35 ideas
| 13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom [phronesis] is correctly given the name 'kalon' [beautiful], since it performs the works that we say are beautiful and welcome as such. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 416d) | |
| A reaction: 'Phronesis' in Aristotle is more like prudence, or common sense, rather than wisdom ['sophia']. 'Kalon' also means fine or noble. This translation seems fair enough, though. |
| 13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: Are good people any different from wise ones? No, they aren't. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 398b) | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates's 'intellectualism', his view that being good is entirely a matter of reason and knowledge, and not a matter of habit or emotion. Do we still accept the traditional assumption that wise people are thereby morally good? |
| 6947 | Metaphysics does not rest on facts, but on what we are inclined to believe [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical systems have not usually rested upon any observed facts, or not in any great degree. They are chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seem 'agreeable to reason', which means that which we find ourselves inclined to believe. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.15) | |
| A reaction: This leads to Peirce's key claim - that we should allow our beliefs to be formed by something outside of ourselves. I don't share Peirce's contempt for metaphysics, which I take to be about the most abstract presuppositions of our ordinary beliefs. |
| 6937 | Reason aims to discover the unknown by thinking about the known [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 7) | |
| A reaction: I defy anyone to come up with a better definition of reasoning than that. The emphasis is on knowledge rather than truth, which you would expect from a pragmatist. …Actually the definition doesn't cover conditional reasoning terribly well. |
| 13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What would you call someone who knows how to ask and answer questions? Wouldn't you call him a dialectician? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 390c) | |
| A reaction: Asking good questions and giving good answers sound like two very different skills. I presume dialectic is the process of arriving at answers by means of asking the right questions. |
| 13776 | Truths say of what is that it is, falsehoods say of what is that it is not [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those statements that say of the things that are that they are, are true, while those that say of the things that are that they are not, are false. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385b) | |
| A reaction: It was quite a shock to discover this, because the famous Aristotle definition (Idea 586) is always quoted, and no modern writers seem to have any awareness of the Plato remark. Classical scholarship is very poor in analytic philosophy. |
| 13777 | A name is a sort of tool [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A name is a sort of tool. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 388a) | |
| A reaction: Idea 13775 gives a background for this metaphor, from earlier in the text. Wittgenstein has a famous toolkit metaphor for language. The whole of this text, 'Cratylus', is about names. |
| 13790 | A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The name-giver might have made a mistake at the beginning and then forced the other names to be consistent with it. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 436c) | |
| A reaction: Lovely. This is Gareth Evans's 'Madagascar' example. See Idea 9041. |
| 13791 | Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If things cannot be learned except from their names, how can we possibly claim that the name-givers or rule-setters have knowledge before any names had been given for them to know? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 438b) | |
| A reaction: Running through this is a hostility to philosophy of language, so I find it very congenial. We are animals who relate to the world before language takes a grip. We have full-blown knowledge of things, with no intervention of words. |
| 13789 | Anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 435d) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan, but it seems to be blatantly false. The best example is Gareth Evans's of joining in a conversation about a person ('Louis'?), and only gradually tuning in to the person to which the name refers. |
| 2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e) |
| 21492 | Realism is basic to the scientific method [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental hypothesis of the method of science is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinion of them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877]), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'method' | |
| A reaction: He admits later that this is only a commitment and not a fact. It seems to me that when you combine this idea with the huge success of science, the denial of realism is crazy. Philosophy has a lot to answer for. |
| 6949 | If someone doubted reality, they would not actually feel dissatisfaction [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Nobody can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.19) | |
| A reaction: This rests on Peirce's view that all that really matters is a sense of genuine dissatisfaction, rather than a theoretical idea. So even at the end of Meditation One, Descartes isn't actually worried about whether his furniture exists. |
| 13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If we undertake to cut something and make the cut in whatever way we choose and with whatever tool we choose, we will not succeed. If we cut according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with the natural tool, we'll succeed and cut correctly. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 387a) | |
| A reaction: I take this passage to be the creed for realists about the physical world - a commitment not merely to the existence of an external world, but to the existence of facts about it, which we may or may not be able to discover. |
| 13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Don't you think that just as each thing has a colour or some of those other qualities we mentioned, it also has a being or essence? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 423e) | |
| A reaction: The Greek here seems to be 'ousia', which I increasingly think should be translated as 'distinct identity', rather than as 'existence' or as 'essence'. Maybe the philosophical term 'haecceity' captures it best. |
| 13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
| 13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is the being or essence of each of the things that are something private to each person, as Protagoras tells us? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385e) | |
| A reaction: This kind of drastic personal relativism about essences doesn't sound very plausible, but the idea that essences are private to each culture, or to each language, must certainly be taken seriously. |
| 13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soc: Suppose we made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you; would there then be two Cratyluses, or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus? Crat: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 432c) | |
| A reaction: Don't think that science fiction examples are a modern development in philosophy. Plato has just invented the Startrek transporter. The two Cratyluses are the two spheres in Max Black's famous example. |
| 6940 | The feeling of belief shows a habit which will determine our actions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.10) | |
| A reaction: It is one thing to assert this fairly accurate observation, and another to assert that this is the essence or definition of a belief. Perhaps it is the purpose of belief, without being the phenomenological essence of it. We act in states of uncertainty. |
