14 ideas
7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
23634 | Accepting the existence of anything presupposes the notion of existence [Reid] |
Full Idea: The belief of the existence of anything seems to suppose a notion of existence - a notion too abstract, perhaps, to enter into the mind of an infant. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 05) | |
A reaction: But even a small infant has to cope with the experience of waking up from a dream. I don't see how existence can be anything other than a primitive concept in any system of ontology. |
23635 | Truths are self-evident to sensible persons who understand them clearly without prejudice [Reid] |
Full Idea: Self-evident propositions are those which appear evident to every man of sound understanding who apprehends the meaning of them distinctly, and attends to them without prejudice. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 10) | |
A reaction: I suspect that there are some truths which are self-evident to dogs. There are also truths which are self-evident to experts, but not to ordinary persons of good understanding. Self-evidence is somewhat contextual. Self-evidence can be empirical. |
7631 | Sensation is not committed to any external object, but perception is [Reid] |
Full Idea: Sensation, by itself, implies neither the conception nor belief of any external object. ...Perception implies a conviction and belief of something external. ...Things so different in their nature ought to be distinguished. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], II.16), quoted by Barry Maund - Perception | |
A reaction: Maund sees this as the origin of the two-stage view of perception, followed by Chisholm, Evans, Dretske and Lowe. It implies that 'looks', 'tastes', 'sounds' etc. are ambiguous words, having either phenomenal or realist meanings. I like it. |
23637 | Primary qualities are the object of mathematics [Reid] |
Full Idea: The primary qualities are the object of the mathematical sciences. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 17) | |
A reaction: He spells out this crucial point, which is not so obvious in Locke. The sciences totally rely on the primary qualities, so it is ridiculous to reject the distinction (which Reid accepts). |
23638 | Secondary qualities conjure up, and are confused with, the sensations which produce them [Reid] |
Full Idea: The thought of a secondary quality always carries us back to the sensation which it produces.We give the same name to both, and are apt to confound them. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 17) | |
A reaction: 'Redness', for example. Reid puts the point very nicely. Secondary qualities are not entirely mental; they pick out features of the world, but are much harder to understand than the primary qualities. The qualia question lurks. |
23639 | It is unclear whether a toothache is in the mind or in the tooth, but the word has a single meaning [Reid] |
Full Idea: If it be made a question whether the toothache be in the mind that feels it, or in tooth that is affected, much might be said on both sides, while it is not observed that the word has two meanings. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 18) | |
A reaction: I'm glad Reid was struck by the weird phenomenon of the brain apparently 'projecting' a pain into a tooth. Presumably before the brain's role was known, people were unaware of this puzzle. There certainly are not two distinct experiences. |
6492 | Reid is seen as the main direct realist of the eighteenth century [Reid, by Robinson,H] |
Full Idea: Reid is often represented by modern opponents of the empiricists as the outstanding protagonist of direct or naïve realism and common sense in the eighteenth century. | |
From: report of Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785]) by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.6 | |
A reaction: Robinson does not deny that this is Reid's view. Keith Lehrer is a great fan of Reid. Personally I think direct realism is quite clearly false, so I find myself losing interest in Reid's so-called 'common sense'. |
23641 | People dislike believing without evidence, and try to avoid it [Reid] |
Full Idea: To believe without evidence is a weakness which every man is concerned to avoid, and which every man wishes to avoid. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 20) | |
A reaction: It seems to be very common, though, for people to believe things on incredibly flimsy evidence, if they find the belief appealing. This is close to Clifford's Principle, but not quite as dogmatic. |
23642 | If non-rational evidence reaches us, it is reason which then makes use of it [Reid] |
Full Idea: If Nature gives us information of things that concern us, by other means that by reasoning, reason itself will direct us to receive that information with thankfulness, and to make the best use of it. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 20) | |
A reaction: This is more of a claim than an argument, but it is hard to see how anything could even be seen as evidence if some sort of rational judgement has not been made. The clever detective sees which facts are evidence. |
23224 | That all matter thinks is absurd, and would make each part of our bodies a distinct self-consciousness [Bentley] |
Full Idea: [Belief in thinking matter] leads to monstrous absurdities. …Every stock and stone would be a percipient and rational creature. …every single Atom of our bodies would be a distinct Animal, endued with self-consciousness and personal sensation of its own. | |
From: Richard Bentley (Matter and Motion Cannot Think [1692], p.14-15), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 2 | |
A reaction: Sounds correct, though presumably panpsychists don't think the flickers of consciousness in my toenails and hair constitute full-blown persons. I can't imagine what awareness is being claimed for my toenails. |
23640 | Only mature minds can distinguish the qualities of a body [Reid] |
Full Idea: I think it requires some ripeness of understanding to distinguish the qualities of a body from the body; perhaps this distinction is not made by brutes, or by infants. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 19) | |
A reaction: I'm glad the brutes get a mention in his assessment of these questions. I take such thinking to arise from what can be labelled the faculty of abstraction, which presumably only appears in a mature brain. It is second-level thinking. |
7909 | The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory. |
7908 | At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff. |