58 ideas
14179 | The finest branch of wisdom is justice and moderation in ordering states and families [Plato] |
Full Idea: By far the greatest and fairest branch of wisdom is that which is concerned with the due ordering of states and families, whose name is moderation and justice. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 209a) | |
A reaction: ['Justice' is probably 'dikaiosune'] It is hard to disagree with this, and it relegates ivory tower philosophical contemplation to second place, unlike the late books of Aristotle's Ethics. |
2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
Full Idea: There seems to be an emerging naturalist consensus that is Realist in ontology and epistemology, externalist in semantics, and computationalist in cognitive psychology, which nicely allows us to retain our understanding of ourselves as rational creatures. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
Full Idea: A psychology that can't make sense of such facts as that mental processes are typically truth-preserving is ipso facto dead in the water. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) |
2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §3) |
12215 | The existence of numbers is not a matter of identities, but of constituents of the world [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: On saying that a particular number exists, we are not saying that there is something identical to it, but saying something about its status as a genuine constituent of the world. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.168) | |
A reaction: This is aimed at Frege's criterion of identity, which is to be an element in an identity relation, such as x = y. Fine suggests that this only gives a 'trivial' notion of existence, when he is interested in a 'thick' sense of 'exists'. |
12211 | It is plausible that x^2 = -1 had no solutions before complex numbers were 'introduced' [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: It is not implausible that before the 'introduction' of complex numbers, it would have been incorrect for mathematicians to claim that there was a solution to the equation 'x^2 = -1' under a completely unrestricted understanding of 'there are'. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009]) | |
A reaction: I have adopted this as the crucial test question for anyone's attitude to platonism in mathematics. I take it as obvious that complex numbers were simply invented so that such equations could be dealt with. They weren't 'discovered'! |
12209 | The indispensability argument shows that nature is non-numerical, not the denial of numbers [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: Arguments such as the dispensability argument are attempting to show something about the essentially non-numerical character of physical reality, rather than something about the nature or non-existence of the numbers themselves. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.160) | |
A reaction: This is aimed at Hartry Field. If Quine was right, and we only believe in numbers because of our science, and then Field shows our science doesn't need it, then Fine would be wrong. Quine must be wrong, as well as Field. |
12214 | 'Exists' is a predicate, not a quantifier; 'electrons exist' is like 'electrons spin' [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The most natural reading of 'electrons exist' is that there are electrons while, on our view, the proper reading should be modeled on 'electrons spin', meaning every electron spins. 'Exists' should be treated as a predicate rather than a quantifier. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.167) | |
A reaction: So existence IS a predicate (message to Kant). Dunno. Electrons have to exist in order to spin, but they don't have to exist in order to exist. But they don't have to exist to be 'dead'. |
12212 | Just as we introduced complex numbers, so we introduced sums and temporal parts [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: Just as one can extend the domain of discourse to include solutions to the equation 'x^2=-1' so one can extend the domain of discourse to include objects that satisfy the condition 'x is the sum of the G's' or 'x is a temporal part of the object b at t'. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.164) | |
A reaction: This thought lies behind Fine's 'Proceduralism'. I take it that our collection of abstracta consists entirely of items we have either deliberately or unthinkingly 'introduced' into our discourse when they seemed useful. They then submit to certain laws. |
12216 | Real objects are those which figure in the facts that constitute reality [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The real objects are the objects of reality, those that figure in the facts by which reality is constituted. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.172) | |
A reaction: And these need to be facts over and above the basic facts. Thus, does the 'equator' constitute reality, over and above the Earth being a rotating sphere? Does 'six' constitute reality, over and above all the possible groups of six objects? |
12218 | Being real and being fundamental are separate; Thales's water might be real and divisible [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: Being the case in reality and being fundamental are not sufficient for one another. If one agrees with Thales that the world is composed of water, and with Aristotle that water is indefinitely divisible, then water would be real but not fundamental. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.174) | |
A reaction: Presumably the divisibility would make a reductionist account of water possible. The Atlantic Ocean is real, but water molecules would have a more prominent place in the ontology of any good metaphysician. |
12217 | For ontology we need, not internal or external views, but a view from outside reality [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: We need to straddle both of Carnap's internal and external views. It is only by standing outside of reality that we are able to occupy a standpoint from which the constitution of reality can be adequately described. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.174) | |
