41 ideas
6675 | The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing [Pascal] |
Full Idea: The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 423 (277)) | |
A reaction: This romantic remark has passed into folklore. I am essentially against it, but the role of intuition and instinct are undeniable in both reasoning and ethics. I don't feel inclined, though, to let my heart overrule my reason concerning what exists. |
6021 | It is only when we say a proposition that we speak truly or falsely [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: It is only when we say a proposition that we speak truly or falsely. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors (six books) [c.180], 8.74) | |
A reaction: This makes assertions truth-bearers, rather than propositions. But a proposition can be true or false if it is stamped with a date and/or place. "Shakespeare was born in Stratford on 23rd April 1664". No one needs to assert that. |
6020 | 'Man is a rational mortal animal' is equivalent to 'if something is a man, that thing is a rational mortal animal' [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Definitions are identical to universal propositions in meaning, and only differ in syntax, for whoever says 'Man is a rational mortal animal' says the same thing in meaning as whoever says 'If something is a man, that thing is a rational mortal animal'. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors (six books) [c.180], 11.8) | |
A reaction: How strikingly like Bertrand Russell's interest and solutions. Sextus shows a straightforward interest in logical form, of a kind we associate with the twentieth century. Did Sextus Empiricus invent quantification? |
458 | Nothing could come out of nothing, and existence could never completely cease [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: From what in no wise exists, it is impossible for anything to come into being; for Being to perish completely is incapable of fulfilment and unthinkable. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B012), quoted by Anon (Lyc) - On Melissus 975b1-4 |
5112 | Empedocles says things are at rest, unless love unites them, or hatred splits them [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Empedocles claims that things are alternately changing and at rest - that they are changing whenever love is creating a unity out of plurality, or hatred is creating plurality out of unity, and they are at rest in the times in between. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 250b26 | |
A reaction: I suppose one must say that this an example of Ruskin's 'pathetic fallacy' - reading human emotions into the cosmos. Being constructive little creatures, we think goodness leads to construction. I'm afraid Empedocles is just wrong. |
13209 | There is no coming-to-be of anything, but only mixing and separating [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Empedocles says there is no coming-to-be of anything, but only a mingling and a divorce of what has been mingled. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314b08 | |
A reaction: Aristotle comments that this prevents Empedocleans from distinguishing between superficial alteration and fundamental change of identity. Presumably, though, that wouldn't bother them. |
457 | Substance is not created or destroyed in mortals, but there is only mixing and exchange [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: There is no creation of substance in any one of mortal existence, nor any end in execrable death, but only mixing and exchange of what has been mixed. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B008), quoted by Plutarch - 74: Reply to Colotes 1111f | |
A reaction: also Aristotle 314b08 |
22011 | The first principles of truth are not rational, but are known by the heart [Pascal] |
Full Idea: We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through that latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 110 p.58), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04 n4 | |
A reaction: This resembles the rationalist defence of fundamental a priori principles, needed as a foundation for knowledge. But the a priori insights are not a feature of the 'natural light' of reason, and are presumably inexplicable (of the 'heart'). |
462 | One vision is produced by both eyes [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: One vision is produced by both eyes | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B088), quoted by Strabo - works 8.364.3 |
6026 | How can you investigate without some preconception of your object? [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: A preconception and conception must precede every object of investigation, for how can anyone even investigate without some conception of the object of investigation? | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors (six books) [c.180], 8.331a) | |
A reaction: The Duhem-Quine thesis about the 'theory-ladenness of observation' is just a revival of some routine ancient scepticism. As well as a conceptual scheme to accommodate the observation, there must also be some motivation for the investigation. |
22765 | Wisdom and thought are shared by all things [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: Wisdom and power of thought, know thou, are shared in by all things. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Logicians (two books) II.286 | |
A reaction: Sextus quotes this, saying that it is 'still more paradoxical', and that it explicitly includes plants. This may mean that Empedocles was not including inanimate matter. |
1524 | For Empedocles thinking is almost identical to perception [Empedocles, by Theophrastus] |
Full Idea: Empedocles assumes that thinking is either identical to or very similar to sense-perception. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], A86) by Theophrastus - On the Senses 9 | |
A reaction: Not to be sniffed at. We can, of course, control our thinking (though we can't control the controller) and we contemplate abstractions, but that might be seen as a sort of perception. Vision is not as visual as we think. |
6681 | We only want to know things so that we can talk about them [Pascal] |
Full Idea: We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 77 (152)) | |
A reaction: This may be right, but I wouldn't underestimate it as a worthy end (though Pascal, as usual, calls it 'vanity'). Good talk might even be the highest human good (how many people like, more than anything, chatting in pubs?), and good talk is knowledgeable. |
6676 | Painting makes us admire things of which we do not admire the originals [Pascal] |
Full Idea: How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 40 (134)) | |
