3 ideas
1556 | 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 |
22073 | The basis of philosophy is the Self prior to experience, where it is the essence of freedom [Schelling] |
Full Idea: The highest principle of all philosophy is the Self insofar as it is purely and simply Self, not yet conditioned by an object, but where it is formulated by freedom. The alpha and omega of all philosophy is freedom. | |
From: Friedrich Schelling (Letters to Hegel [1795], 1795 02 04), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.83 | |
A reaction: A common later response to this (e.g. in Schopenhauer) is that there is no concept of the Self prior to experience. The idealists seem to adore free will, while offering no reply to Spinoza on the matter, with whom they were very familiar. |
10370 | Causal relata are individuated by coarse spacetime regions [Quine, by Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Quine's view is that causal relata are individuated by spacetime regions, which is even less fine-grained than Davidson's account of events.... He says fine-grained events are poorly individuated and unfamiliar. | |
From: report of Willard Quine (Events and Reification [1985]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.2 | |
A reaction: [Schaffer cites Davidson 1985 as accepting this view] This is a nice suggestion, if we are looking for a naturalistic account of causal relata. It makes a minimum ontological commitment (a Quine trait), and I would supplement it with active 'powers'. |