Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Dthat', 'On Hippocrates and Plato' and 'In Defense of a Dogma'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind

6003	Galen showed by experiment that the brain controls the body [Galen, by Hankinson]
	Full Idea: Galen established by experiments in neural anatomy that the brain really is, contra the Stoics and Aristotelians, the body's control centre.
	From: report of Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170]) by R.J. Hankinson - Galen (damaged)
	A reaction: And about time too. This is one of the most significant events in the development of human understanding. No one has been able to go back to the old view, even Descartes, no matter how much they may long to do so.

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy

7319	If we give up synonymy, we have to give up significance, meaning and sense [Grice/Strawson]
	Full Idea: If we are to give up the notion of sentence-synonymy as senseless, we must give up the notion of sentence-significance (of a sentence having meaning) as senseless too. But then perhaps we might as well give up the notion of sense.
	From: P Grice / P Strawson (In Defense of a Dogma [1956]), quoted by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2
	A reaction: This is very prescient. Nearly all American philosophers seem to embrace Quine's view of analyticity (the philosophical equivalent of Americans putting a man on the moon?), but have they digested the implications (which Quine later largely admits)?

19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / b. Causal reference

14080	Are causal descriptions part of the causal theory of reference, or are they just metasemantic? [Kaplan, by Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Kaplan notes that the causal theory of reference can be understood in two quite different ways, as part of the semantics (involving descriptions of causal processes), or as metasemantics, explaining why a term has the referent it does.
	From: report of David Kaplan (Dthat [1970]) by Jonathan Schaffer - Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson 1
	A reaction: [Kaplan 'Afterthought' 1989] The theory tends to be labelled as 'direct' rather than as 'causal' these days, but causal chains are still at the heart of the story (even if more diffused socially). Nice question. Kaplan takes the meta- version as orthodox.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

6030	Each part of the soul has its virtue - pleasure for appetite, success for competition, and rectitude for reason [Galen]
	Full Idea: We have by nature these three appropriate relationships, corresponding to each form of the soul's parts - to pleasure because of the appetitive part, to success because of the competitive part, and to rectitude because of the rational part.
	From: Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170], 5.5.8)
	A reaction: This is a nice combination of Plato's tripartite theory of soul (in 'Republic') and Aristotle's derivation of virtues from functions. Presumably, though, reason should master the other two, and there is nothing in Galen's idea to explain this.