171 ideas
| 2136 | Philosophers become as divine and orderly as possible, by studying divinity and order [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Because a philosopher's links are with a realm which is divine and orderly, he becomes as divine and orderly as is humanly possible. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 500d) | |
| A reaction: Can you be too orderly? Without order nothing of any interest (to gods or men) could ever happen. |
| 23767 | The winds of the discussion should decide its destination [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We must let our destination be decided by the winds of the discussion. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 394d) | |
| A reaction: Always loved that one. Had it on the wall of my teaching room. I take it that the aim is to follow reason, rather than the powerful rhetoric of some member of the group. The spirit of philosophy is to avoid prejudgement of your enquiry. |
| 23682 | It would be absurd to be precise about the small things, but only vague about the big things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be absurd to devote all our energies to securing the greatest possible precision and clarity in matters of little consequence, and not to demand the highest precision in the most important things of all. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 504e) | |
| A reaction: I offer this to modern analytic philosophers, who often strike me as having this priority the wrong way round. Their defence, of course, is that the important things depend on the things of little consequence - but they can lose the plot with big things. |
| 7001 | If you begin philosophy with language, you find yourself trapped in it [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you start with language and try to work your way outwards, you will never get outside language. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This voices my pessimism about the linguistic approach to philosophy (and I don't just mean analysis of ordinary language), though I wonder if the career of (say) John Searle is a counterexample. |
| 7037 | Parsimony does not imply the world is simple, but that our theories should try to be [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A commitment to parsimony is not a commitment to a conception of the world as simple. The idea, rather, is that we should not complicate our theories about the world unnecessarily. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
| A reaction: In other words, Ockham's Razor is about us, not about the world. It would be absurd to make the a priori assumption that the world has to be simple. Are we, though, creating bad theories by insisting that they should be simple? |
| 7038 | A theory with few fundamental principles might still posit a lot of entities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It could well turn out that a simpler theory - a theory with fewer fundamental principles - posits more entities than a more complex competitor. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 4036. The point here is that you can't simply translate Ockham as 'keep it simple', as there are different types of simplicity. The best theory will negotiate a balance between entities and principles. |
| 2154 | The ability to take an overview is the distinguishing mark of a dialectician [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The ability to take an overview is the distinguishing mark of a dialectician. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 537c) |
| 2151 | Dialectic is the only method of inquiry which uproots the things which it takes for granted [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic is the only field of inquiry whose quest for certainty causes it to uproot the things it takes for granted in the course of its journey. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 533c) |
| 4011 | For Plato, rationality is a vision of and love of a cosmic rational order [Plato, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: In Plato's theory, to be rational is to have a vision of rational order, and to love this order. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 537d) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §4.1 | |
| A reaction: There may be a worrying elitism in this, but it helps to pinpoint the sense in which 'all philosophers are Platonists'. |
| 2093 | You must never go against what you actually believe [Plato] |
| Full Idea: You must never go against what you actually believe. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 350e) |
| 2130 | People often merely practice eristic instead of dialectic, because they don't analyse the subject-matter [Plato] |
| Full Idea: People often think they are practising dialectic when they are practising eristic; this is because of their inability to conduct the enquiry by dividing the subject-matter into its various aspects. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 454a) |
| 9847 | A contextual definition permits the elimination of the expression by a substitution [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The standard sense of a 'contextual definition' permits the eliminating of the defined expression, by transforming any sentence containing it into an equivalent one not containing it. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: So the whole definition might be eliminated by a single word, which is not equivalent to the target word, which is embedded in the original expression. Clearly contextual definitions have some problems |
| 7004 | The view that truth making is entailment is misguided and misleading [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I argue that the widely held view that truth making is to be understood as entailment is misguided in principle and potentially misleading. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If reality was just one particle, what would entail the truths about it? Suppose something appears to be self-evident true about reality, but no one can think of any entailments to derive it? Do we assume a priori that they are possible? |
| 2145 | In mathematics certain things have to be accepted without further explanation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The practitioners of maths take certain things as basic, and feel no further need to explain them. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 510c) |
| 7035 | God does not create the world, and then add the classes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see classes as an 'addition of being'; God does not create the world, and then add the classes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4 n6) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. We may be tempted into believing in the reality of classes when considering maths, but it seems utterly implausible when considering trees or cows. |
| 9820 | In classical logic, logical truths are valid formulas; in higher-order logics they are purely logical [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: For sentential or first-order logic, the logical truths are represented by valid formulas; in higher-order logics, by sentences formulated in purely logical terms. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 3) |