A reaction: A lesser sort of painting simply depicts things we admire, such as a nice stretch of landscape. For Pascal it is vanity, but it could be defended as the highest achievement of art, if the purpose of artists is to make us see beauty where we had missed it. |
6680 | It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river [Pascal] |
Full Idea: It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river; true on this side of the Pyrenees, false on the other. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 60 (294)) | |
A reaction: Pascal gives nice concise summaries of our intuitions. Legal justice may be all we can actually get, but everyone knows that what happens to someone could be 'fair' on one side of a river, and very 'unfair' on the other. |
6677 | Imagination creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the supreme good [Pascal] |
Full Idea: Imagination decides everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the world's supreme good. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 44 (82)) | |
A reaction: Compare Fogelin's remark in Idea 6555. I see Pascal's point, but these ideals are also responses to facts about the world, such as human potential and human desire and successful natural functions. |
552 | Empedocles said good and evil were the basic principles [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Empedocles was the first to give evil and good as principles. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 985a | |
A reaction: Once you start to think that good and evil will only matter if they have causal powers, it is an easy step to the idea of a benevolent god, and a satanic anti-god. Otherwise the 'principles' could be ignored. |
6678 | We live for the past or future, and so are never happy in the present [Pascal] |
Full Idea: Our thoughts are wholly concerned with the past or the future, never with the present, which is never our end; thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 47 (172)) | |
A reaction: A very nice expression of the importance of 'living for the moment' as a route to happiness. Personally I am occasionally startled by the thought 'Good heavens, I seem to be happy!', but it usually passes quickly. How do you plan for the present? |
6032 | Right actions, once done, are those with a reasonable justification [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Right action is whatever, once it has been done, has a reasonable justification. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors (six books) [c.180], 7.158) | |
A reaction: Why does he add 'once it has been done'? Wouldn't a proposed action be right if it had a reasonable justification? This grows out of the classical and Stoic emphasis on reason in ethics, and leads towards Scanlon's Contractualism. |
20732 | If man considers himself as lost and imprisoned in the universe, he will be terrified [Pascal] |
Full Idea: Let man consider what he is in comparison with what exists; let him regard himself as lost, and from this little dungeon the universe, let him learn to take the earth and himself at their proper value. Anyone considering this will be terrified at himself. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], p.199), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction Pref 'What? | |
A reaction: [p.199 of Penguin edn] Cited by Aho as a forerunner of existentialism. Montaigne probably influenced Pascal. Interesting that this is to be a self-inflicted existential crisis (for some purpose, probably Christian). |
6682 | Majority opinion is visible and authoritative, although not very clever [Pascal] |
Full Idea: Majority opinion is the best way because it can be seen, and is strong enough to command obedience, but it is the opinion of those who are least clever. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 85 (878)) | |
A reaction: A nice statement of the classic dilemma faced by highly educated people over democracy. Plato preferred the clever, Aristotle agreed with Pascal, and with me. Politics must make the best of it, not pursue some ideal. Education is the one feeble hope. |
6679 | It is not good to be too free [Pascal] |
Full Idea: It is not good to be too free. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 57 (379)) | |
A reaction: All Americans, please take note. I agree with this, because I agree with Aristotle that man is essentially a social animal (Idea 5133), and living in a community is a matter of compromise. Extreme libertarianism contradicts our natures, and causes misery. |
589 | 'Nature' is just a word invented by people [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: Nature is but a word of human framing. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B008), quoted by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1015a |
1517 | The tektraktys (1+2+3+4=10) is the 'fount of ever-flowing nature' [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: The tektraktys (1+2+3+4=10) is the 'fount of ever-flowing nature', because nature is a harmony of three concords (4th,5th and octave), and these ratios (4:3, 3:2, and 2:1) are found in the tektraktys. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors (six books) [c.180], 7.95) |
21823 | The principle of 'Friendship' in Empedocles is the One, and is bodiless [Empedocles, by Plotinus] |
Full Idea: In Empedocles we have a dividing principle, 'Strife', set against 'Friendship' - which is the One and is to him bodiless, while the elements represent matter. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.09 | |
A reaction: The first time I've seen the principle of Love in Empedocles identified with the One of Parmenides. Plotinus is a trustworthy reporter, I think, because he was well read, and had access to lost texts. |
2680 | Empedocles said that there are four material elements, and two further creative elements [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Empedocles holds that the corporeal elements are four, but that all the elements, including those which create motion, are six in number. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314a16 |
6002 | Empedocles says bone is water, fire and earth in ratio 2:4:2 [Empedocles, by Inwood] |
Full Idea: Empedocles used numerical ratios to explain different kinds of matter; for example, bone is two parts water, four parts fire, two parts earth; and blood is an equal blend of all four elements. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Brad Inwood - Empedocles | |
A reaction: Why isn't the ration 1:2:1? This presumably shows the influence of Pythagoras (who had also been based in Italy, like Empedocles), as well as that of the earlier naturalistic philosophers. It was a very good theory, though wrong. |
13207 | Fire, Water, Air and Earth are elements, being simple as well as homoeomerous [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Empedocles says that Fire, Water, Air and Earth are four elements, and are thus 'simple' rather than flesh, bone and bodies which, like these, are 'homoeomeries'. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314a26 | |