A reaction: See Idea 4840! I thoroughly approve of this idea, which almost amounts to a Credo for the modern metaphysician. Since we can think outside our room, or our country, or our era, or our solar system, I think we can do what Fine is demanding. |
12213 | Ontological claims are often universal, and not a matter of existential quantification [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: I suggest we give up on the account of ontological claims in terms of existential quantification. The commitment to the integers is not an existential but a universal commitment, to each of the integers, not to some integer or other. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Ontology [2009], p.167) | |
A reaction: In classical logic it is only the existential quantifier which requires the domain to be populated, so Fine is more or less giving up on classical logic as a tool for doing ontology (apparently?). |
1607 | Diotima said the Forms are the objects of desire in philosophical discourse [Plato, by Roochnik] |
Full Idea: According to Diotima, the Forms are the objects of desire operative in philosophical discourse. | |
From: report of Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 210a4-) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.199 |
174 | True opinion without reason is midway between wisdom and ignorance [Plato] |
Full Idea: There is a state of mind half-way between wisdom and ignorance - having true opinions without being able to give reasons for them. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 202a) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 2140, where Plato scorns this state of mind. What he describes could be split into two - purely lucky true beliefs, and 'externalist knowledge', with non-conscious justification. |
2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Premeditated cognitive management is possible if knowing the contents of one's thoughts would tell you what would make them true and what would cause you to have them. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I love the idea of 'cognitive management'. Since belief is fairly involuntary, I subject myself to the newspapers, books, TV and conversation which will create the style of beliefs to which I aspire. Why? |
2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
Full Idea: A creature that knows what makes its thoughts true and what would cause it to have them, could therefore cause itself to have true thoughts. …This would explain why experimentation is so close to the heart of our cognitive style. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
Full Idea: You can put yourself into a situation where you may be caused to believe that P. Putting a question to someone who is in the know is one species of this behaviour, and putting a question to Nature (an experiment) is another. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
Full Idea: To be in the audience for an experiment you have to believe what the experimenter believes about what the outcome would mean, but not necessarily what the outcome will be. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Experimentation is an occasional and more or less self-conscious exercise in what informal thinking does all the time without thinking about it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Theories function as links in the causal chains that run from environmental outcomes to the beliefs that they cause the inquirer to have. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I hold that psychological laws are intentional, that semantics is purely informational, and that thinking is computation (and that it is possible to hold all of these assumptions at once). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: When he puts it baldly like that, it doesn't sound terribly persuasive. Thinking is 'computation'? Raw experience is irrelevant? What is it 'like' to spot an interesting connection between two propositions or concepts? It's not like adding 7 and 5. |
2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I think it is likely that we are the only creatures that can think about the contents of our thoughts. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I think this is a major idea. If you ask me the traditional question - what is the essential difference between us and other animals? - this is my answer (not language, or reason). We are the metathinkers. |
180 | We call a person the same throughout life, but all their attributes change [Plato] |
Full Idea: During the period from boyhood to old age, man does not retain the same attributes, though he is called the same person. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 207d) | |
A reaction: This precisely identifies the basic problem of personal identity over time. If this is the problem, DNA looks more and more significant for the answer, though it would be an awful mistake to think a pattern of DNA was a person. |
181 | Only the gods stay unchanged; we replace our losses with similar acquisitions [Plato] |
Full Idea: We retain identity not by staying the same (the preserve of gods) but by replacing losses with new similar acquisitions. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 208b) | |
A reaction: Any modern student of personal identity should be intrigued by this remark! It appears to take a rather physical view of the matter, and to be aware of human biology as a process. Are my continuing desires token-identical, or just 'similar'? |
2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The Cartesian view is that the interaction problem does arise, but is unsolvable because interaction is miraculous. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: A rather unsympathetic statement of the position. Cartesians might think that God could explain to us how interaction works. Cartesians are not mysterians, I think, but they see no sign of any theory of interaction. |
