199 ideas
9199 | Wisdom for one instant is as good as wisdom for eternity [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: If a person has wisdom for one instant, he is no less happy than he who possesses it for eternity. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Pierre Hadot - Philosophy as a way of life 8 | |
A reaction: [Hadot quotes Plutarch 'On Common Conceptions' 8,1062a] This makes it sound awfully like some sort of Buddhist 'enlightenment', which strikes like lightning. He does wisdom recognise itself - by a warm glow, or by the cautious thought that got you there? |
20853 | Wise men should try to participate in politics, since they are a good influence [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: The wise man will participate in politics unless something prevents him, for he will restrain vice and promote virtue. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.121 | |
A reaction: [from lost On Ways of Life Bk 1] We have made modern politics so hostile for its participants, thanks to cruel media pressure, that the best people now run a mile from it. Disastrous. |
7504 | Modern science comes from Descartes' view that knowledge doesn't need moral purity [Descartes, by Foucault] |
Full Idea: Before Descartes, one could not be impure, immoral, and know the truth. After Descartes, direct evidence is enough, and we have a nonascetic subject of knowledge; this change makes possible the institutionalisation of modern science. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics | |
A reaction: I would have thought Gassendi and the British Empiricists would be a more plausible source for this shift of attitude. Plato would relegate modern science to a lower level of knowledge. |
20772 | Three branches of philosophy: first logic, second ethics, third physics (which ends with theology) [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: There are three kinds of philosophical theorems, logical, ethical, and physical; of these the logic should be placed first, ethics second, and physics third (and theology is the final topic in physics). | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035a | |
A reaction: [in his lost 'On Lives' Bk 4] 'Theology is the final topic in physics'! That should create a stir in theology departments. Is this an order of study, or of importance? You come to theology right at the end of your studies. |
1569 | Descartes impoverished the classical idea of logos, and it no longer covered human experience [Roochnik on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes attacked and fundamentally altered classical logos. The result is an impoverished conception of reason, one that is unable to do justice to the significance and value of human experience. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason Prol. Xii |
2248 | Reason says don't assent to uncertain principles, just as much as totally false ones [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Reason now persuades me that I should withhold my assent no less carefully from opinions that are not completely certain and indubitable than I would from those that are patently false. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.18) |
2857 | Since Plato all philosophers have followed the herd, except Descartes, stuck in superficial reason [Nietzsche on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Since Plato all philosophers have followed moral 'instinct', or 'faith', or (as I call it) 'the herd'. One might exclude Descartes, the father of rationalism, who recognised only reason - but reason is only an instrument, and Descartes was superficial. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil §191 |
5969 | Chrysippus said the uncaused is non-existent [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus said that the uncaused is altogether non-existent. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c | |
A reaction: The difficulty is to see what empirical basis there can be for such a claim, or what argument of any kind other than an intuition. Induction is the obvious answer, but Hume teaches us scepticism about any claim that 'there can be no exceptions'. |
2290 | Once it is clear that there is a God who is no deceiver, I conclude that clear and distinct perceptions must be true [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Once I perceived that there is a God,…and that he is no deceiver, I then concluded that everything that I clearly and distinctly perceived is necessarily true. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.70) | |
A reaction: spotted by Arnauld |
3641 | It is circular to make truth depend on believing God's existence is true [Arnauld on Descartes] |
Full Idea: How does the author avoid reasoning in a circle when he says that we are sure that what we clearly and distinctly perceive is true only because God exists? But we can be sure that God exists only because we clearly and distinctly perceive this. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.71) by Antoine Arnauld - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fourth) 214 |
4524 | Descartes is right that in the Christian view only God can guarantee the reliability of senses [Nietzsche on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Even Descartes had a notion that in a Christian mode of thought (where God is a good creator), only God's veracity guarantees to us the judgements of our senses. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.71) by Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power (notebooks) §436 | |
A reaction: An unusual defence of the notorious Cartesian Circle. Of course, Descartes claims that God guarantees reason (as 'clear and distinct conception'), not senses, and only reason led Descartes to God. |
2266 | My general rule is that everything that I perceive clearly and distinctly is true [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I now seem able to posit as a general rule that everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.35) |
4301 | Someone may think a thing is 'clear and distinct', but be wrong [Leibniz on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Leibniz objected to Descartes' theory of truth, saying that people may think something is clear and distinct, and yet be wrong. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.36) by Gottfried Leibniz - works | |
A reaction: Quite so. Descartes has misunderstood what sort of concept 'truth' is meant to be. It's the usual confusion of epistemology and metaphysics. Truth is not a feature of the human mind. |
21388 | The causes of future true events must exist now, so they will happen because of destiny [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: True future events cannot be such as do not possess causes on account of which they will happen; therefore that which is true must possess causes: and so, when the [true future events] happen they will have happened as a result of destiny. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 9.23-8 | |
A reaction: [exact ref unclear] Presumably the current causes are the truthmakers for the future events, and so the past is the truthmaker of the future, if you are a determinist. |
20780 | Graspable presentations are criteria of facts, and are molded according to their objects [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Of presentations, some are graspable, some non-graspable. The graspable presentation, which they say is the criterion of facts [pragmata], is that which comes from an existing object and is stamped and molded in accordance wth the existing object itself. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46 | |
A reaction: [in lost Physics Bk 2] The big modern anguish over truth-as-correspondence is how you are supposed to verify the 'accordance'. This idea seems to blur the ideas of truth and justification (the 'criterion'), and you can't have both as accordance. |
20793 | How could you ever know that the presentation is similar to the object? [Sext.Empiricus on Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: One cannot say that the soul grasps the externally existing objects by means of the states of the senses on the basis of the similarity of these states to the externally existing objects. For on what basis will it know the similarity? | |
From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.74 | |
A reaction: This exactly the main modern reason for rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. You are welcome to affirm a robust view of truth, but supporting it by claiming a correspondence or resemblance is dubious. |
8077 | Stoic propositional logic is like chemistry - how atoms make molecules, not the innards of atoms [Chrysippus, by Devlin] |
Full Idea: In Stoic logic propositions are treated the way atoms are treated in present-day chemistry, where the focus is on the way atoms fit together to form molecules, rather than on the internal structure of the atoms. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: A nice analogy to explain the nature of Propositional Logic, which was invented by the Stoics (N.B. after Aristotle had invented predicate logic). |
20791 | Chrysippus has five obvious 'indemonstrables' of reasoning [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus has five indemonstrables that do not need demonstration:1) If 1st the 2nd, but 1st, so 2nd; 2) If 1st the 2nd, but not 2nd, so not 1st; 3) Not 1st and 2nd, the 1st, so not 2nd; 4) 1st or 2nd, the 1st, so not 2nd; 5) 1st or 2nd, not 2nd, so 1st. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.80-81 | |
A reaction: [from his lost text 'Dialectics'; squashed to fit into one quote] 1) is Modus Ponens, 2) is Modus Tollens. 4) and 5) are Disjunctive Syllogisms. 3) seems a bit complex to be an indemonstrable. |
8078 | Modus ponens is one of five inference rules identified by the Stoics [Chrysippus, by Devlin] |
Full Idea: Modus ponens is just one of the five different inference rules identified by the Stoics. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: Modus ponens strikes me as being more like a definition of implication than a 'rule'. Implication is what gets you from one truth to another. All the implications of a truth must also be true. |
10054 | Arithmetic and geometry achieve some certainty without worrying about existence [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Arithmetic, geometry and sciences of that kind only treat of things without taking any great trouble to ascertain whether they are actually existent or not, and contain some measure of certainty. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1), quoted by Alan Musgrave - Logicism Revisited §4 | |
A reaction: This is Musgrave's earliest quotation which seems to take the if-thenist view. |
6023 | Every proposition is either true or false [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: We hold fast to the position, defended by Chrysippus, that every proposition is either true or false. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 38 | |
A reaction: I am intrigued to know exactly how you defend this claim. It may depend what you mean by a proposition. A badly expressed proposition may have indeterminate truth, quite apart from the vague, the undecidable etc. |
2430 | I can learn the concepts of duration and number just from observing my own thoughts [Descartes] |
Full Idea: When I think that I exist now, and recollect that I existed in the past, and when I conceive various thoughts, the number of which I know, then I acquire the ideas of duration and number which I can thereafter transfer to all the other objects I wish. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.44) |
2252 | Surely maths is true even if I am dreaming? [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Surely whether I am asleep or awake, two plus three makes five, and a square does not have more than four sides. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.20) |
9901 | Numbers can't be sets if there is no agreement on which sets they are [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: The fact that Zermelo and Von Neumann disagree on which particular sets the numbers are is fatal to the view that each number is some particular set. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
A reaction: I agree. A brilliantly simple argument. There is the possibility that one of the two accounts is correct (I would vote for Zermelo), but it is not actually possible to prove it. |
9912 | There are no such things as numbers [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: There are no such things as numbers. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
