39 ideas
| 21943 | Since Kant, self-criticism has been part of philosophy [Gutting] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy after Kant has involved a continuing critique of its own project. | |
| From: Gary Gutting (Foucault: a very short introduction [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by many modern philosophers in the analytic tradition who write as if Kant had never existed. I don't know if that is a conscious decision, but it may be a good one. |
| 162 | Can we understand an individual soul without knowing the soul in general? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Do you think it possible to form an adequate conception of the nature of an individual soul without considering the nature of soul in general? | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 270c) | |
| A reaction: Do animals understand anything (as opposed to simply being aware of things)? |
| 160 | The highest ability in man is the ability to discuss unity and plurality in the nature of things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When I believe that I have found in anyone the ability to discuss unity and plurality as they exist in the nature of things, I follow his footsteps as if he was a god. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 266b) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the problem of identity, which is at the heart of modern metaphysics. |
| 166 | A speaker should be able to divide a subject, right down to the limits of divisibility [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A speaker must be able to define a subject generically, and then to divide it into its various specific kinds until he reaches the limits of divisibility. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 277b) |
| 21944 | Structuralism describes human phenomena in terms of unconscious structures [Gutting] |
| Full Idea: Structuralism in the 1960s was a set of theories which explained human phenomena in terms of underlying unconscious structures, rather than the lived experience described by Phenomenology. | |
| From: Gary Gutting (Foucault: a very short introduction [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: Hence the interest in Freud and Marx, and Foucault's interest in history, each offering to unmask what is hidden in consciousness. The unmasking is a basically Kantian project. Cf. Frege's hatred of 'psychologism'. |
| 13985 | A true proposition seems true of one fact, but a false proposition seems true of nothing at all. [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Whereas there might be just one fact that a true proposition was like, we would have to say that a false proposition was unlike any fact. We could not speak of the fact that it was false of, so we could not speak of its being false of anything at all. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
| A reaction: Ryle brings out very nicely the point Russell emphasised so much, that the most illuminating studies in philosophy are of how falsehood works, rather than of how truths work. If I say 'the Queen is really a man' it is obvious what that is false of. |
| 13984 | Two maps might correspond to one another, but they are only 'true' of the country they show [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: One map of Sussex is like another, but it is not true of that other map, but only of the county. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
| A reaction: One might question whether a map is in any sense 'true' of Sussex, though one must admit that there are good and bad maps of Sussex. The point is a nice one, which shows that there is no simple account of truth as correspondence. |
| 13979 | Logic studies consequence, compatibility, contradiction, corroboration, necessitation, grounding.... [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Logic studies the way in which one thing follows from another, in which one thing is compatible with another, contradicts, corroborates or necessitates another, is a special case of another or the nerve of another. And so on. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
| A reaction: I presume that 'and so on' would include how one thing proves another. This is quite a nice list, which makes me think a little more widely about the nature of logic (rather than just about inference). Incompatibility isn't a process. |
| 7953 | Reasoning needs to cut nature accurately at the joints [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In our reasoning we need a clear view of the ability to divide a genus into species, observing the natural joints, not mangling any of the parts, like an unskilful butcher. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 265d) | |
| A reaction: In modern times this Platonic idea has become the standard metaphor for realism. I endorse it. I think nature has joints, and we should hunt for them. There are natural sets. The joints may exist in abstract concepts, as well as in objects. |
| 13988 | Many sentences do not state facts, but there are no facts which could not be stated [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: There are many sentences which do not state facts, while there are no facts which (in principle) could not be stated. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Substitute') | |
| A reaction: Hm. This seems like a nice challenge. The first problem would be infinite facts. Then complex universal facts, beyond the cognizance of any mind. Then facts that change faster than thinking can change. Do you give up yet? Then there's.... |
| 16121 | I revere anyone who can discern a single thing that encompasses many things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If I believe that someone is capable of discerning a single thing that is also by nature capable of encompassing many, I follow 'straight behind, in his footsteps, as if he were a god'. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 266b) | |
| A reaction: [Plato quote Odyssey 2.406] This is the sort of simple but profound general observation which only the early philosophers bothered to make, and no one comments on now. Encompassing many under one is the very essence of thinking. |
| 153 | It takes a person to understand, by using universals, and by using reason to create a unity out of sense-impressions [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It takes a man to understand by the use of universals, and to collect out of the multiplicity of sense-impressions a unity arrived at by a process of reason. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 249b) |