2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The question how mental representations could be both semantic, like propositions, and causal, like rocks, trees, and neural firings, is arguably just the interaction problem all over again. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: Interesting way of presenting the problem. If you seem to be confronting the interaction problem, you have probably drifted into a bogus dualist way of thinking. Retreat, and reformulate you questions and conceptual apparatus, till the question vanishes. |
2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Type physicalism is, roughly, the doctrine that psychological kinds are identical to neurological kinds. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App A n.1) | |
A reaction: This gets my general support, leaving open the nature of 'kinds'. Presumably the identity is strict, as in 'Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus'. It seems unlikely that if you and I think the 'same' thought, that we have strictly identical brain states. |
2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
Full Idea: What Hume didn't see was that the causal and representational properties of mental symbols have somehow to be coordinated if the coherence of mental life is to be accounted for. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: Certainly the idea that it all somehow becomes magic at the point where the brain represents the world is incoherent - but it is a bit magical. How can the whole of my garden be in my brain? Weird. |
2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Propositional attitudes are really three-place relations, between a creature, a proposition, and a mode of presentation (which are sentences of Mentalese). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure about 'really'! Why do we need a creature? Isn't 'hoping it will rain' a propositional attitude which some creature may or may not have? Fodor wants it to be physical, but it's abstract? |
2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Mentalism isn't gratuitous; you need it to explain rationality. Mental causation buys you behaviours that are unlike reflexes in at least three ways: they're autonomous, they're productive, and they're experimental. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: He makes his three ways sound all-or-nothing, which is (I believe) the single biggest danger when thinking about the mind. "Either you are conscious, or you are not..." |
2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
Full Idea: There isn't any XYZ, and there couldn't be any, and so we don't have to worry about it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
A reaction: Jadeite and Nephrite are real enough, which are virtually indistinguishable variants of jade. You just need Twin Jewellers instead of Twin Earths. We could build them, and employ twins to work there. |
2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
Full Idea: We need the idea of broad content to make sense of the fact that thoughts have the truth-conditions that they do. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
A reaction: There seems to be (as Dummett points out) a potential circularity here, as you can hardly know the truth-conditions of something if you don't already know its content. |
3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If the words of 'Swamp Man' (spontaneously created, with concepts) are about XYZ on Twin Earth, it is not because he's causally connected to the stuff, but because XYZ would cause his 'water' tokens (in the absence of H2O). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App B) | |
A reaction: The sight of the Eiffel tower causes my 'France' tokens, so is my word "France" about the Eiffel Tower? What would cause my 'nothing' tokens? |
2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you know quite a lot about what would cause you to have it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure where this fits into the great jigsaw of the mind, but it strikes me as an acute and important observation. The truth of a thought is not essential to make you have it. Ask Othello. |
2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I assume intentional content reduces (in some way) to information. …The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not the way that it is related to other thoughts. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2) | |
A reaction: Does this make Fodor a 'weak' functionalist? The 'strong' version would say a thought is merely a location in a flow diagram, but Fodor's 'mentalism' includes a further 'content' in each diagram box. |
2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Semantics, according to the informational view, is mostly about counterfactuals; what counts for the identity of my concepts is not what I do distinguish but what I could distinguish if I cared to (even using instruments and experts). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
A reaction: We all differ in our discriminations (and awareness of expertise), so our concepts would differ, which is bad news for communication (see Idea 223). The view has some plausibility, though. |
2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It is the essence of semantic externalism that there is nothing that you have to believe, there are no inferences that you have to accept, to have the concept 'elm'. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
A reaction: [REMINDER: broad content is filed in 18.C.7, under 'Thought' rather than under language. That is because I am a philospher of thought, rather than of language. |
2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It is the causal connection between the state of the world and the contents of beliefs that the reduction of meaning to information is designed to insure. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I'm not clear why characterising the contents of a belief in terms of its information has to amount to a 'reduction'. A cup of tea isn't reduced to tea. Connections imply duality. |
2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you thereby know what would make the thought true. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: The truthmaker might by physically impossible, and careful thought might show it to be contradictory - but that wouldn't destroy the meaning. |