A reaction: Mill said precisely the same (Idea 9794). I think I agree. There has been a classic error of reification. An abstract pattern is not an object. If I coin a word for all the three-digit numbers in our system, I haven't created a new 'object'. |
9151 | Benacerraf says numbers are defined by their natural ordering [Benacerraf, by Fine,K] |
Full Idea: Benacerraf thinks of numbers as being defined by their natural ordering. | |
From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence §5 | |
A reaction: My intuition is that cardinality is logically prior to ordinality, since that connects better with the experienced physical world of objects. Just as the fact that people have different heights must precede them being arranged in height order. |
13891 | To understand finite cardinals, it is necessary and sufficient to understand progressions [Benacerraf, by Wright,C] |
Full Idea: Benacerraf claims that the concept of a progression is in some way the fundamental arithmetical notion, essential to understanding the idea of a finite cardinal, with a grasp of progressions sufficing for grasping finite cardinals. | |
From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Crispin Wright - Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects 3.xv | |
A reaction: He cites Dedekind (and hence the Peano Axioms) as the source of this. The interest is that progression seems to be fundamental to ordianls, but this claims it is also fundamental to cardinals. Note that in the first instance they are finite. |
17904 | A set has k members if it one-one corresponds with the numbers less than or equal to k [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: Any set has k members if and only if it can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the set of numbers less than or equal to k. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
A reaction: This is 'Ernie's' view of things in the paper. This defines the finite cardinal numbers in terms of the finite ordinal numbers. He has already said that the set of numbers is well-ordered. |
17906 | To explain numbers you must also explain cardinality, the counting of things [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: I would disagree with Quine. The explanation of cardinality - i.e. of the use of numbers for 'transitive counting', as I have called it - is part and parcel of the explication of number. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I n2) | |
A reaction: Quine says numbers are just a progression, with transitive counting as a bonus. Interesting that Benacerraf identifies cardinality with transitive counting. I would have thought it was the possession of numerical quantity, not ascertaining it. |
9898 | We can count intransitively (reciting numbers) without understanding transitive counting of items [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: Learning number words in the right order is counting 'intransitively'; using them as measures of sets is counting 'transitively'. ..It seems possible for someone to learn the former without learning the latter. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
A reaction: Scruton's nice question (Idea 3907) is whether you could be said to understand numbers if you could only count intransitively. I would have thought such a state contained no understanding at all of numbers. Benacerraf agrees. |
17903 | Someone can recite numbers but not know how to count things; but not vice versa [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: It seems that it is possible for someone to learn to count intransitively without learning to count transitively. But not vice versa. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
A reaction: Benacerraf favours the priority of the ordinals. It is doubtful whether you have grasped cardinality properly if you don't know how to count things. Could I understand 'he has 27 sheep', without understanding the system of natural numbers? |
9897 | The application of a system of numbers is counting and measurement [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: The application of a system of numbers is counting and measurement. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
A reaction: A simple point, but it needs spelling out. Counting seems prior, in experience if not in logic. Measuring is a luxury you find you can indulge in (by imagining your quantity) split into parts, once you have mastered counting. |
9900 | For Zermelo 3 belongs to 17, but for Von Neumann it does not [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: Ernie's number progression is [φ],[φ,[φ]],[φ,[φ],[φ,[φ,[φ]]],..., whereas Johnny's is [φ],[[φ]],[[[φ]]],... For Ernie 3 belongs to 17, not for Johnny. For Ernie 17 has 17 members; for Johnny it has one. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
A reaction: Benacerraf's point is that there is no proof-theoretic way to choose between them, though I am willing to offer my intuition that Ernie (Zermelo) gives the right account. Seventeen pebbles 'contains' three pebbles; you must pass 3 to count to 17. |
9899 | The successor of x is either x and all its members, or just the unit set of x [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: For Ernie, the successor of a number x was the set consisting of x and all the members of x, while for Johnny the successor of x was simply [x], the unit set of x - the set whose only member is x. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
A reaction: See also Idea 9900. Benacerraf's famous point is that it doesn't seem to make any difference to arithmetic which version of set theory you choose as its basis. I take this to conclusively refute the idea that numbers ARE sets. |
8697 | Disputes about mathematical objects seem irrelevant, and mathematicians cannot resolve them [Benacerraf, by Friend] |
Full Idea: If two children were brought up knowing two different set theories, they could entirely agree on how to do arithmetic, up to the point where they discuss ontology. There is no mathematical way to tell which is the true representation of numbers. | |
From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Michčle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics | |
A reaction: Benacerraf ends by proposing a structuralist approach. If mathematics is consistent with conflicting set theories, then those theories are not shedding light on mathematics. |
8304 | No particular pair of sets can tell us what 'two' is, just by one-to-one correlation [Benacerraf, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: Hume's Principle can't tell us what a cardinal number is (this is one lesson of Benacerraf's well-known problem). An infinity of pairs of sets could actually be the number two (not just the simplest sets). | |
From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 10.3 | |
A reaction: The drift here is for numbers to end up as being basic, axiomatic, indefinable, universal entities. Since I favour patterns as the basis of numbers, I think the basis might be in a pre-verbal experience, which even a bird might have, viewing its eggs. |
9906 | If ordinal numbers are 'reducible to' some set-theory, then which is which? [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: If a particular set-theory is in a strong sense 'reducible to' the theory of ordinal numbers... then we can still ask, but which is really which? | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIB) | |
A reaction: A nice question about all reductions. If we reduce mind to brain, does that mean that brain is really just mind. To have a direction (up/down?), reduction must lead to explanation in a single direction only. Do numbers explain sets? |
9907 | If any recursive sequence will explain ordinals, then it seems to be the structure which matters [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: If any recursive sequence whatever would do to explain ordinal numbers suggests that what is important is not the individuality of each element, but the structure which they jointly exhibit. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
A reaction: This sentence launched the whole modern theory of Structuralism in mathematics. It is hard to see what properties a number-as-object could have which would entail its place in an ordinal sequence. |
9908 | The job is done by the whole system of numbers, so numbers are not objects [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: 'Objects' do not do the job of numbers singly; the whole system performs the job or nothing does. I therefore argue that numbers could not be objects at all. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
A reaction: This thought is explored by structuralism - though it is a moot point where mere 'nodes' in a system (perhaps filled with old bits of furniture) will do the job either. No one ever explains the 'power' of numbers (felt when you do a sudoku). Causal? |
9909 | The number 3 defines the role of being third in a progression [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: Any object can play the role of 3; that is, any object can be the third element in some progression. What is peculiar to 3 is that it defines that role, not by being a paradigm, but by representing the relation of any third member of a progression. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
A reaction: An interesting early attempt to spell out the structuralist idea. I'm thinking that the role is spelled out by the intersection of patterns which involve threes. |
9911 | Number words no more have referents than do the parts of a ruler [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: Questions of the identification of the referents of number words should be dismissed as misguided in just the way that a question about the referents of the parts of a ruler would be seen as misguided. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
A reaction: What a very nice simple point. It would be very strange to insist that every single part of the continuum of a ruler should be regarded as an 'object'. |
8925 | Mathematical objects only have properties relating them to other 'elements' of the same structure [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: Mathematical objects have no properties other than those relating them to other 'elements' of the same structure. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], p.285), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Structuralism Reconsidered §3 n13 | |
A reaction: Suppose we only had one number - 13 - and we all cried with joy when we recognised it in a group of objects. Would that be a number, or just a pattern, or something hovering between the two? |
9938 | How can numbers be objects if order is their only property? [Benacerraf, by Putnam] |
Full Idea: Benacerraf raises the question how numbers can be 'objects' if they have no properties except order in a particular ω-sequence. | |
From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], p.301) by Hilary Putnam - Mathematics without Foundations | |
A reaction: Frege certainly didn't think that order was their only property (see his 'borehole' metaphor in Grundlagen). It might be better to say that they are objects which only have relational properties. |
9910 | Number-as-objects works wholesale, but fails utterly object by object [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: The identification of numbers with objects works wholesale but fails utterly object by object. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a glaring problem for platonists. You can stare at 1728 till you are blue in the face, but it only begins to have any properties at all once you examine its place in the system. This is unusual behaviour for an object. |
9903 | Number words are not predicates, as they function very differently from adjectives [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: The unpredicative nature of number words can be seen by noting how different they are from, say, ordinary adjectives, which do function as predicates. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
A reaction: He points out that 'x is seventeen' is a rare construction in English, unlike 'x is happy/green/interesting', and that numbers outrank all other adjectives (having to appear first in any string of them). |
9904 | The set-theory paradoxes mean that 17 can't be the class of all classes with 17 members [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: In no consistent theory is there a class of all classes with seventeen members. The existence of the paradoxes is a good reason to deny to 'seventeen' this univocal role of designating the class of all classes with seventeen members. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