| 8726 | Geometry can lead the mind upwards to truth and philosophy [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Geometry can attract the mind towards truth. It can produce philosophical thought, in the sense that it can reverse the midguided downwards tendencies we currently have. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 527b) | |
| A reaction: Hence the Academy gate bore the inscription "Let no one enter here who is ignorant of geometry". He's not necessarily wrong. Something in early education must straighten out some of the kinks in the messy human mind. |
| 9896 | A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 11) | |
| A reaction: We might say that the only way of 'reaching' or 'constructing' a prime is by incrementing by one till you reach it. That seems a pretty good definition. 64, for example, can be reached by a large number of different routes. |
| 18255 | Addition of quantities is prior to ordering, as shown in cyclic domains like angles [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to a quantitative domain of any kind that there should be an operation of adding its elements; that this is more fundamental thaat that they should be linearly ordered by magnitude is apparent from cyclic domains like that of angles. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |
| 9895 | A number is a multitude composed of units [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A number is a multitude composed of units. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 2) | |
| A reaction: This is outdated by the assumption that 0 and 1 are also numbers, but if we say one is really just the 'unit' which is preliminary to numbers, and 0 is as bogus a number as i is, we might stick with the original Greek distinction. |
| 9852 | We understand 'there are as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them as by counting them [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A child understands 'there are just as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them off as by counting them. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: I find it very intriguing that you could know that two sets have the same number, without knowing any numbers. Is it like knowing two foreigners spoke the same words, without understanding them? Or is 'equinumerous' conceptually prior to 'number'? |
| 9829 | The identity of a number may be fixed by something outside structure - by counting [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The identity of a mathematical object may sometimes be fixed by its relation to what lies outside the structure to which it belongs. It is more fundamental to '3' that if certain objects are counted, there are three of them. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as Dummett being pushed (by his dislike of the purely abstract picture given by structuralism) back to a rather empiricist and physical view of numbers, though he would totally deny that. |
| 9828 | Numbers aren't fixed by position in a structure; it won't tell you whether to start with 0 or 1 [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The number 0 is not differentiated from 1 by its position in a progression, otherwise there would be no difference between starting with 0 and starting with 1. That is enough to show that numbers are not identifiable just as positions in structures. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This sounds conclusive, but doesn't feel right. If numbers are a structure, then where you 'start' seems unimportant. Where do you 'start' in St Paul's Cathedral? Starting sounds like a constructivist concept for number theory. |
| 9863 | We aim for elevated discussion of pure numbers, not attaching them to physical objects [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Our discussion of numbers leads the soul forcibly upward and compels it to discuss the numbers themselves, never permitting anyone to propose for discussion numbers attached to visible or tangible bodies. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525d) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as very important, because it shows that the platonist view of numbers places little or no importance on counting, inviting the question of whether they could be understood in complete ignorance of the process of counting. |
| 9864 | In pure numbers, all ones are equal, with no internal parts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: With those numbers that can be grasped only in thought, ..each one is equal to every other, without the least difference and containing no internal parts. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 526a) | |
| A reaction: [Two voices in the conversation are elided] Intriguing and tantalising. Does 13 have internal parts, in the platonist view? If so, is it more than the sum of its parts? Is Plato committed to numbers being built from indistinguishable abstract units/ |
| 8727 | Geometry is not an activity, but the study of unchanging knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Geometers talk as if they were actually doing something, and the point of their theorems is to have some effect (like 'squaring'). ...But the sole purpose is knowledge, of things which exist forever, not coming into existence and passing away. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 527a) | |
| A reaction: Modern Constructivism defends the view which Plato is attacking. The existence of real infinities can be doubted simply because we have not got enough time to construct them. |
| 9861 | The same thing is both one and an unlimited number at the same time [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We see the same thing to be both one and an unlimited number at the same time. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525a) | |
| A reaction: Frege makes the same point, that a pair of boots is both two and one. The point is at its strongest in opposition to empirical accounts of arithmetic. However, Mill observes that pebbles can be both 5 and 3+2, without contradiction. |
| 9876 | Set theory isn't part of logic, and why reduce to something more complex? [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The two frequent modern objects to logicism are that set theory is not part of logic, or that it is of no interest to 'reduce' a mathematical theory to another, more complex, one. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: Dummett says these are irrelevant (see context). The first one seems a good objection. The second one less so, because whether something is 'complex' is a quite different issue from whether it is ontologically more fundamental. |
| 9862 | To become rational, philosophers must rise from becoming into being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers must rise up out of becoming and grasp being, if they are ever to become rational. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525b) | |
| A reaction: I am never quite sure what 'being' means in such contexts, and it seems suffused with mysticism. In Plato's case, it is obviously related to what is unchanging, but why would something lack 'being', just because it underwent change? |