| 6941 | We are entirely satisfied with a firm belief, even if it is false [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: As soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.10) | |
| A reaction: This does not deny that the truth or falsehood of a belief is independent of whether we are satisfied with it. It is making a fair point, though, about why we believe things, and it can't be because of truth, because we don't know how to ensure that. |
| 6942 | We want true beliefs, but obviously we think our beliefs are true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We seek for a belief that we shall think to be true; but we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: If, as I do, you like to define belief as 'commitment to truth', Peirce makes a rather startling observation. You are rendered unable to ask whether your beliefs are true, because you have defined them as true. Nice point… |
| 6943 | A mere question does not stimulate a struggle for belief; there must be a real doubt [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief; there must be a real and living doubt. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: This the attractive aspect of Peirce's pragmatism, that he is always focusing on real life rather than abstract theory or pure logic. |
| 6598 | We need our beliefs to be determined by some external inhuman permanency [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This very sensible and interesting remark hovers somewhere between empiricism and pragmatism. Fogelin very persuasively builds his account of knowledge on it. The key point is that we hardly ever choose what to believe. See Idea 2454. |
| 6944 | Demonstration does not rest on first principles of reason or sensation, but on freedom from actual doubt [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is a common idea that demonstration must rest on indubitable propositions, either first principles of a general nature, or first sensations; but actual demonstration is completely satisfactory if it starts from propositions free from all actual doubt. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: Another nice example of Peirce focusing on the practical business of thinking, rather than abstract theory. I agree with this approach, that explanation and proof do not aim at perfection and indubitability, but at what satisfies a critical mind. |
| 6948 | Doubts should be satisfied by some external permanency upon which thinking has no effect [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: To satisfy our doubts it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.18) | |
| A reaction: This may be the single most important idea in pragmatism and in the philosophy of science. See Fodor on experiments (Idea 2455). Put the question to nature. The essential aim is to be passive in our beliefs - just let reality form them. |
| 13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It isn't even reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things are passing on and none remain. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 440a) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates Plato's horror at Heraclitus scepticism about the stable identity of things. It leads to the essentialism of Aristotle and Leibniz, who fear that there is no knowledge if we can't pin down individual identities. Know processes? |
| 6945 | Once doubt ceases, there is no point in continuing to argue [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Some people seem to love to argue a point after all the world is fully convinced of it. But no further advance can be made. When doubt ceases, mental action on the subject comes to an end; and, if it did go on, it would be without purpose. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: This is the way Peirce's pragmatism, which deals with how real thinking actually works (rather than abstract logic), deals with scepticism. However, there is a borderline where almost everyone is satisfied, but the very wise person remains sceptical. |
| 13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who named the soul thought that when the soul is present in the body, it causes it to live and gives it the power to breathe the air and be revitalized [anapsuchon]. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 399d) | |
| A reaction: I quote this to emphasis that Greek psuché is very different from the consciousness which is largely discussed in modern philosophy of mind. I find it helpful to make a real effort to grasp the Greek concept. The feeling of life within you. |
| 22306 | To explain false belief we should take belief as relating to a proposition's parts, not to the whole thing [Russell] |
| Full Idea: To explain belief in what is false we shall have to regard what is called belief in a proposition as not a thought related to the proposition, but rather as a thought related to the constituents of the proposition. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Papers of 1906 [1906], V.321), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 40 '1906' | |
| A reaction: Russell proposed a new theory of judgement, in order to explain erroneous judgements, given that true propositions are identical with facts. Of course there might be errors about the constituents, as well as about their structure. Othello is his example. |
| 13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
| Full Idea: 'Areté' signifies lack of perplexity [euporia, ease of movement], and that the flow of a good soul is unimpeded. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 415d) | |
| A reaction: Some highly dubious etymology going on here, and throughout 'Cratylus', but it gives a nice feeling for the way Socrates and Plato saw virtue. |
| 6939 | What is true of one piece of copper is true of another (unlike brass) [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The guiding principle is that what is true of one piece of copper is true of another; such a guiding principle with regard to copper would be much safer than with regard to many other substances - brass, for example. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 8) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is so beautifully simple and sensible. This gives the essential notion of a natural kind, and is a key notion in our whole understanding of physical reality. |
| 6938 | Natural selection might well fill an animal's mind with pleasing thoughts rather than true ones [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is probably of more advantage to an animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 8) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is a pragmatist saying that a set of beliefs might work fine but be untrue. So Peirce does not have the highly relativistic notion of truth of some later pragmatists. Good for him. Note the early date to be thinking about Darwin. |
| 13779 | The natural offspring of a lion is called a 'lion' (but what about the offspring of a king?) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that it is right to call a lion's offspring a 'lion' and a horse's offspring a 'horse' (I'm talking about natural offspring, not some monster). ...but by the same argument any offspring of a king should be called a 'king'. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 393b) | |
| A reaction: The standard modern difficulty is whether all descendants of dinosaurs are still called 'dinosaur', which they are not. |
| 13783 | Even the gods love play [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Even the gods love play. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 406c) |
| 6946 | If death is annihilation, belief in heaven is a cheap pleasure with no disappointment [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: If death is annihilation, then the man who believes that he will certainly go straight to heaven when he dies, provided he have fulfilled certain simple observances in this life, has a cheap pleasure which will not be followed by the least disappointment. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.12) | |
| A reaction: This is a nicely wicked summary of one side of Pascal's options. All the problems of the argument are built into Peirce's word "cheap". Peirce goes on to talk about ostriches burying their heads. |