A reaction: This was Frege's disaster, and seems to block any attempt to achieve logicism by translating numbers into sets. It now seems unclear whether set theory is logic, or mathematics, or sui generis. |
5992 | Chrysippus says action is the criterion for existence, which must be physical [Chrysippus, by Tieleman] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus regarded power to act and be acted upon as the criterion for existence or being - a test satisfied by bodies alone. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Teun L. Tieleman - Chrysippus | |
A reaction: This defines existence in terms of causation. Is he ruling out a priori a particle (say) which exists, but never interacts with anything? If so, he is inclining towards anti-realism. |
21673 | There are simple and complex facts; the latter depend on further facts [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus says there are two classes of facts, simple and complex. An instance of a simple fact is 'Socrates will die at a given date', ...but 'Milo will wrestle at Olympia' is a complex statement, because there can be no wrestling without an opponent. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 13.30 | |
A reaction: We might say that there are atomic and complex facts, but our atomic facts tend to be much simpler, usually just saying some object has some property. |
16652 | Stoics categories are Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation [Chrysippus, by Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The Stoics proposed a rather modest categorisation of Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.1 |
2297 | If I can separate two things in my understanding, then God can separate them in reality [Descartes] |
Full Idea: My ability clearly and distinctly to understand one thing without another suffices to make me certain that the one thing is different from the other, since they can be separated from each other (at least by God). | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) |
3628 | Substance cannot be conceived or explained to others [Gassendi on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The alleged naked, or rather hidden, substance of wax is something that we can neither ourselves conceive nor explain to others. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.31) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 273 |
16058 | Dion and Theon coexist, but Theon lacks a foot. If Dion loses a foot, he ousts Theon? [Chrysippus, by Philo of Alexandria] |
Full Idea: If two individuals occupied one substance …let one individual (Dion) be thought of as whole-limbed, the other (Theon) as minus one foot. Then let one of Dion's feet be amputated. Theon is the stronger candidate to have perished. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Philo (Alex) - On the Eternity of the World 48 | |
A reaction: [SVF 2.397 - from Chrysippus's lost 'On the Growing Argument'] This is the original of Tibbles the Cat. Dion must persist to change, and then ousts Theon (it seems). Philo protests at Theon ceasing to exist when nothing has happened to him. |
16631 | If we remove surface qualities from wax, we have an extended, flexible, changeable thing [Descartes] |
Full Idea: After taking away what does not belong to the wax, let us see what is left: surely, it is nothing other than a thing that is extended, flexible and changeable. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], (VII:30-1)), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 08.2 | |
A reaction: Aristotle worried about nothing being left when you 'stripped' an object, so this could be seen as a positive contribution to scholastic philosophy. Why is the substrate 'flexible'? He talks elsewhere of taking the clothes off the wax and seeing it naked. |
17865 | Descartes gives an essence by an encapsulating formula [Descartes, by Almog] |
Full Idea: For Descartes in providing an essence for an item [such as God, wax, or a mathematical kind] we provide an encapsulating formula defining the phenomenon. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Joseph Almog - Nature Without Essence I | |
A reaction: I argue that this is not what Aristotle intended be an essentialist definition, which can be quite long, like a scientific monograph. Descartes firmly rejected Aristotle's 'substantial form' as essence. |
16059 | Change of matter doesn't destroy identity - in Dion and Theon change is a condition of identity [Chrysippus, by Long/Sedley] |
Full Idea: The Growing Argument said any change of matter is a change of identity. Chrysippus presents it with a case (Dion and Theon) where material diminution is the necessary condition of enduring identity, since the diminished footless Dion survives. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by AA Long / DN Sedley - Hellenic Philosophers commentary 28:175 | |
A reaction: [The example, in Idea 16058, is the original of Tibbles the Cat] This is a lovely bold idea which I haven't met in the modern discussions - that identity actually requires change. The concept of identity is meaningless without change? |
9905 | Identity statements make sense only if there are possible individuating conditions [Benacerraf] |
Full Idea: Identity statements make sense only in contexts where there exist possible individuating conditions. | |
From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], III) | |
A reaction: He is objecting to bizarre identifications involving numbers. An identity statement may be bizarre even if we can clearly individuate the two candidates. Winston Churchill is a Mars Bar. Identifying George Orwell with Eric Blair doesn't need a 'respect'. |
2301 | We know by thought that what is done cannot be undone [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Some ideas belong exclusively to the mind, such as perceiving that what has been done cannot be undone, and everything else that is known by the light of nature. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.82) |
3642 | Pythagoras' Theorem doesn't cease to be part of the essence of triangles just because we doubt it [Arnauld on Descartes] |
Full Idea: You can't reason 'I know the triangle is right-angled, but I doubt Pythagoras' Theorem, therefore it does not belong to the essence of right-angled triangles that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides'. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) by Antoine Arnauld - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fourth) 202 |
20190 | Belief is not an intellectual state or act, because propositions are affirmed or denied by the will [Descartes, by Zagzebski] |
Full Idea: Descartes claimed that belief is not purely an intellectual state or act, since it is not the intellect that affirms or denies a proposition proposed for its consideration, but the will. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], IV) by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski - Virtues of the Mind 4.2 | |
A reaction: This is the canonical idea of 'doxastic voluntarism' - that we choose what to believe or not believe. In modern times this view has become deeply unfashionable. I don't we should wholly reject the possibility of choosing to believe something. |
1582 | Labelling slightly doubtful things as false is irrational [Roochnik on Descartes] |
Full Idea: To declare that which is the least bit dubious as absolutely false is to declare war on logos. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.17) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.72 |
2256 | Maybe there is only one certain fact, which is that nothing is certain [Descartes] |
Full Idea: If I suppose that everything I see is false. Nothing I remember actually existed. I have no senses, and body, shape, extension, movement and place are all chimeras. What then is true? Perhaps just the single fact that nothing is certain. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.24) |
1585 | Descartes tried to model reason on maths instead of 'logos' [Roochnik on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes rejects logos because it does not achieve the certainty he craves. He replaces it with his own model of rationality, one modelled essentially on mathematics. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.76 |
2258 | I must even exist if I am being deceived by something [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Doubtless I exist if I persuade myself of something. But there is some powerful and cunning deceiver who is deliberately deceiving me. Then too there is no doubt that I exist, if he is deceiving me. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.25) |
3160 | The Cogito is a transcendental argument, not a piece of a priori knowledge [Rey on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The Cogito is a transcendental argument; Descartes doesn't claim that it is a priori that he exists, but that any doubt or denial that he exists would presuppose his existence. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 3.2.1 |
3849 | "I think therefore I am" is the absolute truth of consciousness [Sartre on Descartes] |
Full Idea: "I think therefore I am" is the absolute truth of consciousness as it attains to itself. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2) by Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism and Humanism p.44 |
2259 | "I am, I exist" is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind [Descartes] |
Full Idea: "I am, I exist" is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.25) |
6929 | Modern philosophy set the self-conscious ego in place of God [Descartes, by Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Modern philosophy set the thinking being, the ego, and the self-conscious mind in the place of the merely ideated being, in place of God. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §37 | |
A reaction: Descartes would be shocked by this interpretation, but God comes third in his logical priorities, after the existence of his ego, and its reliance on what is clear and distinct. |
6914 | Descartes transformed 'God is thinkable, so he exists' into 'I think, so I exist' [Descartes, by Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Descartes transformed the proposition 'because God is thinkable, therefore he exists' into the proposition 'I think, therefore I am'. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §18 | |
A reaction: This implies that Descartes' foundation is the Ontological Argument rather than the Cogito. It certainly shows how a priori synthetic thinking is basic in Descartes - that views of existence derive from pure thought. Was Descartes an idealist? |
4641 | In the Meditations version of the Cogito he says "I am; I exist", which avoids presenting it as an argument [Descartes, by Baggini /Fosl] |
Full Idea: Descartes may have been aware of the danger of begging the question (in claiming "I think therefore I am") because in 'Meditations' he says "I am; I exist", which is not presented in the form of an argument. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by J Baggini / PS Fosl - The Philosopher's Toolkit §3.22 | |
A reaction: Certainly the word 'therefore' cries out for a strict analysis of what is being inferred from what, but presenting the Cogito as a self-evident intuition for the 'natural light' has its own problems. |
2260 | If I don't think, there is no reason to think that I exist [Descartes] |
Full Idea: It could be that if I were to cease all thinking I would then utterly cease to exist. …I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is, a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.27) |
1117 | The Cogito proves subjective experience is basic, but makes false claims about the Self [Russell on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The Cogito argument proves that subjective experience is the most reliable, but it makes unjustified claims about the certainty of the Self. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch 2 |
3120 | Autistic children seem to use the 'I' concept without seeing themselves as thinkers [Segal on Descartes] |
Full Idea: It really does not seem (as a result of research into autism) that when one thinks of oneself with one's 'I' concept, one must thereby represent oneself as a thinker. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Gabriel M.A. Segal - A Slim Book about Narrow Content 4.2 |
5360 | The thing which experiences may be momentary, and change with the next experience [Russell on Descartes] |
Full Idea: It might be that the something which sees a brown colour is quite momentary, and not the same thing which has some different experience the next moment. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This has become one of the standard objections to the Cogito. Note that Descartes himself was aware of the problem (Idea 1400). Sometimes experiences make no sense if there isn't something connecting them to previous experiences. |
