4 ideas
| 19389 | Truth is a characteristic of possible thoughts [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Truth really belongs to the class of thoughts which are possible. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Dialogue on Things and Words [1677], p.7) | |
| A reaction: I like the fact that this ties truth to 'thoughts', rather than peculiar abstract unthought entities called 'propositions', but I take it that thoughts which are possible but not thought will thereby not exist, so they can't be true. |
| 19388 | True and false seem to pertain to thoughts, yet unthought propositions seem to be true or false [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: B: I concede that truth and falsity both pertain to thoughts and not to things. A: But this contradicts your previous opinion that a proposition remains true even when you are not thinking about it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Dialogue on Things and Words [1677], p.7) | |
| A reaction: I don't trigger the truth of a proposition by thinking about it - I see that it is true. But I dislike the idea that reality is full of propositions, which seems to be mad metaphysics. So I deny unthought propositions are true, because there aren't any. |
| 22352 | Out of more than a hundred planets, Earth is the only one with the idea of free will [Vonnegut] |
| Full Idea: I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will'. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will. | |
| From: Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five [1969], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Spoken by the ambassador from the planet Tralfamadore. Possibly the greatest put down of a philosophical idea since Diogenes responded to Plato's definition of a man. I think free will is a non-idea. It is non-sensical, and doesn't exist. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |