction bringing the negative truthmaker into existence sounds odd. |
14403 | If Truthmaker says each truth is made by the existence of something, the theory had de re modality at is core [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Truthmaker says that, for each truth, there is something that, by its mere existence, makes that truth true, …so Truthmaker has de re modality at its core. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 5.III) | |
A reaction: I have no problem with de re modality, so this doesn't bother me. Merricks brings out nicely the baggage which you must carry if you are a Truthmaker. |
14397 | Truthmaker demands not just a predication, but an existing state of affairs with essential ingredients [Merricks] |
Full Idea: The claim 'that Fido is brown' seems to demand only a brown Fido, but Truthmaker demands more. It demands both that a state of affairs along the lines of 'Fido's being brown' exists, and also that this state has its constituents essentially. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4.I) | |
A reaction: One would need to reread Merricks to get this clear, but my instinct is that the two scenarios are not very different. 'A brown Fido' would require Fido to be necessarily brown to do the job. |
14396 | If 'truth supervenes on being', worlds with the same entities, properties and relations have the same truths [Merricks] |
Full Idea: 'Truth supervenes on being' says that any two possible worlds alike with respect to what entities exist and which properties (and relations) each of those entities exemplifies are thereby alike with respect to what is true. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4) | |
A reaction: Merricks says this view is found in early Wittgenstein, as well as in David Lewis. He suggests that this is a weaker and more plausible thesis than the full commitment to truthmakers. It still allows some truths to lack truthmakers. Sounds plausible. |
14400 | If truth supervenes on being, that won't explain why truth depends on being [Merricks] |
Full Idea: If 'truth supervenes on being' aims to articulate the idea that truth depends on being, it must say more than that truth supervenes on being. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4.VI) | |
A reaction: This is a perennial problem with supervenience accounts, such as the supervenience of beauty on the object, or of mind on brain. |
14394 | It is implausible that claims about non-existence are about existing things [Merricks] |
Full Idea: It is implausible that a claim asserting that a thing fails to exist is made true by - and so is appropriately about - some other, existing thing. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.V) |
14390 | Truthmaker isn't the correspondence theory, because it offers no analysis of truth [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Because Truthmaker offers no analysis of being true, Truthmaker is not the correspondence theory of truth. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 1.IV) | |
A reaction: I'm not convinced that the correspondence theory offers an 'analysis' of truth. It doesn't seem to do much more than offer a word which suggests an analogy with some relation in the world. |
14412 | Speculations about non-existent things are not about existent things, so Truthmaker is false [Merricks] |
Full Idea: That 'there might have been a dozen more fundamental particles' is true, but not appropriately about any existing entities or their properties. Since Truthmaker says that all truths are about existing entities, it must be false. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.VI) | |
A reaction: Since I don't necessarily agree that 'there might have been a dozen more fundamental particles' (see Scientific Essentialism), and I take the disagreement to have some basis, I doubt this idea. What stops 'there could be circular squares' from being true? |
14414 | I am a truthmaker for 'that a human exists', but is it about me? [Merricks] |
Full Idea: I am a truthmaker for 'that a human exists', but it is not obvious that that proposition is thus about me. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.I) | |
A reaction: This is part of the general rather good objection that it is often unclear what a truth is 'about' (Idea 14408). The original Gettier examples about justification illustrate this problem. They make things true, in a surprising way. |
14418 | Being true is not a relation, it is a primitive monadic property [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Being true is not a relation. …Being true is a monadic property. …Being true is a primitive property. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 8.IV) | |
A reaction: Even after reading Merricks on this, I am not sure I understand it. If a single sentence floats in the void, it is hard to see how the 'monadic' property of truth could accrue to it. |
14391 | If the correspondence theory is right, then necessary truths must correspond to something [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Suppose for the sake of argument that the correspondence theory is correct. Then it is analytic that each necessary truth, in virtue of being true, corresponds to something. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 2.II) | |
A reaction: The sort of nice simple observation for which I admire Merricks. You don't have to give up on the correspondence theory at this point, but you will have to go through with some substantial metaphysics to keep it afloat. |
14419 | Deflationism just says there is no property of being truth [Merricks] |
Full Idea: I take 'deflationism' to be nothing other than the claim that there is no property of being true. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 8.V) |
13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
14393 | The totality state is the most plausible truthmaker for negative existential truths [Merricks] |
Full Idea: The claim that the totality state is the sole truthmaker for negative existential truths emerges as the best position for a truthmaker theorist. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.III) |
14413 | Some properties seem to be primitive, but others can be analysed [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Some properties (perhaps negative charge, or the relation of identity) admit of no analysis, and so are primitive. But others are analysable, and so not primitive | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.I) |