2870 | 'I think' assumes I exist, that thinking is known and caused, and that I am doing it [Nietzsche on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The sentence "I think" contains a series of unprovable assertions; for example, it is I who think, that it must be something at all which thinks, that thinking is by an entity thought of as a cause, that an 'I' exists, and that I know what thinking is. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil §16 |
5188 | A thought doesn't imply other thoughts, or enough thoughts to make up a self [Ayer on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to be the main objection to the Cogito. It doesn't refute it, but simply recommends cautious restraint in what is being claimed as its conclusion. I can't make much sense of a thought which has no thinker at all. |
3624 | That I perform an activity (thinking) doesn't prove what type of thing I am [Hobbes on Descartes] |
Full Idea: From the fact that I am thinking it follows that I exist, since that which thinks is not nothing. But when he adds 'that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect', a doubt arises. ..You might as well say 'I am walking, therefore I am a walk'. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Thomas Hobbes - Objections to 'Meditations' (Third) 172 |
4526 | The Cogito assumes a priori the existence of substance, when actually it is a grammatical custom [Nietzsche on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes' Cogito posits as 'true a priori' our belief in the concept of substance, but the idea that when there is a thought there has to be something 'that thinks' is simply a formulation of our grammatical custom that adds a doer to every deed. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power (notebooks) §484 | |
A reaction: This anticipates the sort of thing Ayer and the logical positivists said. It is not clear that Descartes does think the mind is a substance, but this pinpoints a possible presupposition in Descartes. |
5579 | How can we infer that all thinking involves self-consciousness, just from my own case? [Kant on Descartes] |
Full Idea: It seems strange that the condition under which I think is to be valid for everything that thinks, and that on an empirical-seeming proposition we can presume to ground a universal judgement, that everything that thinks has self-consciousness. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason A346 | |
A reaction: Kant is not bothered by this, and says we know it a priori. If it is indeed an empirical proposition, it becomes an induction with one instance, which is the notorious weakness of the 'argument from analogy' to other minds. The Cogito is not empirical. |
5580 | My self is not an inference from 'I think', but a presupposition of it [Kant on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The simplicity of my self is not inferred from the proposition "I think", but rather the former lies in every thought. 'I am simple' is an immediate apperception, just as the Cogito is tautological, since 'cogito' immediately asserts the reality. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason A355 | |
A reaction: This is why Kant thinks the self is the result of a transcendental deduction, rather than of a direct observation of the self-evident. Personally I side with Descartes. I do not 'observe' my self, but I am acutely aware of its presence and actions. |
5587 | We cannot give any information a priori about the nature of the 'thing that thinks' [Kant on Descartes] |
Full Idea: If anyone asks me: What is the constitution of a thing that thinks? I do not know how to answer a priori, because the answer ought to be synthetic (for an analytic answer explains thinking, but gives no cognition of that on which thinking rests). | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason A398 | |
A reaction: This has always seemed a problem with Descartes' very thin account of his 'res cogitans', but then what exactly does Kant want to know? Is it a metaphysical disaster if we think of the self as having no more identity than a geometrical point? |
5588 | The fact that I am a subject is not enough evidence to show that I am a substantial object [Kant on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The fact that I am a subject ..does not signify that as object I am a self-subsisting being or substance; the latter goes too far, and hence demands data that are not encountered at all in thinking. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason B407 | |
A reaction: This is a key problem with the Cogito - that so little can be said about the 'I' of which the existence has been proved that it is not clear that anything has been proved at all - certainly not that there is a continuous and stable Ego. |
13923 | Descartes' claim to know his existence before his essence is misleading or absurd [Descartes, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: Descartes claimed to know that he existed before he knew what he was - before he grasped his own essence. This is either disingenuous or intended non-literally, if it is not to be dismissed as incomprehensible. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by E.J. Lowe - Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence 2 n32 | |
A reaction: If something comes at you from the mist, you can know that it exists before you know what it is. How could you understand the essence of something if you hadn't first encountered its existence? Lowe has it the wrong way round. |
6930 | Modern self-consciousness is a doubtful abstraction; only senses and feelings are certain [Feuerbach on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The self-consciousness of modern philosophy is only a being ideated and mediated through abstraction and thus a doubtful being; certain and immediately assured is only that which is an object of the senses, perception and feeling. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §37 | |
A reaction: This seems to agree with Hume's empirical doubts about the self (Idea 1316). The comment that 'abstraction' is involved in the Cogito argument is interesting. Descartes said the Cogito was a 'simply intuition of the mind' (Idea 3622). |
1369 | It is a precondition of the use of the word 'I' that I exist [Ayer on Descartes] |
Full Idea: In the Cogito the work is all done by the demonstrative word 'I', because it is a precondition of the use of such a word that the thing to which it points has to exist. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by A.J. Ayer - The Problem of Knowledge Ch 2 (iii) |
2873 | Maybe 'I' am not the thinker, but something produced by thought [Nietzsche on Descartes] |
Full Idea: In the past one said 'I' is the condition, 'think' is the predicate and conditioned - thinking is an activity which the subject causes; but maybe the reverse is true - and 'I' is only a synthesis produced by thinking. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil §54 |
3623 | The Cogito only works if you already understand what thought and existence are [Mersenne on Descartes] |
Full Idea: In order to be certain that you are thinking you must know what thought or thinking is, and what your existence is; but since you do not yet know what these things are, how can you know that you are thinking or that you exist? | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Marin Mersenne - Objections to 'Meditations' (Sixth) 413 |
2261 | My perceiving of things may be false, but my seeming to perceive them cannot be false [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I now see a light, I hear a noise, I feel heat. Perhaps these things are false, since I am asleep. Yet I certainly do seem to see, hear, and feel warmth. This cannot be false. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.29) |
2257 | I myself could be the author of all these self-delusions [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I myself could be the author of all these self-delusions. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.24) |
2279 | A triangle has a separate non-invented nature, shown by my ability to prove facts about it [Descartes] |
Full Idea: A triangle has a determinate nature, which I did not fabricate, and which does not depend on my mind. This is evident from the fact that various properties can be demonstrated regarding it, such as that its three angles are equal to two right angles. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.64) |
6490 | For Descartes, objects have one primary quality, which is geometrical [Descartes, by Robinson,H] |
Full Idea: Descartes denies any similarity between the physical world and ideas, as matter possesses only geometrical properties; Locke allows more primary qualities, but follows Boyle and the atomists in treating secondary qualities as creations of sense. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.5 | |
A reaction: The interesting point to note here is that Descartes' geometrical view of objects (they are defined purely by 'extension') is the view that they have one minimal primary quality. I prefer Locke's view, of which the history (given here) is interesting. |
2295 | Why does pain make us sad? [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Why should a certain sadness of spirit arise from a sensation of pain? | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.76) |
2263 | The wax is not perceived by the senses, but by the mind alone [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The perception of the wax is neither a seeing, nor a touching, nor an imagining. Rather, it is an inspection on the part of the mind alone. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.31) |
3627 | Dogs can make the same judgements as us about variable things [Gassendi on Descartes] |
Full Idea: A dog certainly makes similar kinds of judgement to your perceiving men by their hats and cloaks when they see their master's hat or clothes, …and they can recognise their master even if he is standing, sitting, lying down, or crouching. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.32) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 272 |
2264 | We don't 'see' men in heavy clothes, we judge them to be men [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Were I to look out of my window and observe men crossing the square, I would ordinarily say that I see the men themselves. But what do I see but hats and clothes, which could conceal automata? Yet I judge them to be men. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.32) |
2265 | We perceive objects by intellect, not by senses or imagination [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Bodies are not, properly speaking, perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.34) |
2247 | To achieve good science we must rebuild from the foundations [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Once in my life I had to raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations, if I wanted to establish anything firm and lasting in the sciences. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.17) | |
A reaction: This sentence is the beginning of the Enlightenment. The project of proving absolutely everything, and in a foundational way, is now met with much scepticism. I will never abandon the project! |
2255 | Only one certainty is needed for progress (like a lever's fulcrum) [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Archimedes sought but one firm and immovable point in order to move the entire earth. Just so, great things are to be hoped for if I succeed in finding just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshaken. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.24) | |
A reaction: The classic foundationalist difficulty is that you may find something totally certain, but is it a fulcrum? Or is it just minimal, boring and useless? |
2251 | Even if my body and objects are imaginary, there may be simpler things which are true [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Perhaps even though general things like eyes could be imaginary, still one must admit that certain other things that are even more simple and universal are true. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.20) |
6347 | Descartes can't begin again, because sceptics doubt cognitive processes as well as beliefs [Pollock/Cruz on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes' strategy of starting over will not work, because the skeptic is not just questioning our beliefs, he is also questioning the cognitive processes by which we arrive at our beliefs, and if we start all over again we use the same processes. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) | |
