24 ideas
| 1606 | You have to be a Platonist to debate about reality, so every philosopher is a Platonist [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Everyone who enters into a debate about reality automatically becomes a Platonist. Since such debates are the essence of philosophy, every philosopher is a Platonist. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) | |
| A reaction: This is correct |
| 1595 | Philosophy aims to satisfy the chief human desire - the articulation of beauty itself [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy, the attempt to articulate the vision of beauty itself, is the attempt to satisfy the highest human desire. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.120) | |
| A reaction: A million miles away from modern philosophy, but still an ideal to be taken seriously. |
| 2676 | Didactic argument starts from the principles of the subject, not from the opinions of the learner [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Didactic arguments are those which reason from the principles appropriate to each branch of learning and not from the opinions of the answerer (for he who is learning must take things on trust). | |
| From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 165b01) |
| 1571 | 'Logos' ranges from thought/reasoning, to words, to rational structures outside thought [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos can mean i) a thought or reasoning, ii) the word which expresses a thought, iii) a rational structure outside human thought. These meanings give 'logos' an extraordinary range. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 12) |
| 1572 | In the seventeenth century the only acceptable form of logos was technical knowledge [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century only a certain type of logos was deemed legitimate, namely that identified with technical knowledge (or 'techné'). | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 15) |
| 1573 | The hallmark of a person with logos is that they give reasons why one opinion is superior to another [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: What is supposed to identify the person of logos from the one without is the commitment to giving reasons explaining why one opinion is superior to another. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 17) |
| 1592 | Logos cannot refute the relativist, and so must admit that it too is a matter of desire (for truth and agreement) [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos cannot refute the radical, consistent and self-conscious relativist. Therefore it must admit that, like the relativist, it itself is essentially a matter of desire. It wants to say what is right and wrong, true and false, and for others to agree. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.108) |
| 1593 | Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.109) |
| 1603 | Logos is not unconditionally good, but good if there is another person willing to engage with it [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos is not unconditionally good, but good contingent on there being some other person (out there) who is willing to talk with logos, to approach it even as an opponent. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.175) |
| 1598 | We prefer reason or poetry according to whether basics are intelligible or not [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Is the arché (basis) intelligible, or is it chaos? Upon this question hinges all, for answering it determines whether poetry or logos is the form of human speech that best does justice to the world. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.139) |
| 2675 | Reasoning is a way of making statements which makes them lead on to other statements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Reasoning is based on certain statements made in such a way as necessarily to cause the assertion of things other than those statements and as a result of those statements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 165a01) |
| 1584 | Modern science, by aiming for clarity about the external world, has abandoned rationality in the human world [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: The modern scientific world view, with all its hope for clarity and precision, has a flipside, …which is its abandonment of rationality in the world of human significance. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.74) |
| 1591 | Unfortunately for reason, argument can't be used to establish the value of argument [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Unfortunately for the logos there is no argument that can, without begging the question, establish the goodness of argumentation. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.106) |
| 1599 | Attempts to suspend all presuppositions are hopeless, because a common ground must be agreed for the process [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: To debate about suspending all our presuppositions requires a common ground which, upon being established, immediately renders the debate superfluous. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.144) |
| 2677 | Dialectic aims to start from generally accepted opinions, and lead to a contradiction [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Dialectical arguments are those which, starting from generally accepted opinions, reason to establish a contradiction. | |
| From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 165b03) |
| 2674 | Competitive argument aims at refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism or repetition [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Those who compete and contend in argument aim at five objects: refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism, and the reduction of one's opponent to a state of babbling, that is, making him say the same thing over and over again. | |
| From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 165b15) |
| 16967 | 'Are Coriscus and Callias at home?' sounds like a single question, but it isn't [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If you ask 'Are Coriscus and Callias at home or not at home?', whether they are both at home or not there, the number of propositions is more than one. For if the answer is true, it does not follow that the question is a single one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 176a08) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Aristotle is saying that some questions should not receive a 'yes' or 'no' answer, because they are equivocal. Arthur Prior cites this passage, on 'and'. Ordinary use of 'and' need not be the logical use of 'and'. |
| 1605 | Reality can be viewed neutrally, or as an object of desire [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: There are two extremes: the Aristotelian views reality simply as reality, and the sophist or poet view reality only as an object of desire. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) |
| 16149 | Generic terms like 'man' are not substances, but qualities, relations, modes or some such thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: 'Man', and every generic term, denotes not an individual substance but a quality or relation or mode or something of the kind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 179a01) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle's denial that species constitutes the essence of anything. I take 'man' to be a categorisation of individuals, and is ontologically nothing at all in its own right. |
| 11840 | Only if two things are identical do they have the same attributes [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is only to things which are indistinguishable and one in essence [ousia] that all the same attributes are generally held to belong. | |
| From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 179a37) | |
| A reaction: This simply IS Leibniz's Law (to which I shall from now on quietly refer to as 'Aristotle's Law'). It seems that it just as plausible to translate 'ousia' as 'being' rather than 'essence'. 'Indistinguishable' and 'one in ousia' are not the same. |
| 1577 | Relativism is a disease which destroys the possibility of rational debate [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Relativism is disease, is pollution, for it negates the efficacy of logos. It destroys the possibility of a complete rational debate of fundamental questions. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.41) |
| 8130 | Qualities of experience are just representational aspects of experience ('Representationalism') [Harman, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Harman defended what came to be known as 'representationalism' - the view that qualitative aspects of experience are nothing other than representational aspects. | |
| From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Intrinsic Quality of Experience [1990]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.459 | |
| A reaction: Functionalists like Harman have a fairly intractable problem with the qualities of experience, and this may be clutching at straws. What does 'represent' mean? How is the representation achieved? Why that particular quale? |
| 1578 | If relativism is the correct account of human values, then rhetoric is more important than reasoning [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: If relativism offers an accurate description of human values, then rhetoric replaces logos as the most fundamental human activity. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.47) | |
| A reaction: Or putting it another way, logos (reason) becomes meaningless. I suppose, though, that a relativist can conduct conditional reasoning (but must belief in some rules of reason). |
| 1596 | Reasoning aims not at the understanding of objects, but at the desire to give beautiful speeches [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos originates not in a cognitive capacity for the apprehension of objects, but in the desire to give birth to beautiful speeches. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.124) | |
| A reaction: It is hard for us to grasp this, but it might be quite life-enhancing if we could return to that old way of thought. |