39 ideas
125 | Is a gifted philosopher unmanly if he avoids the strife of the communal world? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: Even a naturally gifted philosopher isn't going to develop into a real man, because he's avoiding the heart of his community and the thick of the agora. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 485d) | |
A reaction: A serious charge against philosophy. An attraction of the subject is its purity, its necessity, its timelessness, and in some ways these are just nicer and easier and more understandable than the hard mess of real life. But understanding has to be good. |
12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
Full Idea: That knowledge is worthiest which is charged with least multiplicity, which appeareth to be metaphysic | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
A reaction: A surprising view, coming from the father of modern science, but essentially correct. Obviously metaphysics aspires to avoid multiplicity, but it is riddled not only with complexity in its researches, but massive uncertainties. |
12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
Full Idea: Knowledges are as pyramides, whereof history is the basis. So of natural philosophy, the basis is natural history, the stage next the basis is physic; the stage next the vertical point is metaphysic. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
A reaction: The father of modern science keeps a place for metaphysics, as the most abstract level above the physical sciences. I would say he is right. It leads to my own slogan: science is the servant of philosophy. |
12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
Full Idea: Physic should contemplate that which is inherent in matter, and therefore transitory; and metaphysic that which is abstracted and fixed | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
A reaction: He cites the ancients for this view, with which he agrees. One could do worse than hang onto metaphysics as the study of necessities, but must then face the attacks of the Quineans - that knowledge of necessities is beyond us. |
12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
Full Idea: Physic inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and metaphysic handleth the formal and final causes. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 12119. This divides up Aristotle's famous Four Causes (or Explanations), outlined in 'Physics' II.3. The concept of 'matter', and the nature of 'cause' seem to me to fall with the purview of metaphysics. Interesting, though. |
1654 | In "Gorgias" Socrates is confident that his 'elenchus' will decide moral truth [Vlastos on Plato] |
Full Idea: In the 'Gorgias' Socrates is still supremely confident that the elenchus is the final arbiter of moral truth. | |
From: comment on Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.117 |
4321 | We should test one another, by asking and answering questions [Plato] |
Full Idea: Test me, and let yourself be tested as well, by asking and answering questions. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 462a) | |
A reaction: The idea must be to avoid wild speculation, by continually filtering ideas through rival critical intelligences. The best philosophical method ever devised. |
9216 | Each area of enquiry, and its source, has its own distinctive type of necessity [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The three sources of necessity - the identity of things, the natural order, and the normative order - have their own peculiar forms of necessity. The three main areas of human enquiry - metaphysics, science and ethics - each has its own necessity. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6) | |
A reaction: I would treat necessity in ethics with caution, if it is not reducible to natural or metaphysical necessity. Fine's proposal is interesting, but I did not find it convincing, especially in its view that metaphysical necessity doesn't intrude into nature. |
12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
Full Idea: They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.5) | |
A reaction: Just the sort of pithy remark for which Bacon is famous. It is an obvious point, but a nice corrective to anyone who wants to apply empirical principles in a rather gormless way. |
9214 | Unsupported testimony may still be believable [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: I may have good reason to believe some testimony, for example, even though the person providing the testimony has no good reason for saying what he does. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 5) | |
A reaction: Thus small children, madmen and dreamers may occasionally get things right without realising it. I take testimony to be merely one more batch of evidence which has to be assessed in building the most coherent picture possible. |
12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
Full Idea: All true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, ascendent and descendent, ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.1) | |
A reaction: After several hundred years, I doubt whether anyone can come up with a better account of scientific method than Bacon's. |
12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
Full Idea: The ordinary face and view of experience is many times satisfied by several theories and philosophies. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.5) | |
A reaction: He gives as his example that the Copernican system and the Ptolemaic system both seem to satisfy all the facts. He wrote in 1605, just before Galileo's telescope. His point is regularly made in modern discussions. In this case, he was wrong! |