A reaction: Scepticism comes in degrees, so there is not one strategy employed by sceptics. It is certainly true, though, that nothing can resist extreme scepticism. The most extreme view is to refuse to accept the meaningfulness of all belief language. |
2296 | If pain is felt in a lost limb, I cannot be certain that a felt pain exists in my real limbs [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I have heard it said by people whose arm or leg has been amputated that they still sensed pain in the lost limb. Thus it does not seem certain that one of my bodily members causes me pain, even though I sense pain in it. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.77) |
3620 | We correct sense errors with other senses, not intellect [Mersenne on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Owing to refraction a stick which is in fact straight appears bent in water. What corrects the error? The intellect? Not at all; it is the sense of touch. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.18) by Marin Mersenne - Objections to 'Meditations' (Sixth) 418 |
3619 | The senses can only report, so perception errors are in the judgment [Gassendi on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Although there is deception or falsity, it is not to be found in the senses; for the sense are quite passive and report only appearances, which must appear the way they do owing to their causes. The error or falsity is in the judgement or the mind. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.18) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 332 |
2249 | It is prudent never to trust your senses if they have deceived you even once [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The senses are sometimes deceptive, and it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.18) |
2253 | God may have created nothing, but made his creation appear to me as it does now [Descartes] |
Full Idea: How do I know that God did not bring it about that there is no earth or heavens, no extension, shape, size or place, and yet that all these things appear to me precisely as they do now? | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.21) |
2254 | To achieve full scepticism, I imagine a devil who deceives me about the external world and my own body and senses [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I will suppose an evil genius, supremely powerful and clever, who has directed his entire effort at deceiving me. I will regard all external things as devilish hoaxes, and myself as not possessed of a body or senses, but falsely believing these things. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §1.22) |
2305 | Waking actions are joined by memory to all our other actions, unlike actions of which we dream [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Dreams are never joined by the memory with all the actions of life, as is the case with those actions that occur when one is awake. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.89) |
2294 | I can only sense an object if it is present, and can't fail to sense it when it is [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Perceptions come upon me without my consent, to the extent that, wish as I may, I could not sense any object unless it was present to a sense organ, nor could I fail to sense it when it was present. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.75) |
4862 | Can the pineal gland be moved more slowly or quickly by the mind than by animal spirits? [Spinoza on Descartes] |
Full Idea: I am in ignorance whether the pineal gland can be agitated more slowly or more quickly by the mind than by the animal spirits. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.82) by Baruch de Spinoza - The Ethics V Pref | |
A reaction: Is this the earliest statement of the problem of double causation? It is a classic difficulty for dualists, highlighted by Ryle, among others. Avoidance of double causation is a classic reason for moving to monism about mind. |
3850 | We discovers others as well as ourselves in the Cogito [Sartre on Descartes] |
Full Idea: It is not only oneself that one discovers in the Cogito, but those of others too. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2) by Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism and Humanism p.45 | |
A reaction: The analytical tradition requires a bit more than an instant perception of others in oneself. The problem of 'other minds' must at least be mentioned. However, the way to get to know a universal is to fully study a single instance. |
2302 | Faculties of the mind aren't parts, as one mind uses them [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The faculties of willing, sensing, understanding and so on cannot be called "parts" of the mind, since it is one and the same mind that wills, senses and understands. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.86) | |
A reaction: It is best here to say that Descartes has confused the 'mind' with the 'person'. These faculties make (I think) no sense without a person to perform them, but the 'mind' surely includes these conscious activities, and many fringe events as well. |
1875 | Dogs show reason in decisions made by elimination [Chrysippus, by Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: A dog makes use of the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism when, arriving at a spot where three ways meet, after smelling at two roads by which the quarry did not pass, he rushes off at once by the third without pausing to smell. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.69 | |
A reaction: As we might say: either A or B or C; not A; not B; therefore C. I wouldn't want to trust this observation without a lot of analysis of slow-motion photography of dogs as crossroads. Even so, it is a nice challenge to Descartes' view of animals. |
3151 | Descartes put thought at the centre of the mind problem, but we put sensation [Rey on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes confined his dualism to problems of reason and language. Sensation and even imagination seemed to him physically unproblematic. Nowadays it is the reverse: thinking seems easy - but feeling? | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 2 n16 | |
A reaction: Thinking only 'seems easy' if it can be done without consciousness, and that is beginning to look like a dubious assumption. The most interesting and promising area is the borderline between a chess-playing machine and a human chess player. |
21800 | Descartes mentions many cognitive faculties, but reduces them to will and intellect [Descartes, by Schmid] |
Full Idea: Although Descartes accepted a variety of cognitive faculties like the intellect, will, power of judgement, imagination, memory, and perception, he took them all to be ultimately reducible to different operations of the will and intellect. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 4) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 2 | |
A reaction: In Med 4, it is most clear, when he reduces 'judgement' to will and intellect, which enable his to assent to an idea. Nietzsche saw Descartes' view as simplistic. |
1399 | Imagination and sensation are non-essential to mind [Descartes] |
Full Idea: This power of imagination which is in me, in so far as it differs from the power of conceiving, is in no way necessary to my nature or essence. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.73) | |
A reaction: This is my candidate for the biggest blunder ever made by a great philosopher. But it was thanks to his mistake that I began to realise how totally central imagination is to the very act of thinking. Thank you, René. |
1400 | Some cause must unite the separate temporal sections of a person [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Because the entire span of one's life can be divided into countless parts, each one wholly independent of the rest, it does not follow from the fact that I existed a short time ago that I exist now, unless some cause creates and preserves me each moment. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.49) | |
A reaction: How could I 'prove' that this computer is the same computer as it was five minutes ago, even after I have accepted the straightforward existence of the computer? This is the Enlightenment Project, the mad desire to prove absolutely everything. |
1401 | Since I only observe myself to be thinking, I conclude that that is my essence [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Since I do not observe that any other thing belongs necessarily to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing, or substance whose essence is thinking. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) | |
A reaction: This actually appears to be my favourite confusion - of episemology with ontology. Compare 'whenever I see him he is smiling, so he must be happy'. Personally I am happy to say that my essence is thinking, as long as it needn't be conscious. |
2299 | I can exist without imagination and sensing, but they can't exist without me [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I can understand myself without the faculties of imagining and sensing, but not vice versa; I cannot understand them without me - a substance endowed with understanding. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) | |
A reaction: I think this is a fundamental and important error on Descartes' part. The idea that understanding is possible without imagination (and even sensation) is wrong, and it leads to the misleading concept of 'pure' reason. |
6907 | For Descartes a person's essence is the mind because objects are perceived by mind, not senses [Descartes, by Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: For Descartes the essence of corporeal things is not an object of the senses, but only of the mind; and hence it is not the senses but the mind that is the essence of the perceiving subject, that is, of man. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17 | |
A reaction: This, of course, is why Descartes' approach can lead to idealism and solipsism, whereas the other approach leads to empiricism and animalism (Idea 6669). |
2283 | Our 'will' just consists of the feeling that when we are motivated to do something, there are no external pressures [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny, we are moved in such a way that we sense we are determined to it by no external force. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.57) |
2282 | My capacity to make choices with my free will extends as far as any faculty ever could [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I experience that the will or free choice I have received from God is limited by no boundaries whatever, …indeed it is so great in me that I cannot grasp the idea of any greater faculty. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.56) |
20834 | Chrysippus allows evil to say it is fated, or even that it is rational and natural [Plutarch on Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus gives vice blatant freedom to say not only that it is necessary and according to fate, but even that it occurs according to god's reason and the best nature. | |
From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1050c | |
A reaction: This is Plutarch's criticism of stoic determinism or fatalism. Zeno replied that the punishment for vice may also be fated. It seems that Chysippus did believe that punishments were too harsh, given that vices are fated [p.109]. |
20833 | A swerve in the atoms would be unnatural, like scales settling differently for no reason [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus argues against the 'swerve' of the Epicureans, on the grounds that they are doing violence to nature by positing something which is uncaused, and cites dice or scales, which can't settle differently without some cause or difference. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c | |
A reaction: That is, the principle of sufficient reason (or of everything having a cause) is derived from observation, not a priori understanding. Pace Leibniz. As in modern discussion, free will or the swerve only occur in our minds, and not elsewhere. |
20808 | Everything is fated, either by continuous causes or by a supreme rational principle [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his 'On Fate') that everything happens by fate. Fate is a continuous string of causes of things which exist or a rational principle according to which the cosmos is managed. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.148 |
