Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford' and 'On the True Doctrine (Against Christians)'

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5 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 2. Knowledge as Convention
By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias]
     Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature.
     From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories
Intentionality is the mark of dispositions, not of the mental [Place]
     Full Idea: My thesis is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional.
     From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 1)
     A reaction: An idea with few friends, but I really like it, because it offers the prospect of a unified account of physical nature and the mind/brain. It seems reasonable to say my mind is essentially a bunch of dispositions. Mind is representations + dispositions.
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 6. Animal Rights
The world was made as much for animals as for man [Celsus]
     Full Idea: The world was made as much for the irrational animals as for men.
     From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], §V)
     A reaction: A good remark. It seems to be a classic distortion of European Christianity that the world is made for us, and that animals only exist to fill our sandwiches.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / c. Essence and laws
Dispositions are not general laws, but laws of the natures of individual entities [Place]
     Full Idea: Dispositions are the substantive laws, not, as for Armstrong, of nature in general, but of the nature of individual entities whose dispositional properties they are.
     From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 6)
     A reaction: [He notes that Nancy Cartwright 1989 agrees with him] I like this a lot. I tend to denegrate 'laws', because of their dubious ontological status, but this restores laws to the picture, in the place where they belong, in the stuff of the world.
29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 4. Christianity / a. Christianity
Christians presented Jesus as a new kind of logos to oppose that of the philosophers [Celsus]
     Full Idea: Christians put forth this Jesus not only as the son of God, but as the very Logos - not the pure and holy Logos known to the philosophers, but a new kind of Logos.
     From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], III)