12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
Full Idea: It is the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as in a champaign region, and not in the inclosures of particularity. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.1) | |
A reaction: I have to plead guilty to this myself. He may have pinpointed the key motivation behind philosophy. We all want to know things, as Aristotle said, but some of us want the broad brush, and others want the fine detail. |
114 | Rhetoric can produce conviction, but not educate people about right and wrong [Plato] |
Full Idea: Rhetoric is an agent of the kind of persuasion which is designed to produce conviction, but not to educate people about right and wrong. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 455a) | |
A reaction: Surely there must be good rhetoric (or at least it is an open question)? |
116 | Rhetoric is irrational about its means and its ends [Plato] |
Full Idea: Rhetoric is a knack, because it lacks rational understanding of its object or what it dispenses (and can't explain the reason anything happens). | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 465a) | |
A reaction: If there are cunning people who have the wrong sort of intelligence for morality, there must be cunning users of rhetoric who know exactly what they are doing. |
135 | All activity aims at the good [Plato] |
Full Idea: All activity aims at the good. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 499e) | |
A reaction: He includes non-conscious activity, so this is the 'teleological' view of nature, which seems a bit optimistic to the modern mind. |
122 | Moral rules are made by the weak members of humanity [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: It's the weaklings who constitute the majority of the human race who make the rules. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 483b) | |
A reaction: An aristocrat bemoans democracy. Presumably the qualification for being a 'weakling' is shortage of money. How strong are the scions of the aristocrats? |
139 | A good person is bound to act well, and this brings happiness [Plato] |
Full Idea: A good person is bound to do whatever he does well and successfully, and success brings fulfilment and happiness. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 507c) | |
A reaction: Not how we would see it, I guess, but this is the Greek idea that a good person is one who functions well. Anyone who functions well is probably having a good time. |
128 | Is it natural to simply indulge our selfish desires? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: Nature says the only authentic way of life is to do nothing to hinder or restrain the expansion of one's desires. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 491e) | |
A reaction: Sounds like the natural desires of a young single man. Parents and spouses have natural desires that focus on other people's desires. |
4322 | In slaking our thirst the goodness of the action and the pleasure are clearly separate [Plato] |
Full Idea: When we drink to quench thirst, we lose the distress of the thirst and the pleasure of drinking at the same moment, but one loss is good and the other bad, so the pleasure and the goodness must be separate. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 497d) | |
A reaction: This is open to the objection that the good of slaking one's thirst is a long-term pleasure, where the drinking is short-term, so pleasure is still the good. |
136 | Good should be the aim of pleasant activity, not the other way round [Plato] |
Full Idea: Good should be the goal of pleasant activities, rather than pleasure being the goal of good activities. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 500a) | |
A reaction: Nice. Not far off what Aristotle says on the topic. So what activities should we seek out? Narrow the pleasures down to the good ones, or narrow the good ones down to the pleasurable? |
134 | Good and bad people seem to experience equal amounts of pleasure and pain [Plato] |
Full Idea: There is little to tell between good and bad people (e.g. cowards) in terms of how much pleasure and distress they experience. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 498c) | |
A reaction: A very perceptive remark. If the good are people with empathy for others, then they may suffer more distress than the insensitive wicked. |
132 | If happiness is the satisfaction of desires, then a life of scratching itches should be happiness [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: I want to ask whether a lifetime spent scratching, itching and scratching, no end of scratching, is also a life of happiness. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 494c) | |
A reaction: There are plenty of people who think 'fun' is the main aim of life, and who fit what Socrates is referring to. We don't admire such a life, but not many people can be admired. |
4319 | In a fool's mind desire is like a leaky jar, insatiable in its desires, and order and contentment are better [Plato] |
Full Idea: In a fool's mind desire is a leaky jar, …which is an analogy for the mind's insatiability, showing we should prefer an orderly life, in which one is content with whatever is to hand, to a self-indulgent life of insatiable desire. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 493b) | |
A reaction: This points to an interesting paradox, that pleasure requires the misery of desire. And yet absence of desire is like death. An Aristotelian mean, of living according to nature, seems the escape route. |