20835 | Chrysippus is wrong to believe in non-occurring future possibilities if he is a fatalist [Plutarch on Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus's accounts of possibility and fate are in conflict. If he is right that 'everything that permits of occurring even if it is not going to occur is possible', then many things are possible which are not according to fate. | |
From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1055e | |
A reaction: A palpable hit, I think. Plutarch refers to Chrysippus's rejection of Diodorus Cronus's Master Argument. Fatalism seems to entail that the only future possibilities are the ones that actually occur. |
20836 | The Lazy Argument responds to fate with 'why bother?', but the bothering is also fated [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus responded to the Lazy Argument (that the outcome of an illness is fated, so there is no point in calling the doctor) by saying 'calling the doctor is fated just as much as recovering', which he calls 'co-fated'. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 28-30 | |
A reaction: From a pragmatic point of view, this idea also nullifies fatalism, since you can plausibly fight against your fate to your last breath. No evidence could ever be offered in support of fatalism, not even the most unlikely events. |
21679 | When we say events are fated by antecedent causes, do we mean principal or auxiliary causes? [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Some causes are perfect and principal, others auxiliary and proximate. Hence when we say that everything takes place by fate owing to antecedent causes, what we wish to be understood is not perfect and principal causes but auxiliary and proximate causes. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 18.41 | |
A reaction: This move is described by Cicero as enabling Chrysippus to 'escape necessity and to retain fate'. |
20837 | Fate is an eternal and fixed chain of causal events [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Fate is a sempiternal and unchangeable series and chain of things, rolling and unravelling itself through eternal sequences of cause and effect, of which it is composed and compounded. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Aulus Gellius - Noctes Atticae 7.2.01 | |
A reaction: It seems that Chrysippus (called by Aulus Gellius 'the chief Stoic philosopher') had a rather grandly rhetorical prose style. |
5971 | Destiny is only a predisposing cause, not a sufficient cause [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus considered destiny to be not a cause sufficient of itself but only a predisposing cause. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 997) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1056b | |
A reaction: This appears to be a rejection of determinism, and is the equivalent of Epicurus' introduction of the 'swerve' in atoms. They had suddenly become bothered about the free will problem in about 305 BCE. There must be other non-destiny causes? |
2276 | The mind is a non-extended thing which thinks [Descartes] |
Full Idea: My concept of the human mind is a thinking thing, not extended in length, breadth or depth, and having nothing else from the body. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.53) | |
A reaction: But he admits (in Med 6) that the mind is so closely integrated with the body that they seem inseparable. Perhaps he shouldn't trust his own concept of the thing, because he is too close to the subject matter. You can't count a crowd if you are in it. |
2298 | Mind is not extended, unlike the body [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Since I am clearly a thinking thing and not an extended thing, and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of a body, as merely an extended thing and not a thinking thing, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) | |
A reaction: How can he be 'certain' for this reason? This is a classic confusion of ontology and epistemology. Given that the mind is a special case, he should be asking WHY his thinking is clear to him, but his body isn't. Maybe it is because of his viewpoint. |
3423 | Descartes is a substance AND property dualist [Descartes, by Kim] |
Full Idea: Descartes' dualism combines substance dualism and property dualism; two disparate domains of substances, and two mutually exclusive families of properties. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.211 | |
A reaction: I would have thought that substance dualism entailed property dualism. How would you distinguish two substances from one another except by their properties? There seems a merely logical possibility that God gives two substances the same properties. |
2303 | The mind is utterly indivisible [Descartes] |
Full Idea: There is a great difference between a mind and a body, in that a body, by its very nature, is always divisible, but the mind is utterly indivisible. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.85) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being simply false. I don't just mean that surgeons can split the mind in half. We should think of the mind as a team of conscious and non-conscious processes, which are held together by a self in normal healthy people. Selves change. |
6153 | Interaction between mental and physical seems to violate the principle of conservation of energy [Rowlands on Descartes] |
Full Idea: It is often argued that any interaction between the physical and the mental - as defined by Descartes - would require a violation of the first law of thermodynamics, the principle of conservation of energy. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This would be because consciousness is adding energy to the system (in order to generate movement) without it having come from anywhere else in the physical system. A good objection, which only a miracle could overcome. |
3625 | The 'thinking thing' may be the physical basis of the mind [Hobbes on Descartes] |
Full Idea: It may be that the thing that thinks is the subject to which mind, reason or intellect belong; and this subject may thus be something corporeal. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.27) by Thomas Hobbes - Objections to 'Meditations' (Third) 173 | |
A reaction: Of course, Descartes goes on to reject this view. Presumably he is suggesting that mind etc. might be properties of something corporeal, rather than being identical with it. Descartes was well aware of materialism in Hobbes and Gassendi. |
2552 | Knowing different aspects of brain/mind doesn't make them different [Rorty on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Why should an epistemic distinction reflect an ontological distinction? Why should our epistemic privilege of being incorrigible about how things seem to us reflect a distinction between two realms of being? | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) by Richard Rorty - Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 1.2 | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being one of the most important ideas in philosophy, mainly as a corrective to a lot of bad philosophy, rather than as wisdom offered to non-philosophers (for whom Rorty's thought is probably common sense. How is it? How do we know? |
4305 | Descartes gives no clear criterion for individuating mental substances [Cottingham on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes gives no clear criterion for individuating mental substances. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.86 | |
A reaction: Presumably I can individuate my own mind by the 'natural light' of reason, and the implications of the Cogito. The minds of others do seem to be a problem. Why should they coincide with bodies, and not overlap or blend or swap? |
4861 | Does Descartes have a clear conception of how mind unites with body? [Spinoza on Descartes] |
Full Idea: What does Descartes understand by the union of the mind and the body? What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter? | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.82) by Baruch de Spinoza - The Ethics V Pref | |
A reaction: This is the classic, original and strongest objection to Cartesian dualism - that mind and body are held to be too different to interact. Spinoza may have overreacted a bit when he saw the only solution as the total identity of the two things. |
6540 | Even Descartes may concede that mental supervenes on neuroanatomical [Lycan on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Even Descartes may have conceded that the mental supervenes on the neuroanatomical. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 6) by William Lycan - Consciousness 5.2 | |
A reaction: This is true (early in Meditation Six) despite his later suggestion of the pineal gland as the linking point. It proves nothing, but I have heard John Cottingham suggest that Descartes might well be a materialist if he came back today. |
7733 | Superman's strength is indubitable, Clark Kent's is doubtful, so they are not the same? [Maslin on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes's claim that mind and body are separate because the first is necessary when thinking and the second isn't, is like arguing 'Superman's strength is indubitable; Clark Kent's strength is widely doubted; so Clark Kent is not Superman'. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], p.156) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 2.7.1 | |
A reaction: I've heard people defend Descartes on this, and Kripke is interesting on the subject, but Descartes had better not be following this pattern of argument, or else a great philosopher would really be presenting an absurdity. |
5686 | In some thoughts I grasp a subject, but also I will or fear or affirm or deny it [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Other thoughts are different from ideas, as when I will, or fear, or affirm, or deny, there is always some thing that I grasp as the subject of my thought, yet I embrace in my thought something more than the likeness of that thing. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.37) | |
A reaction: Note that the class of mental events we call 'propositional attitudes' had already been identified by Descartes. His categories of thinking in Med. Three might be one of his most important contributions, because that is what matters in the mind. |
4017 | Descartes created the modern view of rationality, as an internal feature instead of an external vision [Descartes, by Taylor,C] |
Full Idea: Rationality is now an internal property of subjective thinking, rather than its consisting in (according to Plato) its vision of reality. This view of Descartes' has become the standard modern view. | |
From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §8 | |
A reaction: Greek 'logos' actually seemed to be both internal and external. We have certainly lost the idea that the universe is rational, even though it is ordered. |
2284 | I make errors because my will extends beyond my understanding [Descartes] |
Full Idea: My errors are owing simply to the fact that, since the will extends further than the intellect, I do not contain the will within the same boundaries, but extend it to things I do not understand. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.58) |
5685 | True ideas are images, such as of a man, a chimera, or God [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Some of my thoughts are like images of things; to these alone does the word 'idea' properly apply, as when I think of a man, or a chimera, or the sky, or an angel, or God. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.37) | |
A reaction: Descartes is obviously aware of a problem with the application of the word 'idea'. This definition seems rather narrow (and visual), but it is certainly confined to concepts, and does not expand to include propositions. |
3629 | All ideas are adventitious, and come from the senses [Gassendi on Descartes] |
Full Idea: I would go further than you and note that all our ideas seem to be adventitious - to proceed from things which exist outside the mind and come under one of our senses. ..The idea of a giant is a man of ordinary size which the mind enlarges at will. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.38) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 280 | |
A reaction: A classic early statement of modern empiricism. Gassendi needed to think about logic, maths, and necessities to make his case more secure. Where did his idea to 'enlarge' the giant come from? |
2273 | The ideas of God and of my self are innate in me [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The idea of God is innate in me, just as the idea of myself is innate in me. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.51) |
