30 ideas
| 13560 | A wise man is not subservient to anything [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: I do not call any man wise who is subservient to anything. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §11) | |
| A reaction: At the very least, a wise man should be subservient to a wiser man. |
| 21812 | Being is the product of pure intellect [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Intellectual-Principle [Nous] by its intellective act establishes Being. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.04) | |
| A reaction: This is a surprising view - that there is something which is prior to Being - but I take it to be Plotinus giving primacy to Plato's Form of the Good (a pure ideal), ahead of the One of Parmenides (which is Being). |
| 21817 | The One does not exist, but is the source of all existence [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The First is no member of existence, but can be the source of all. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.07) | |
| A reaction: The First is the One, and this explicitly denies that it has Being. This answers the self-predication problem of Forms. Plato thought the Form of the Beautiful was beautiful, but it can't be (because of the regress). The source of existence can't exist. |
| 21824 | The One is a principle which transcends Being [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: There exists a principle which transcends Being; this the One. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.10) | |
| A reaction: The idea that the One transcends Being is the distinctive Plotinus doctrine. He defends the view that this was also the view of Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato. |
| 21813 | Number determines individual being [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Number is the determinant of individual being. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.05) | |
| A reaction: You might have thought that number was the consequence of the individualities (or units) within being, but not so. You can't get more platonic than saying that the idealised numbers are the source of the particular units. |
| 5506 | If soul was like body, its parts would be separate, without communication [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: If the soul had the nature of the body, it would have isolated members each unaware of the condition of the other;..there would be a particular soul as a distinct entity to each local experience, so a multiplicity of souls would administer an individual. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 4.2.2), quoted by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.15 | |
| A reaction: Of course, the modern 'modularity of mind' theory does suggest that we are run by a team, but a central co-ordinator is required, with a full communication network across the modules. |
| 21827 | The movement of Soul is continuous, but we are only aware of the parts of it that are sensed [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The Soul maintains its unfailing movement; for not all that passes in the soul is, by that fact, perceptible; we know just as much as impinges on the faculty of the sense. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.12) | |
| A reaction: This is a straightforward argument in favour of an unconscious aspect to the mind - and a rather good argument too. No one thinks that our minds ever stop working, even in sleep. |
| 7658 | Obviously there can't be a functional anaylsis of qualia if they are defined by intrinsic properties [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: If you define qualia as intrinsic properties of experiences considered in isolation from all their causes and effects, logically independent of all dispositional properties, then they are logically guaranteed to elude all broad functional analysis. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a good point - it seems daft to reify qualia and imagine them dangling in mid-air with all their vibrant qualities - but that is a long way from saying there is nothing more to qualia than functional roles. Functions must be exlained too. |
| 21828 | A person is the whole of their soul [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Man is not merely a part (the higher part) of the Soul but the total. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.12) | |
| A reaction: The soul is psuche, which includes the vegetative soul. The higher part is normally taken to be reason. This seems pretty close to John Locke's view of the matter. |
| 7655 | The work done by the 'homunculus in the theatre' must be spread amongst non-conscious agencies [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: All the work done by the imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theater must be distributed among various lesser agencies in the brain, none of which is conscious. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Dennett's account crucially depends on consciousness being much more fragmentary than most philosophers claim it to be. It is actually full of joints, which can come apart. He may be right. |
| 21809 | Our soul has the same ideal nature as the oldest god, and is honourable above the body [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Our own soul is of that same ideal nature [as the oldest god of them all], so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves which we have found soul to be, honourable above the body. For what is body but earth? | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.02) | |
| A reaction: The strongest versions of substance dualism are religious in character, because the separateness of the mind elevates us above the grubby physical character of the world. I'm with Nietzsche on this one - this view is actually harmful to us. |
| 21825 | The soul is outside of all of space, and has no connection to the bodily order [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: We may not seek any point in space in which to seat the soul; it must be set outside of all space; its distinct quality, its separateness, its immateriality, demand that it be a thing alone, untouched by all of the bodily order. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.10) | |
| A reaction: You can't get more dualist than that. He doesn't seem bothered about the interaction problem. He likens such influence to the radiation of the sun, rather than to physical movement. |
| 7657 | Intelligent agents are composed of nested homunculi, of decreasing intelligence, ending in machines [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: As long as your homunculi are more stupid and ignorant than the intelligent agent they compose, the nesting of homunculi within homunculi can be finite, bottoming out, eventually, with agents so unimpressive they can be replaced by machines. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: [Dennett first proposed this in 'Brainstorms' 1978]. This view was developed well by Lycan. I rate it as one of the most illuminating ideas in the modern philosophy of mind. All complex systems (like aeroplanes) have this structure. |
| 7656 | I don't deny consciousness; it just isn't what people think it is [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: I don't maintain, of course, that human consciousness does not exist; I maintain that it is not what people often think it is. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I consider Dennett to be as near as you can get to an eliminativist, but he is not stupid. As far as I can see, the modern philosopher's bogey-man, the true total eliminativist, simply doesn't exist. Eliminativists usually deny propositional attitudes. |