| 21818 | Being depends on the Good, which is not itself being, but superior to being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good is not being, but superior to it in rank and power. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 509b) | |
| A reaction: I was surprised to find that in Plotinus the One is not being, because it is the source of being, and thus superior to being. Then a footnote sent me here, and I realise that Plato thought that the Form of the Good is superior to Being. |
| 2061 | The best things (gods, healthy bodies, good souls) are least liable to change [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The best things (such as a god, a healthy body, or a good soul) are least liable to alteration or change. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 380e) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit circular. They are unlikely to qualify for the 'best' group of they keep changing. We wouldn't praise good health which only last half an hour. |
| 7017 | The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: Fodor, for example, claims that certain causal laws only operate at high levels of reality. I agree with Heil's idea - the notion that there are different realities around here that don't connect properly to one another is philosopher's madness. |
| 7003 | There are levels of organisation, complexity, description and explanation, but not of reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We should accept levels of organisation, levels of complexity, levels of description, and levels of explanation, but not the levels of reality favoured by many anti-reductionists. The world is then ontologically, but not analytically, reductive. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right to me. The crunch questions seem to be whether the boundaries at higher levels of organisation exist lower down, and whether the causal laws of the higher levels can be translated without remainder into lower level laws. |
| 9884 | The distinction of concrete/abstract, or actual/non-actual, is a scale, not a dichotomy [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between concrete and abstract objects, or Frege's corresponding distinction between actual and non-actual objects, is not a sharp dichotomy, but resembles a scale upon which objects occupy a range of positions. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: This might seem right if you live (as Dummett chooses to) in the fog of language, but it surely can't be right if you think about reality. Is the Equator supposed to be near the middle of his scale? Either there is an equator, or there isn't. |
| 9869 | Realism is just the application of two-valued semantics to sentences [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Fully fledged realism depends on - indeed, may be identified with - an undiluted application to sentences of the relevant kind of straightforwards two-valued semantics. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of account you get from a whole-heartedly linguistic philosopher. Personally I would say that Dummett has got it precisely the wrong way round: I adopt a two-valued semantics because my metaphysics is realist. |
| 7045 | Realism says some of our concepts 'cut nature at the joints' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Realism is sometimes said to involve a commitment to the idea that certain of our concepts, those with respect to which we are realists, 'carve reality at the joints'. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.11) | |
| A reaction: Clearly not all concepts cut nature at the joints (e.g. we have concepts of things we know to be imaginary). Personally I am committed to this view of realism. I try very hard to use concepts that cut accurately; why shouldn't I sometimes succeed? |
| 6562 | Plato's reality has unchanging Parmenidean forms, and Heraclitean flux [Plato, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, the intelligible world - the world of eternal and unchanging forms - is Parmenidean; the world of appearances - the world of flux we inhabit - is Heraclitean. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Parmenides said reality is 'One'; Heraclitus said reality is 'flux'. This is a nice summary of Plato's view, and encapsulates two key influences on Plato, though the mathematical reality of Pythagoras should also be mentioned on the 'forms' side. |
| 7065 | Anti-realists who reduce reality to language must explain the existence of language [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Anti-realist philosophers, and those who hope to reduce metaphysics to (or replace it with) the philosophy of language, owe the rest of us an account of the ontology of language. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice turning-the-tables question. In all accounts of relativism, x is usually said to be relative to y. You haven't got proper relativism if you haven't relativised both x and y. But relativised them to what? Nietzsche's 'perspectivism' (Idea 4420)? |
| 7020 | Concepts don't carve up the world, which has endless overlooked or ignored divisions [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Concepts do not 'carve up' the world; the world already contains endless divisions, most of which we remain oblivious to or ignore. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: Concepts could still carve up the world, without ever aspiring to do a complete job. We carve up the aspects that interest us, but the majority of the carving is in response to natural divisions, not whimsical conventions. |
| 7007 | I think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers who accept that properties are intrinsic features of objects regard them as pure powers, pure dispositionalities; I prefer to think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am uneasy about 'qualitative' as a category, and am inclined to reduce it to being a dispositional power to cause primary and secondary qualities in observers. Roughness is only a power, not a quality, if there are no observers. |
| 7015 | A predicate applies truly if it picks out a real property of objects [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When a predicate applies truly to an object, it does so in virtue of designating a property possessed by that object and by every object to which the predicate truly applies (or would apply). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: I am sympathetic to Heil's aim of shifting our attention from arbitrary predicates to natural properties, but it won't avoid Fodor's problem (Idea 7014) that all kinds of whimsical predicates will apply 'truly', but fail to pick out anything significant. |
| 7042 | A theory of universals says similarity is identity of parts; for modes, similarity is primitive [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The friend of universals has an account of similarity relations as relations of identity and partial identity; the friend of modes must regard similarity relations as primitive and irreducible. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.5) | |