2285 | I can think of innumerable shapes I have never experienced [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I can think of countless geometrical figures, concerning which there can be no suspicion of their ever having entered me through the senses. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.64) |
2286 | The idea of a supremely perfect being is within me, like the basic concepts of mathematics [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The idea of God, that is, the idea of a supremely perfect being, is one discovered to be no less within me than the idea of any figure or number. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.65) |
20787 | A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own, for example, 'It is day' or 'Dion is walking'. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.65 | |
A reaction: Note the phrase 'on its own'. If you say 'it is day and Dion is walking', that can't be denied on its own, because first the two halves must each be evaluated, so presumably that doesn't count as a stoic proposition. |
20850 | Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111 | |
A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions. |
20869 | The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: He who makes moral progress to the highest degree performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances, and omits none. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Sophocles - Sophocles' Electra 4.39.22 | |
A reaction: Hence concerns about omission as well as commission in the practice of ethics can be seen in the light of character and virtue. The world is fully of nice people who act well, but don't do so well on omissions. Car drivers, for example. |
3044 | Stoics say that beauty and goodness are equivalent and linked [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stoics say the beautiful is the only good. Good is an equivalent term to the beautiful; since a thing is good, it is beautiful; and it is beautiful, therefore it is good. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.59 |
20838 | Fate initiates general causes, but individual wills and characters dictate what we do [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: The order and reason of fate set in motion the general types and starting points of the causes, but each person's own will [or decisions] and the character of his mind govern the impulses of our thoughts and minds and our very actions. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Aulus Gellius - Noctes Atticae 7.2.11 | |
A reaction: So if you try and fail it was fate, but if you try and succeed it was you? |
20813 | Human purpose is to contemplate and imitate the cosmos [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: The human being was born for the sake of contemplating and imitating the cosmos. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.37 | |
A reaction: [This seems to be an idea of Chrysippus] Remind me how to imitate the cosmos. Presumably this is living according to nature, but that becomes more obscure when express like this. |
3045 | Stoics say justice is a part of nature, not just an invented principle [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stoics say that justice exists by nature, and not because of any definition or principle. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.66 | |
A reaction: cf Idea 3024. Stoics thought that nature is intrinsically rational, and therein lies its justice. 'King Lear' enacts this drama about whether nature is just. |
20774 | Only nature is available to guide action and virtue [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: What am I to take as the principle of appropriate action and raw material for virtue if I give up nature and what is according to nature? | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1069e | |
A reaction: 'Nature' is awfully vague as a guideline, even when we are told nature is rational. I can only make sense of it as 'human nature', which is more Aristotelian than stoic. 'Go with the flow' and 'lay the cards you are dealt' might capture it. |
20864 | Live in agreement, according to experience of natural events [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: The goal of life is to live in agreement, which is according to experience of the things which happen by nature. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.06a | |
A reaction: Cleanthes added 'with nature' to Zeno's slogan, and Chyrisppus added this variation. At least it gives you some idea of what the consistent rational principle should be. You still have to assess which aspects of nature should influence us. |
5972 | Living happily is nothing but living virtuously [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: According to Chrysippus, living happily consists solely in living virtuously. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr139) by Plutarch - 72: Against Stoics on common Conceptions 1060d | |
A reaction: This, along with 'live according to nature', is the essential doctrine of stoicism. This is 'eudaimonia', not the modern idea of feeling nice. Is it possible to admire another person for anything other than virtue? (Yes! Looks, brains, strength, wealth). |
1777 | Pleasure is not the good, because there are disgraceful pleasures [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Pleasure is not the good, because there are disgraceful pleasures, and nothing disgraceful is good. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.60 | |
A reaction: I certainly approve of the idea that not all pleasure is intrinsically good. Indeed, I think good has probably got nothing to do with pleasure. 'Disgraceful' is hardly objective though. |
5973 | Justice can be preserved if pleasure is a good, but not if it is the goal [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus thinks that, while justice could not be preserved if one should set up pleasure as the goal, it could be if one should take pleasure to be not a goal but simply a good. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 23) by Plutarch - 72: Against Stoics on common Conceptions 1070d | |
A reaction: This is an interesting and original contribution to the ancient debate about pleasure. It shows Aristotle's moderate criticism of pleasure (e.g. Idea 84), but attempts to pinpoint where the danger is. Aristotle says it thwarts achievement of the mean. |
20845 | There are shameful pleasures, and nothing shameful is good, so pleasure is not a good [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus (in his On Pleasure) denies even of pleasure that it is a good; for there are also shameful pleasures, and nothing shameful is good. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.103 | |
A reaction: Socrates seems to have started this line of the thought, to argue that pleasure is not The Good. Stoics are more puritanical. Nothing counts as good if it is capable of being bad. Thus good pleasures are not good, which sounds odd. |
5967 | People need nothing except corn and water [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus praises ad nauseam the lines "For what need mortals save two things alone,/ Demeter's grain and draughts of water clear". | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1043e | |
A reaction: "Oh, reason not the need!" says King Lear. The remark shows the close affinity of stoicism and cynicism, as the famous story of Diogenes is that he threw away his drinking cup when he realised you could drink with your hands. |
5966 | All virtue is good, but not always praised (as in not lusting after someone ugly) [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Although deeds done in accordance with virtue are congenial, not all are cited as examples, such as courageously extending one's finger, or continently abstaining from a half-dead old woman, or not immediately agreeing that three is four. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 211), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1038f | |
A reaction: Presumably the point (so elegantly expressed - what a shame we have lost most of Chrysippus) is that virtue comes in degrees, even though its value is an absolute. The same has been said (by Russell and Bonjour) about self-evidence. |
20855 | Chrysippus says virtue can be lost (though Cleanthes says it is too secure for that) [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus says that virtue can be lost, owing to drunkenness and excess of black bile, whereas Cleanthes says it cannot, because it consists in secure intellectual grasps, and it is worth choosing for its own sake. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.127 | |
A reaction: Succumbing to drunkenness looks like evidence that you were not truly virtuous. Mental illness is something else. On the whole I agree the Cleanthes. |
5970 | Chrysippus says nothing is blameworthy, as everything conforms with the best nature [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus has often written on the theme that there is nothing reprehensible or blameworthy in the universe since all things are accomplished in conformity with the best nature. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1051b | |
A reaction: This is Leibniz's "best of all possible worlds", but deriving the idea from the rightness of nature rather than the perfection of God. Chrysippus has a more plausible ground than Leibniz, as for him nasty things follow from conscious choice. |
20842 | Rational animals begin uncorrupted, but externals and companions are bad influences [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: The rational animal is corrupted, sometimes because of the persuasiveness of external activities and sometimes because of the influence of companions. For the starting points provided by nature are uncorrupted. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.89 | |
A reaction: If companions corrupt us, what corrupted the companions? Aren't we all in this together? And where do the 'external activities' originate? |
20856 | Justice, the law, and right reason are natural and not conventional [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in On the Honourable) that justice is natural and not conventional, as are the law and right reason. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.128 | |
A reaction: How does he explain variations in the law between different states? Presumably some of them have got it wrong. What is the criterion for deciding which laws are natural? |
1779 | We don't have obligations to animals as they aren't like us [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: We have no obligations of justice to other animals, because they are dissimilar to us. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.66 | |
A reaction: "Dissimilar" begs questions. Some human beings don't seem much like me. How are we going to treat visiting aliens? |
20857 | Justice is irrelevant to animals, because they are too unlike us [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: There is no justice between us and other animals because of the dissimilarity between us and them. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.129 | |
A reaction: [from lost On Justice Bk 1] What would he make of modern revelations about bonobos and chimpanzees? If there is great dissimilarity between some peoples, does that invalidate justice between them? He also said animals exist for our use. |
20812 | Covers are for shields, and sheaths for swords; likewise, all in the cosmos is for some other thing [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Just as the cover was made for the sake of the shield, and the sheath for the sword, in the same way everything else except the cosmos was made for the sake of other things. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.37 | |
A reaction: Chrysippus was wise to stop at the cosmos. Similarly, religious teleology had better not ask about the purpose of God. What does he think pebbles are for? Nature is the source of stoic value, so it needs to be purposeful. |
2280 | Many causes are quite baffling, so it is absurd to deduce causes from final purposes [Descartes] |
Full Idea: God can make unnumerable things whose cause escapes me, and for this reason alone the entire class of causes which people customarily derive from a thing's "end", I judge to be utterly useless in physics. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.55) | |
A reaction: anti-Aristotle |
21403 | The later Stoics identified the logos with an air-fire compound, called 'pneuma' [Chrysippus, by Long] |