| 154 | We would have an overpowering love of knowledge if we had a pure idea of it - as with the other Forms [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What overpowering love knowledge would inspire if it could bring a clear image of itself before our sight, and the same may be said of the other forms. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 250d) | |
| A reaction: the motivation in Plato's theory |
| 13983 | Representation assumes you know the ideas, and the reality, and the relation between the two [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: The theory of Representative Ideas begs the whole question, by assuming a) that we can know these 'Ideas', b) that we can know the realities they represent, and c) we can know a particular 'idea' to be representative of a particular reality. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
| A reaction: Personally I regard the ideas as immediate (rather than acquired by some knowledge process), and I am dimly hoping that they represent reality (or I'm in deep trouble), and I am struggling to piece together the reality they represent. I'm happy with that. |
| 151 | True knowledge is of the reality behind sense experience [Plato] |
| Full Idea: True knowledge is concerned with the abode of true reality, without colour or shape, intangible but utterly real, apprehensible only to the intellect. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 247c) |
| 165 | If the apparent facts strongly conflict with probability, it is in everyone's interests to suppress the facts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There are some occasions when both prosecution and defence should positively suppress the facts in favour of probability, if the facts are improbable. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 272e) |
| 9296 | The soul is self-motion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Self-motion is of the very nature of the soul. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245e) | |
| A reaction: This culminates a length discussion of the soul. He gives an implausible argument that the soul is immortal, because it could never cease its self-motion. Why are we so unimpressed by motion, when the Greeks were amazed by it? |
| 23997 | Plato saw emotions and appetites as wild horses, in need of taming [Plato, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Plato had a conception of the emotions and our bodily appetites as being like wild horses, to be harnassed and controlled by reason. | |
| From: report of Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE]) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Education' | |
| A reaction: This seems to make Plato the patriarch of puritanism. See Symposium, as well as Phaedrus. But bringing up children can often seem like taming wild beasts. |
| 13980 | If you like judgments and reject propositions, what are the relata of incoherence in a judgment? [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Those who find 'judgments' everywhere and propositions nowhere find that some judgments cohere whereas others are incoherent. What is the status of the terms between which these relations hold? | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
| A reaction: Ryle is playing devil's advocate, but this strikes me as a nice point. I presume Russell after 1906 is the sort of thinker he has in mind. |
| 13978 | Husserl and Meinong wanted objective Meanings and Propositions, as subject-matter for Logic [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: It is argued by Husserl and (virtually) by Meinong that only if there are such entities as objective Meanings - and propositions are just a species of Meaning - is there anything for Logic to be about. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
| A reaction: It is presumably this proposal which led to the scepticism about meanings in Wittgenstein, Quine and Kripke. The modern view, which strikes me as right, is that logic is about inference, and so doesn't need a subject-matter. |
| 13977 | When I utter a sentence, listeners grasp both my meaning and my state of mind [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: If I have uttered my sentence aloud, a listener can both understand what I say or grasp my meaning, and also infer to my state of mind. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], I) | |
| A reaction: This simple observations seems rather important. If we shake written words onto the floor, they might add up to a proper sentence, but half of the point of a sentence is missing. Irony trades on the gap between meaning and state of mind. |
| 13976 | 'Propositions' name what is thought, because 'thoughts' and 'judgments' are too ambiguous [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: As the orthodox terms 'thoughts' and 'judgments' are equivocal, since they may equally well denote 'thinkings' as 'what-is-thought', the 'accusatives' of acts of thinking have come to be called 'propositions'. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], I) | |
| A reaction: I have understood propositions to be capable of truth or falsity. 'What is thought' could be a right old jumble of images and disjointed fragments. Propositions are famous for their unity! |
| 13981 | Several people can believe one thing, or make the same mistake, or share one delusion [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: We ordinarily find no difficulty in saying of a given thing that several people believe it and so, if they think it false, 'make the same mistake' or 'labour under the same delusion'. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
| A reaction: Ryle is playing devil's advocate, but this (like 13980) strikes me as quite good support for propositions. I suppose you can describe these phenomena as assent to sentences, but they might be very different sentences to express the same delusion. |
| 13987 | We may think in French, but we don't know or believe in French [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Although we speak of thinking in French, we never talk of knowing or believing or opining in French. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Substitute') | |
| A reaction: Once again Ryle is playing devil's advocate, but he does it rather well, and offers good support for my belief in propositions. I love this. 'I know, in French, a bank where the wild thyme blows'. |