2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If what you are thinking depends on all of what you believe, then nobody ever thinks the same thing twice. …That is why so many semantic holists (Quine, Putnam, Rorty, Churchland, probably Wittgenstein) end up being semantic eliminativists. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
A reaction: If linguistic holism is nonsense, this is easily settled. What I say about breakfast is not changed by reading some Gibbon yesterday. |
2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The standard view is that Frege cases [knowing Jocasta but not mother] show that reference doesn't determine sense, and Twin cases [knowing water but not H2O] show that sense doesn't determine reference. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) | |
A reaction: How about 'references don't contain much information', and 'descriptions may not fix what they are referring to'? Simple really. |
2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Broad semantic theories generally hold that the basic semantic properties of thoughts are truth and denotation. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
A reaction: I think truth and denotation are the basic semantic properties, but I am dubious about whole-hearted broad semantic theories, so I seem to have gone horribly wrong somewhere. |
2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
Full Idea: You need an externalist semantics to explain why the contents of beliefs should have anything to do with how the world is. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: Since externalist semantics only emerged in the 1970s, that implies that no previous theory had any notion that language had some connection to how the world is. Eh? |
172 | Love of ugliness is impossible [Plato] |
Full Idea: There cannot be such a thing as love of ugliness. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 201a) |
4026 | Beauty is harmony with what is divine, and ugliness is lack of such harmony [Plato] |
Full Idea: Ugliness is out of harmony with everything that is godly; beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 206d) | |
A reaction: This remark shows how the concept of 'harmony' is at the centre of Greek thought (and is a potential bridge of the is/ought gap). |
173 | Beauty and goodness are the same [Plato] |
Full Idea: What is good is the same as what is beautiful. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 201c) |
183 | Stage two is the realisation that beauty of soul is of more value than beauty of body [Plato] |
Full Idea: The second stage of progress is to realise that beauty of soul is more valuable than beauty of body. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 210b) |
184 | Progress goes from physical beauty, to moral beauty, to the beauty of knowledge, and reaches absolute beauty [Plato] |
Full Idea: One should step up from physical beauty, to moral beauty, to the beauty of knowledge, until at last one knows what absolute beauty is. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 211c) | |
A reaction: Presumably this is why Socrates refused sexual favours to Alcibiades. The idea is inspiring, and yet it is a rejection of humanity. |
171 | Music is a knowledge of love in the realm of harmony and rhythm [Plato] |
Full Idea: Music may be called a knowledge of the principles of love in the realm of harmony and rhythm. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 187c) |
179 | Love is desire for perpetual possession of the good [Plato] |
Full Idea: Love is desire for perpetual possession of the good. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 206a) | |
A reaction: Even the worst human beings often have lovers. 'Perpetual' is a nice observation. |
14177 | Love assists men in achieving merit and happiness [Plato] |
Full Idea: Phaedrus: Love is not only the oldest and most honourable of the gods, but also the most powerful to assist men in the acquisition of merit and happiness, both here and hereafter. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 180b) | |
A reaction: Maybe we should talk less of love as a feeling, and more as a motivation, not just in human relationships, but in activities like gardening and database compilation. |
176 | Love follows beauty, wisdom is exceptionally beautiful, so love follows wisdom [Plato] |
Full Idea: Wisdom is one of the most beautiful of things, and Love is love of beauty, so it follows that Love must be a love of wisdom. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 204b) | |
A reaction: Good, but wisdom isn't the only exceptionally beautiful thing. Music is beautiful partly because it is devoid of ideas. |
177 | If a person is good they will automatically become happy [Plato] |
Full Idea: 'What will be gained by a man who is good?' 'That is easy - he will be happy'. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 205a) | |
A reaction: Suppose you tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944 (a good deed), but failed. Happiness presumably results from success, rather than mere good intentions. |
14178 | Happiness is secure enjoyment of what is good and beautiful [Plato] |
Full Idea: By happy you mean in secure enjoyment of what is good and beautiful? - Certainly. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 202c) | |
A reaction: We seem to have lost track of the idea that beauty might be an essential ingredient of happiness. |
170 | The only slavery which is not dishonourable is slavery to excellence [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only form of servitude which has no dishonour has for its object the acquisition of excellence. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 184c) |
182 | The first step on the right path is the contemplation of physical beauty when young [Plato] |
Full Idea: The man who would pursue the right way to his goal must begin, when he is young, by contemplating physical beauty. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 210a) |
175 | Gods are not lovers of wisdom, because they are already wise [Plato] |
Full Idea: No god is a lover of wisdom or desires to be wise, for he is wise already. | |
From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 204a) |