A reaction: The translation is not quite clear. I take it that flesh and bone may look simple, because they are homoeomerous, but they are not really - but what is his evidence for that? Compare Idea 13208. |
13218 | The elements combine in coming-to-be, but how do the elements themselves come-to-be? [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
Full Idea: Empedocles says it is evident that all the other bodies down to the 'elements' have their coming-to-be and their passing-away: but it is not clear how the 'elements' themselves, severally in their aggregated masses, come-to-be and pass-away. | |
From: comment on Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325b20 | |
A reaction: Presumably the elements are like axioms - and are just given. How do electrons and quarks come-to-be? |
459 | All change is unity through love or division through hate [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: These elements never cease their continuous exchange, sometimes uniting under the influence of Love, so that all become One, at other times again moving apart through the hostile force of Hate. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B017), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 158.1- |
13225 | Love and Strife only explain movement if their effects are distinctive [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
Full Idea: It is not an adequate explanation to say that 'Love and Strife set things moving', unless the very nature of Love is a movement of this kind and the very nature of Strife a movement of that kind. | |
From: comment on Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 333b23 | |
A reaction: I take this to be of interest for showing Aristotle's quest for explanations, and his unwillingness to be fobbed off with anything superficial. I take a task of philosophy to be to push explanations further than others wish to go. |
460 | If the one Being ever diminishes it would no longer exist, and what could ever increase it? [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: Besides these elements, nothing else comes into being, nor does anything cease. For if they had been perishing continuously, they would Be no more; and what could increase the Whole? And whence could it have come? | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B017), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 158.1- |
5090 | Maybe bodies are designed by accident, and the creatures that don't work are destroyed [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Is it just an accident that teeth and other parts of the body seem to have some purpose, and creatures survive because they happen to be put together in a useful way? Everything else has been destroyed, as Empedocles says of his 'cow with human head'. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], 61) by Aristotle - Physics 198b29 | |
A reaction: Good grief! Has no one ever noticed that Empedocles proposed the theory of evolution? It isn't quite natural selection, because we aren't told what does the 'destroying', but it is a little flash of genius that was quietly forgotten. |
461 | God is a pure, solitary, and eternal sphere [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: God is equal in all directions to himself and altogether eternal, a rounded Sphere enjoying a circular solitude. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B028), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.15.2 |
466 | God is pure mind permeating the universe [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: God is mind, holy and ineffable, and only mind, which darts through the whole cosmos with its swift thought. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B134), quoted by Ammonius - On 'De Interpretatione' 4.5.249.6 |
1719 | In Empedocles' theory God is ignorant because, unlike humans, he doesn't know one of the elements (strife) [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
Full Idea: It is a consequence of Empedocles' view that God is the most unintelligent thing, for he alone is ignorant of one of the elements, namely strife, whereas mortal creatures are familiar with them all. | |
From: comment on Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - De Anima 410b08 |
7455 | Pascal knows you can't force belief, but you can make it much more probable [Pascal, by Hacking] |
Full Idea: Pascal knows that one cannot decide to believe in God, but he thinks one can act so that one will very probably come to believe in God, by following a life of 'holy water and sacraments'. | |
From: report of Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8 | |
A reaction: This meets the most obvious and simple objection to Pascal's idea, and Pascal may well be right. I'm not sure I could resist belief after ten years in a monastery. |
7456 | The libertine would lose a life of enjoyable sin if he chose the cloisters [Hacking on Pascal] |
Full Idea: The libertine is giving up something if he chooses to adopt a pious form of life. He likes sin. If God is not, the worldly life is preferable to the cloistered one. | |
From: comment on Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8 | |
A reaction: This is a very good objection to Pascal, who seems to think you really have nothing at all to lose. I certainly don't intend to become a monk, because the chances of success seem incredibly remote from where I am sitting. |
7457 | Pascal is right, but relies on the unsupported claim of a half as the chance of God's existence [Hacking on Pascal] |
Full Idea: Pascal's argument is valid, but it is presented with a monstrous premise of equal chance. We have no good reason for picking a half as the chance of God's existence. | |
From: comment on Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8 | |
A reaction: That strikes me as the last word on this rather bizarre argument. |
6684 | If you win the wager on God's existence you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing [Pascal] |
Full Idea: How will you wager if a coin is spun on 'Either God is or he is not'? ...If you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing. | |
From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) | |
A reaction: 'Sooner safe than sorry' is a principle best used with caution. Do you really 'lose nothing' by believing a falsehood for the whole of your life? What God would reward belief on such a principles as this? |
1522 | It is wretched not to want to think clearly about the gods [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: Wretched is he who cares not for clear thinking about the gods. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B132), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 5.140.5.1 |