| 13989 | There are no propositions; they are just sentences, used for thinking, which link to facts in a certain way [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: There are no substantial propositions...There is just a relation between grammatical structure and the logical structure of facts. 'Proposition' denotes the same as 'sentence' or 'statement'. A proposition is not what I think, but what I think or talk in. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Conclusions') | |
| A reaction: The conclusion of Ryle's discussion, but I found his support for propositions much more convincing than his critique of them, or his attempt at an alternative linguistic account. He never mentioned animals, so he self-evidently hasn't grasped the problem. |
| 13982 | If we accept true propositions, it is hard to reject false ones, and even nonsensical ones [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: All the arguments for the subsistence of true propositions seem to hold good for the subsistence of false ones. We might even have to find room for absurd or nonsensical ones like 'some round squares are not red-headed'. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
| A reaction: A particularly nice example of a Category Mistake from the man who made them famous. Why can't we just make belief a proposition attitude, so I equally believe 'sea is blue', 'grass is pink' and 'trees are bifocal', but the status of my belief varies? |
| 159 | Only a good philosopher can be a good speaker [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Unless a man becomes an adequate philosopher he will never be an adequate speaker on any subject. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 261a) | |
| A reaction: Depends. Hitler showed little sign of clear philosophical thinking, but the addition of lights and uniforms seemed to sweep reasonably intelligent people along with him. |
| 5946 | 'Phaedrus' pioneers the notion of philosophical rhetoric [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The purpose of the 'Phaedrus' is to pioneer the notion of philosophical rhetoric. | |
| From: comment on Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], Ch.10) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment | |
| A reaction: This is a wonderfully challenging view of what Plato was up to. One might connect it with Rorty's claim that philosophy should move away from epistemology and analysis, towards hermeneutics, which sounds to me like rhetoric. 'Phaedrus' is beautiful. |
| 158 | An excellent speech seems to imply a knowledge of the truth in the mind of the speaker [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If a speech is to be classed as excellent, does that not presuppose knowledge of the truth about the subject of the speech in the mind of the speaker. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 259e) | |
| A reaction: I like the thought that Plato's main interest was rhetoric, but with the view that the only good rhetoric is truth-speaking. It would be hard to admire a speech if you disagreed with it. |
| 155 | Beauty is the clearest and most lovely of the Forms [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Only beauty has the privilege of being the most clearly discerned and the most lovely of the forms. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 250e) | |
| A reaction: the motivation in Plato's theory |
| 143 | The two ruling human principles are the natural desire for pleasure, and an acquired love of virtue [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In each one of us there are two ruling and impelling principles: a desire for pleasure, which is innate, and an acquired conviction which causes us to aim at excellence. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 237d) | |
| A reaction: This division is too neat and simple. An obsession with pleasure I would take to be acquired. If you set out to do something, I think there is an innate desire to do it well. |
| 157 | Most pleasure is release from pain, and is therefore not worthwhile [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Life is not worth living for pleasures whose enjoyment entirely depends on previous sensation of pain, like almost all physical pleasures. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 258e) | |
| A reaction: Eating exotic food which is hard to obtain? (Pay someone to obtain it). Rock climbing. Training for sport. |
| 144 | Reason impels us towards excellence, which teaches us self-control [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The conviction which impels us towards excellence is rational, and the power by which it masters us we call self-control. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 237e) |
| 156 | Bad people are never really friends with one another [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is not ordained that bad men should be friends with one another. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 255b) |
| 148 | If the prime origin is destroyed, it will not come into being again out of anything [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the prime origin is destroyed, it will not come into being again out of anything. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245d) | |
| A reaction: This is the essence of Aquinas's Third Way of proving God's existence. |
| 152 | The mind of God is fully satisfied and happy with a vision of reality and truth [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The mind of a god, sustained by pure intelligence and knowledge, is satisfied with the vision of reality, and nourished and made happy by the vision of truth. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 247d) |
| 150 | We cannot conceive of God, so we have to think of Him as an immortal version of ourselves [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Because we have never seen or formed an adequate idea of a god, we picture him to ourselves as a being of the same kind as ourselves but immortal. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 246d) |
| 149 | There isn't a single reason for positing the existence of immortal beings [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There is not a single sound reason for positing the existence of such a being who is immortal | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 246d) |
| 146 | Soul is always in motion, so it must be self-moving and immortal [Plato] |
| Full Idea: All soul is immortal, for what is always in motion is immortal. Only that which moves itself never ceases to be in motion. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245c) |