3 ideas
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 6552 | You can only explain the qualities of large objects using entities which lack those qualities [Heisenberg] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to explain the manifest qualities of ordinary middle-sized objects except by tracing these back to the behaviour of entities which themselves no longer possess these qualities. | |
| From: Werner Heisenberg (Ancient Thought in Modern Physics [1937], p.119), quoted by William Lycan - Consciousness 8.10 | |
| A reaction: Compare the similar wonderful remark by Lucretius (Idea 5713). If we accept this as a general principle for all of nature (including us) - and I do - then it is silly to complain that consciousness isn't found in basic physics. |
| 14739 | 'Water' is two-dimensionally inconstant, with different intensions in different worlds [Chalmers, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: For Chalmers, 'water' is two-dimensionally inconstant, in that it has different secondary intensions relative to different worlds of utterance. | |
| From: report of David J.Chalmers (Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics [2006]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 7.2 | |
| A reaction: In this way 'water' is regarded as being like an indexical (such as 'I'), which has a fixed meaning component, and a second component which varies with different utterances. Maybe. |