16 ideas
| 16123 | Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The rule is that when one perceives first the community between the members of a group of many things, one should not desist until one sees in it all those differences that are located in classes. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285b) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to recommend the opposite as well - see community even when there appears to be nothing but differences. I take this to be analysis, just as much as modern linguistic approaches are. Analyse the world, not language. |
| 16125 | To reveal a nature, divide down, and strip away what it has in common with other things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Let's take the kind posited and cut it in two, .then follow the righthand part of what we've cut, and hold onto things that the sophist is associated with until we strip away everything he has in common with other things, then display his peculiar nature. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 264e) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be close to Aristotle's account of definition, when he is trying to get at what-it-is-to-be some thing. But if you strip away everything the definiendum has in common with other things, will anything remain? |
| 16124 | No one wants to define 'weaving' just for the sake of weaving [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I don't suppose that anyone with any sense would want to hunt down the definition of 'weaving' for the sake of weaving itself. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285d) | |
| A reaction: The point seems to be that the definition brings out the connections between weaving and other activities and objects, thus enlarging our understanding. |
| 22664 | I do not care if my trivial beliefs are false, and I have no interest in many truths [Nozick] |
| Full Idea: I find that I do not mind at all the thought that I have some false beliefs (of US state capitals), and there are many truths I do not care to know at all (total grains of sand on the beach). | |
| From: Robert Nozick (The Nature of Rationality [1993], p.67) | |
| A reaction: A useful corrective to anyone who blindly asserts that truth is the supreme human value. I would still be annoyed if someone taught me lies about these two types of truth. |
| 22665 | Maybe James was depicting the value of truth, and not its nature [Nozick] |
| Full Idea: We might see William James's pragmatic view that truth is what works as depicting the value of truth, and not its nature. | |
| From: Robert Nozick (The Nature of Rationality [1993], p.68) | |
| A reaction: James didn't think that he was doing this. He firmly says that this IS truth, not just the advantages of truth. Another view is that pragmatists are giving a test for truth. |
| 19406 | I strongly believe in the actual infinite, which indicates the perfections of its author [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I am so much for the actual infinite that instead of admitting that nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that it affects nature everywhere in order to indicate the perfections of its author. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reply to Foucher [1693], p.99) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that, for Leibniz, while infinities indicate the perfections of their author, that is not the reason why they exist. God wasn't, presumably, showing off. Leibniz does not think we can actually know these infinities. |
| 5961 | The soul gets its goodness from god, and its evil from previous existence. [Plato] |
| Full Idea: From its composer the soul possesses all beautiful things, but from its former condition, everything that proves to be harsh and unjust in heaven. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 273b) | |
| A reaction: A neat move to explain the origins of evil (or rather, to shift the problem of evil to a long long way from here). This view presumably traces back to the views of Empedocles on good and evil. Can the soul acquire evil in its current existence? |
| 22662 | In the instrumental view of rationality it only concerns means, and not ends [Nozick] |
| Full Idea: On the instrumental conception of rationality, it consists in the effective and efficient achievement of goals, ends, and desires. About the goals themselves it has little to say. | |
| From: Robert Nozick (The Nature of Rationality [1993], p.64) | |
| A reaction: [He quotes Russell 1954 p.viii as expressing this view] A long way from Greek logos, which obviously concerns the rational selection of right ends (for which, presumably, reasons can be given). In practice our ends may never be rational, of course. |
| 22666 | Is it rational to believe a truth which leads to permanent misery? [Nozick] |
| Full Idea: If a mother is presented with convincing evidence that her son has committed a grave crime, but were she to believe it that would make her life thereafter miserable, is it rational for her to believe her son is guilty? | |
| From: Robert Nozick (The Nature of Rationality [1993], p.69) | |
| A reaction: I assume there is a conflict of rationalities, because there are conflicting ends. Presumably most mothers love the truth, but most of us also aim for happy lives. It is perfectly rational to avoid discovering a horrible family truth. |
| 22667 | Rationality needs some self-consciousness, to also evaluate how we acquired our reasons [Nozick] |
| Full Idea: Rationality involves some degree of self-consciousness. Not only reasons are evaluated, but also the processes by which information arrives, is stored, and recalled. | |
| From: Robert Nozick (The Nature of Rationality [1993], p.74) | |
| A reaction: I defend the idea that animals have a degree of rationality, because they can make sensible judgements, but I cannot deny this idea. Rationality comes in degrees, and second-level thought is a huge leap forward in degree. |
| 22663 | Rationality is normally said to concern either giving reasons, or reliability [Nozick] |
| Full Idea: The two themes permeating the philosophical literature are that rationality is a matter of reasons, or that rationality is a matter of reliability. | |
| From: Robert Nozick (The Nature of Rationality [1993], p.64) | |
| A reaction: Since a clock can be reliable, I would have thought it concerns reasons. Or an unthinking person could reliably recite truths from memory. There is also the instrumental view of rationality. |
| 283 | The question of whether or not to persuade comes before the science of persuasion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The science of whether one must persuade or not must rule over the science capable of persuading. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 304c) | |
| A reaction: Plato probably thinks that reason has to be top of the pyramid, but there is always the Nietzschean/romantic question of why we should place such a value on what is rational. |
| 282 | Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The bodiless things, being the most beautiful and the greatest, are only shown with clarity by speech and nothing else. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 286a) | |
| A reaction: Unfortunately this will be true of warped and ugly ideas as well. |
| 281 | The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is by preserving the mean that arts produce everything that is good and beautiful. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 284b) |
| 22559 | Democracy is the worst of good constitutions, but the best of bad constitutions [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato judged that when the constitution is decent, democracy is the worst of them, but when they are bad it is the best. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 302e) by Aristotle - Politics 1289b07 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle denies that a good oligarchy is superior. What of technocracy? The challenge is to set up institutions which ensure the health of the democracy. The big modern problem is populists who lie. |
| 279 | Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is fitting for only the most divine things of all to be always the same and in the same state and in the same respects, and the nature of body is not of this ordering. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 269b) |