| 7654 | What matters about neuro-science is the discovery of the functional role of the chemistry [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Neuro-science matters because - and only because - we have discovered that the many different neuromodulators and other chemical messengers that diffuse throughout the brain have functional roles that make important differences. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I agree with Dennett that this is the true ground for pessimism about spectacular breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, rather than abstract concerns about irreducible features of the mind like 'qualia' and 'rationality'. |
| 13558 | The supreme good is harmony of spirit [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: The highest good is harmony of spirit. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §08) | |
| A reaction: This idea is straight from Plato's Republic. |
| 21826 | The Soul reasons about the Right, so there must be some permanent Right about which it reasons [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good - for reasoning is an enquiry into the rightness and goodness of this rather than that - there must exist some pemanent Right, the source and foundation of this reasoning in our soul. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.11) | |
| A reaction: This is pretty close the Kant's concept of 'the moral order within me', and Plotinus even sees it as rational. Presumably this right is 'permanent' because the revelatlons of reason about it are necessary truths. |
| 6922 | Ecstasy is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man [Plotinus, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Ecstasy or rapture is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man. | |
| From: report of Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §29 | |
| A reaction: See Bernini's statue of St Theresa. Personally I find this very unappealing because of its utter irrationality, but what is the 'highest' human psychological state? Doing mental arithmetic? Doing what is morally right? Dignity under pressure? |
| 13559 | I seek virtue, because it is its own reward [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: You ask what I seek from virtue? Virtue herself. For she has nothing better, she is herself her own reward. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §09) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is the source of the popular saying that 'virtue is its own reward'. The trouble is that this doesn't seem a very persuasive thing to say to a sceptic who doubts whether being virtuous is worth the trouble. |
| 13561 | Virtue is always moderate, so excess need not be feared [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: In the case of virtue excess should not be feared, since in virtue resides moderation. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §13) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that all of the virtues are unified in the one achievement of the virtuous state. It leaves the notion of 'virtue' a bit thin in content, though. |
| 13562 | It is shameful to not even recognise your own slaves [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Why, to your shame, are you so careless that you do not know your handful of slaves by sight? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §17) |
| 13564 | There is far more scope for virtue if you are wealthy; poverty only allows endurance [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: What doubt can there be that the wise man has greater scope for displaying his powers if he is rich than if he is poor, since in the case of poverty only one kind of virtue exists - refusal to be bowed down and crushed. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §22) | |
| A reaction: It is against this view that I see Jesus proposing poverty as central to virtue. But then he has the surprising view (to Seneca) that humility is a virtue. What Nietzsche calls the slaves' inversion of values. |
| 13563 | Why does your wife wear in her ears the income of a wealthy house? [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Why does your wife wear in her ears the income of a wealthy house? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §17) |
| 13565 | If wealth was a good, it would make men good [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Wealth is not a good; for it it was, it would make men good. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §24) | |
| A reaction: An immediately attractive argument, but should we assume that anything which is good will enhance our personal goodness? If goodness is a habit, then continual pursuit of wealth is the test case to examine. Seneca is right! |
| 13557 | Unfortunately the majority do not tend to favour what is best [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Human concerns are not so happily arranged that the majority favours the better things. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §02) | |
| A reaction: On the whole Seneca is unimpressed by democracy, as people are rushed into decisions by the crowd, and live to regret them. |
| 21814 | How can multiple existence arise from the unified One? [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The problem endlessly debated is how, from such a unity as we have declared the One to be, does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity, dyad or number? | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06) | |
| A reaction: This was precisely Aristotle's objection to the One of Parmenides, and especially the problem of the source of movement (which Plotinus also notices). |
| 21816 | Soul is the logos of Nous, just as Nous is the logos of the One [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The soul is an utterance [logos] and act of the Intellectual-Principle [Nous], as that is an utterance and act of the One. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06) | |
| A reaction: Being only comes into the picture at the secondary Nous stage. Nous is the closest to the modern concept of God. |
| 21815 | Because the One is immobile, it must create by radiation, light the sun producing light [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Given this immobility of the Supreme ...what happened then? It must be a circumradiation, which may be compared to the brilliant light encircling the sun and ceaselessly generating from that unchanging substance, | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06) | |
| A reaction: This is the answer given to the problem raised in Idea 21814. The sun produces energy, without apparent movement. Not an answer that will satisfy a physicist, but an interesting answer. |
| 21808 | Soul is author of all of life, and of the stars, and it gives them law and movement [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Soul is the author of all living things, ...it has breathed life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, the divine stars in the sky; ...it is the principle distinct from all of these to which it gives law and movement and life. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.02) | |
| A reaction: This seems to derive from Anaxagoras, who is mentioned by Plotinus. The soul he refers to his not the same as our concept of God. Note the word 'law', which I am guessing is nomos. Not, I think, modern laws of nature, but closer to guidelines. |
| 21811 | Even the soul is secondary to the Intellectual-Principle [Nous], of which soul is an utterance [Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle [Nous]; reason uttered is an image of reason stored within the soul, and similarly soul is an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle. | |
| From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.03) | |
| A reaction: It then turns out that Nous is secondary to the One, so there is a hierarchy of Being (which only enters at the Nous stage). |