130 | Is the happiest state one of sensual, self-indulgent freedom? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: If a person has the means to live a life of sensual, self-indulgent freedom, there's no better or happier state of existence. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 492c) |
120 | Should we avoid evil because it will bring us bad consequences? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: We should avoid doing wrong because of all the bad consequences it will bring us. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 480a) |
118 | I would rather be a victim of crime than a criminal [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: If I had to choose between doing wrong and having wrong done to me, I'd prefer the latter to the former. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 469c) | |
A reaction: cf Democritus 68B45 |
131 | If absence of desire is happiness, then nothing is happier than a stone or a corpse [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: If people who need nothing are happy, there would be nothing happier than a stone or a corpse. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 492e) | |
A reaction: We aren't really supposed to approve of Callicles, but to me this is a splendidly crushing western response to many of the ideals found in eastern philosophy. |
140 | Self-indulgent desire makes friendship impossible, because it makes a person incapable of co-operation [Plato] |
Full Idea: Self-indulgent desire makes a person incapable of co-operation, which is a prerequisite of friendship. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 507e) |
119 | A criminal is worse off if he avoids punishment [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: A criminal is worse off if he doesn't pay the penalty, and continues to do wrong without getting punished. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 472e) |
129 | Do most people praise self-discipline and justice because they are too timid to gain their own pleasure? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: Why do most people praise self-discipline and justice? Because their own timidity makes them incapable of satisfying their pleasures. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 492a) |
4320 | The popular view is that health is first, good looks second, and honest wealth third [Plato] |
Full Idea: I'm sure you know the list of human advantages in the party song: 'The very best is health, Second good looks, and third honest wealth'. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 451e) | |
A reaction: This invites the obvious question of why anyone wants these three things, with the implied answer of 'pleasure'. But we might want them even if we couldn't use them, implying pluralism. |
137 | As with other things, a good state is organised and orderly [Plato] |
Full Idea: As in every case (an artefact, a body, a mind, a creature), a good state is an organised and orderly state. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 506e) |
141 | A good citizen won't be passive, but will redirect the needs of the state [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only responsibility of a good member of a community is altering the community's needs rather than going along with them. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 517b) |
123 | Do most people like equality because they are second-rate? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: It's because most people are second-rate that they are happy for things to be distributed equally. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 483c) |
124 | Does nature imply that it is right for better people to have greater benefits? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Callicles: We only have to look at nature to find evidence that it is right for better to have a greater share than worse. | |
From: Plato (Gorgias [c.387 BCE], 483d) |
12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
Full Idea: To say 'leaves are for protecting of fruit', or that 'clouds are for watering the earth', is well inquired and collected in metaphysic, but in physic they are impertinent. They are hindrances, and the search of the physical causes hath been neglected. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.7) | |
A reaction: This is the standard rebellion against Aristotle which gave rise to the birth of modern science. The story has been complicated by natural selection, which bestows a sort of purpose on living things. Nowadays we pursue both paths. |
12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
Full Idea: I assign to summary philosophy the operation of essences (as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility), with this distinction - that they be handled as they have efficacy in nature, and not logically. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a splendid motto for scientific essentialism, in a climate where modal logicians appear to have taken over the driving seat in our understanding of essences. |
9215 | Causation is easier to disrupt than logic, so metaphysics is part of nature, not vice versa [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: It would be harder to break P-and-Q implying P than the connection between cause and effect. This difference in strictness means it is more plausible that natural necessities include metaphysical necessities, than vice versa. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6) | |
A reaction: I cannot see any a priori grounds for the claim that causation is more easily disrupted than logic. It seems to be based on the strategy of inferring possibilities from what can be imagined, which seems to me to lead to wild misunderstandings. |