14416 | An object can have a disposition when the revelant conditional is false [Merricks] |
Full Idea: It is possible for an object to have a disposition even though the relevant conditional is false. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.III) | |
A reaction: This is the now standard observation that finks (killing the disposition) and antidotes (blocking the effect of the disposition) can intervene, as in safety mechanisms in electrical gadgets. There may be replies available here. |
14392 | Fregeans say 'hobbits do not exist' is just 'being a hobbit' is not exemplified [Merricks] |
Full Idea: A Fregean about existence claims would say that 'that hobbits do not exist' is nothing other than the claim that 'being a hobbit' is not exemplified. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.II) | |
A reaction: 'My passport has ceased to exist' seems to be a bit more dramatic than a relationship with a concept. |
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. |
14410 | You believe you existed last year, but your segment doesn't, so they have different beliefs [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Your belief that you existed in the year 2000 is true; the belief of a segment of you that it then existed is false; so, by the indiscernibility of identicals, there must be two beliefs here. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.IV n20) | |
A reaction: Merricks may be begging the question here. But in the segment view there is nothing which can truly believe it existed a year ago, so therefore nothing here has continued existence, so the segments cannot be part of a single thing. |
14417 | Counterfactuals aren't about actuality, so they lack truthmakers or a supervenience base [Merricks] |
Full Idea: A counterfactual is not appropriately about the way anything is, …but about how something would be, had other things differed from how they actually are. As a result, true counterfactuals have neither truthmakers nor a superveniece base. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.IV) | |
A reaction: Might not the truthmakers for counterfactuals reside in the dispositional facts about actuality? We assess the truth of counterfactuals in degrees, so something must determine our views. |
14402 | If 'Fido is possibly black' depends on Fido's counterparts, then it has no actual truthmaker [Merricks] |
Full Idea: If Fido's being possibly black reduces (in Lewis's account) to the existence of black counterparts of Fido, then 'Fido is possibly black' is actually true, but it has no actually existing truthmaker. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 5.I) | |
A reaction: This problem is increasingly the target of my views about dispositions and powers. Fido is not possibly a prize-winning novelist, but is possibly dead or in good health, because of the actual nature and dispositions of Fido. |
5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
3979 | The Turing Machine is the best idea yet about how the mind works [Fodor on Turing] |
Full Idea: Alan Turing had (in his theory of the 'Turing Machine') what I suppose is the best thought about how the mind works that anyone has had so far. | |
From: comment on Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950]) by Jerry A. Fodor - Jerry A. Fodor on himself p.296 | |
A reaction: I am not convinced, because I don't think rationality is possible without consciousness. The brain may bypass the representations used by a computer. |
5321 | In 50 years computers will successfully imitate humans with a 70% success rate [Turing] |
Full Idea: In about fifty years' time it will be possible to program computers to play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. | |
From: Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950], p.57), quoted by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §5.9 | |
A reaction: This is the famous prophecy called 'The Turing Test'. The current state (2004) seems to be that the figure of 70% is very near, but no one sees much prospect of advancing much further in the next 100 years. Dennett sees jokes as a big problem. |
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. |
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! |
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. |
14407 | Presentist should deny there is a present time, and just say that things 'exist' [Merricks] |
Full Idea: I think presentists should deny that there is anything at all that is the present time, just as they should deny that there are past times or future times. They should say that existing at the present time is just 'existing'. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.I) | |
A reaction: The whole context is needed to understand Merrick's interesting claim. If there is no present, when can events happen? |
14411 | Maybe only presentism allows change, by now having a property, and then lacking it [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Maybe presentism alone allows for genuine change, by permitting the direct having of a property by something and then, later, the absolute lacking of that property by that same thing. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.IV n23) | |
A reaction: Four-dimensionalism (perdurantism) is the view which is most often charged with not explaining change, and that tends to be associated with eternalism. Are there just two coherent packages of views here? |
14406 | Presentists say that things have existed and will exist, not that they are instantaneous [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Presentists deny that everything is instantaneous; they think that many objects not only exist, but also have existed and will exist. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.I) | |
A reaction: The second half is because presentists are committed to the truth of tensed existence claims (despite a lack of any theory as to how they work). Does anyone hold a theory of Instantaneousism? |
14405 | How can a presentist explain an object's having existed? [Merricks] |
Full Idea: I am not sure what account presentists should give of an object's having existed. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.I) | |
A reaction: Personally I am pretty puzzled by the eternalist and growing-block accounts of an object having existed, so we are all up a gum tree here. The best bet is to pull truth and existence apart, but heaven knows what that implies. See Idea 14399. |
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). |