Full Idea: From Chrysippus onwards, the Stoics identified the logos throughout each world-cycle not with pure fire, but with a compound of fire and air, 'pneuma'. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.4.2 | |
A reaction: I suspect this was because breath is so vital to the human body. |
20828 | Fire is a separate element, not formed with others (as was previously believed) [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: In his theory fire is said independently to be an element, since it is not formed together with another one, whereas according to the earlier theory fire is formed with other elements. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.10.16c | |
A reaction: The point is that fire precedes the other elements, and is superior to them. |
5975 | Stoics say earth, air, fire and water are the primary elements [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: The Stoics call the four bodies - earth and water and air and fire - primary elements. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 444) by Plutarch - 72: Against Stoics on common Conceptions 1085c | |
A reaction: Elsewhere (fr 413) Chrysippus denies that they are all 'primary'. Essentially, though, he seems to be adopting the doctrine of Empedocles and Aristotle, in specific opposition to Epicurus' atomism. |
2272 | There must be at least as much in the cause as there is in the effect [Descartes] |
Full Idea: There must be at least as much in the cause as there is in the effect. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.49) |
20819 | The past and the future subsist, but only the present exists [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: When he wished to be subtle, Chrysippus wrote that the past part of time and the future part do not exist but subsist, and only the present exists. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081f | |
A reaction: [from lost On Void] I think I prefer the ontology of Idea 20818. Idea 20819 does not offer an epistemology. Is the present substantial enough to be known? The word 'subsist' is an ontological evasion (even though Russell briefly relied on it). |
20818 | The present does not exist, so our immediate experience is actually part past and part future [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Stoics do not allow a minimal time to exist, and do not want to have a partless 'now'; so what one thinks one has grasped as present is in part future and in part past. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081c | |
A reaction: [from lost On Parts Bk3-5] I agree with the ontology here, but I take our grasp of the present to be very short-term memory of the past. I ignore special relativity. Chrysippus expressed two views about this; in the other one he was a Presentist. |
20821 | Time is continous and infinitely divisible, so there cannot be a wholly present time [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus says most clearly that no time is wholly present; for since the divisibility of continuous things is infinite, time as a whole is also subject to infinite divisibility by this method of division. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: But what is his reason for thinking that time is a continuous thing? There is a minimum time in quantum mechanics (the Planck Time), but do these quantum intervals overlap? Compare Idea 20819. |
2269 | God the creator is an intelligent, infinite, powerful substance [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I understand by the name "God" a certain substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful, and created me along with everything that exists. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.45) |
2289 | Nothing apart from God could have essential existence, and such a being must be unique and eternal [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I cannot think of anything aside from God alone to whose essence existence belongs, and I cannot conceive of two or more such Gods. I also perceive that God must be eternal, and have other perfect qualities. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.68) |
3048 | Stoics say that God the creator is the perfection of all animals [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stoics say that God is an animal immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil, having a foreknowledge of the world; however, he is not the figure of a man, and is the creator of the universe. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.72 |
2275 | It is self-evident that deception is a natural defect, so God could not be a deceiver [Descartes] |
Full Idea: It is quite obvious that a perfect God cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.52) |
20773 | The origin of justice can only be in Zeus, and in nature [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: One can find no other starting point or origin for justice except the one derived from Zeus and that derived from the common nature; for everything like this must have that starting point, if we are going to say anything at all about good and bad things. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035c | |
A reaction: [in lost 'On Gods' bk 3] This appears to offer two starting points, in the mind of Zeus, and in nature, though since nature is presumed to be rational the two may run together. Is Zeus the embodiment, or the unconscious source, or the maker of decrees? |
3042 | Stoics teach that law is identical with right reason, which is the will of Zeus [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stoics teach that common law is identical with that right reason which pervades everything, being the same with Zeus, who is the regulator and chief manager of all existing things. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.53 |
5965 | The source of all justice is Zeus and the universal nature [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: It is not possible to discover any other beginning of justice or any source for it other than that from Zeus and from the universal nature. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 326), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035c | |
A reaction: If the source is 'universal nature', that could agree with Plato, but if the source is Zeus, then stoicism is a religion rather than a philosophy. |
2274 | The idea of God in my mind is like the mark a craftsman puts on his work [Descartes] |
Full Idea: In creating me, God has endowed me with the idea of God, so that it would be like the mark of the craftsman impressed upon his work, although this mark need not be something distinct from the work itself. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.51) |
2288 | I cannot think of a supremely perfect being without the supreme perfection of existence [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I am not free to think of God without existence, that is, a supremely perfect being without a supreme perfection. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.67) |
2268 | One idea leads to another, but there must be an initial idea that contains the reality of all the others [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Although one idea can perhaps issue from another, nevertheless no infinite regress is permitted here; eventually some first idea must be reached whose cause is a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.42) |
2287 | Existence and God's essence are inseparable, like a valley and a mountain, or a triangle and its properties [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Existence can no more be separated from God's essence than its having three angles equal to two right angles can be separated from the essence of a triangle, or than the idea of a valley can be separated from the idea of a mountain. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.66) |
3632 | We mustn't worship God as an image because we have no idea of him [Hobbes on Descartes] |
Full Idea: We are forbidden to worship God in the form of an image, for otherwise we might think that we were conceiving of him who is incapable of being conceived. It seems, then, that there is no idea of God in us. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.65) by Thomas Hobbes - Objections to 'Meditations' (Third) 180 |
5036 | Descartes cannot assume that a most perfect being exists without contradictions [Leibniz on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes' error is in assuming without proof that a most perfect being does not involve a contradiction. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.67) by Gottfried Leibniz - A Specimen of Discoveries p.76 | |
A reaction: Certainly Descartes seems obliged to grasp the concept of God 'clearly and distinctly', so there must be an absence of contradictions. But does Descartes have to prove that there are no contradictions in his concept of a triangle? Is self-evidence enough? |
3633 | We can never conceive of an infinite being [Gassendi on Descartes] |
Full Idea: The human intellect is not capable of conceiving of infinity, and hence it neither has nor can contemplate any idea representing an infinite thing. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.65) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 286 |
3638 | Existence is not a perfection; it is what makes perfection possible [Gassendi on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Existence is not a perfection in God or in anything else; it is that without which no perfections can be present. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §5.67) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 323 |
1782 | Stoics teach that God is a unity, variously known as Mind, or Fate, or Jupiter [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stoics teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind, and Fate, and Jupiter, and by many names besides. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.68 |
20830 | Death can't separate soul from body, because incorporeal soul can't unite with body [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Death is a separation of soul from body. But nothing incorporeal can be separated from a body. For neither does anything incorporeal touch a body, and the soul touches and is separated from the body. Therefore the soul is not incorporeal. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Tertullian - The Soul as an 'Astral Body' 5.3 | |
A reaction: This is the classic interaction difficulty for substance dualist theories of mind. |
2278 | Error arises because my faculty for judging truth is not infinite [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I make mistakes because the faculty of judging the truth, which I got from God, is not, in my case, infinite. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.54) |
3636 | God didn't give us good judgement even about our own lives [Gassendi on Descartes] |
Full Idea: God is not to be blamed for giving puny man a faculty of judging that is too small to cope with everything, but we may still wonder why our judgement is uncertain, confused and inadequate even for the few matters he did want us to decide upon. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.58) by Pierre Gassendi - Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) 314 |
2277 | Since God does not wish to deceive me, my judgement won't make errors if I use it properly [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Since God does not wish to deceive me, he assuredly has not given me a faculty of judgement with which I could never make a mistake, when I use it properly. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.54) |
21404 | There is a rationale in terrible disasters; they are useful to the whole, and make good possible [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: The evil which occurs in terrible disasters has a rationale [logos] peculiar to itself: for in a sense it occurs in accordance with universal reason, and is not without usefulness in relation to the whole. For without it there could be no good. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.4.5 | |
A reaction: [a quotation from Chrysippus. Plutarch, Comm Not 1065b] A nice question about any terrible disaster is whether it is in some way 'useful', if we take a broader view of things. Almost everything has a good aspect, from that perspective. |
2281 | If we ask whether God's works are perfect, we must not take a narrow viewpoint, but look at the universe as a whole [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Whenever we ask whether the works of God are perfect, we should keep in view not simply some one creature in isolation from the rest, but the universe as a whole. | |
From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.55) |