| A reaction: We always seem to be able to ask 'in what respect' a similarity occurs. If similarity is 'primitive and irreducible', we should not be able to analyse and explain a similarity, yet we seem able to. I conclude that Heil is wrong. |
| 7023 | Powers or dispositions are usually seen as caused by lower-level qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The modern default position on dispositionality is that powers or dispositions are higher-level properties objects possess by virtue of those objects' possession of lower-level qualitative (categorical) properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: The new idea which is being floated by Heil, and which I prefer, is that dispositions or powers are basic. A 'quality' is a much more dubious entity than a power. |
| 7025 | Are a property's dispositions built in, or contingently added? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is a dispute over whether a property's dispositionality is built into the property or whether it is a contingent add-on. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.4) | |
| A reaction: Put that way, the idea that it is built in seems much more plausible. If it is an add-on, an explanation of why that disposition is added to that particular property seems required. If it is built in, it seems legitimate to accept it as a brute fact. |
| 2142 | The plurality of beautiful things must belong to a single class, because they have a single particular character [Plato] |
| Full Idea: All the things we refer to as pluralities (e.g. beautiful things) we also count as belonging to a single class by virtue of the fact that they have a single particular character. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 507b) |
| 7034 | Universals explain one-over-many relations, and similar qualities, and similar behaviour [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Universals can explain the one-over-many problem, and easily explain similarity relations between objects, and explain the similar behaviour of similar objects. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.1) | |
| A reaction: A useful summary. If you accept it, you seem to be faced with a choice between Plato (who has universals existing independently of particulars) and Armstrong (who makes them real, but existing only in particulars). |
| 5094 | Plato's Forms are said to have no location in space [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato claims that the Forms are not beyond the heavens, because they are not anywhere. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 203a09 | |
| A reaction: This is an important corrective to caricature accounts of Plato's Forms (encouraged, I'm afraid, by 'Phaedrus'), when critics talk about 'Platonic Heaven'. Forms are not part of space-time. I like the view that they are hypothetical truths. |
| 12043 | Forms are not universals, as they don't cover every general term [Plato, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: Despite a widely misinterpreted passage in the Republic, Plato does not think that there is a Form for every general term; Forms are not what came to be called universals. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Hm. This is a bit of a blow to someone who has catalogued Platonic Forms under 'Universals'. See also Idea 12042, for what Annas thinks Plato may really have had in mind. |
| 2159 | Craftsmen making furniture refer to the form, but no one manufactures the form of furniture [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The manufacture of beds and tables involves the craftsman looking to the form and then making the furniture. The form itself is not manufactured by anyone. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 596b) |
| 17 | A Form applies to a set of particular things with the same name [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We always postulate a single form for each set of particular things, to which we apply the same name. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 596a) | |
| A reaction: This implies that the Forms have a great deal in common with the things, but also hints at the possibility of the Form being quite different from the particular things. |
| 12122 | Plato mistakenly thought forms were totally abstracted away from matter [Bacon on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato lost the real fruit of his opinion, by considering forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Francis Bacon - The Advancement of Learning II.VII.5 | |
| A reaction: This thought is roughly what got me interested in abstraction, on which you will find many ideas in this database. Research into Bacon's thought is hampered by that fact that the logicians have hijacked abstraction in recent philosophy. |
| 5574 | Plato's Forms not only do not come from the senses, but they are beyond possibility of sensing [Plato, by Kant] |
| Full Idea: In Plato's use of the expression 'idea' we can see that he understood by it something that not only could never be borrowed from the senses, but even goes beyond the concepts of the understanding, since nothing in experience could be congruent to it. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason B370 | |
| A reaction: This is why Kant is not a Platonist - because he thinks the limits of our world are the limits of our capacity for possible experience, and Platonic Forms exceed that limit. Personally I am with Plato. I'll never experience a quark either. |
| 7039 | How could you tell if the universals were missing from a world of instances? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a pair of worlds, one in which there are the universals and their instances and one in which there are just the instances (a world of modes). How would the absence of universals make itself felt? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.7) | |
| A reaction: A nice question for Plato, very much in the spirit of Aristotle's string of questions. Compare 'suppose the physics remained, but someone removed the laws'. Either chaos ensues, or you realise they were redundant. Same with Forms. |
| 9880 | Nominalism assumes unmediated mental contact with objects [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The nominalist superstition is based ultimately on the myth of the unmediated presentation of genuine concrete objects to the mind. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to favour nominalism and a representative theory of perception, which acknowledges some 'mediation', but of a non-linguistic form. Any good theory here had better include animals, which seem to form concepts. |
| 7009 | Similarity among modes will explain everthing universals were for [Heil] |
| Full Idea: My contention is that similarity among modes can do the job universals are conventionally postulated to do. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 4441 for Russell's nice objection to this view. The very process by which we observes similarities (as assess their degrees) needs to be explained by any adequate theory of properties or universals. |
| 7041 | Similar objects have similar properties; properties are directly similar [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Objects are similar by virtue of possessing similar properties; properties, in contrast, are not similar in virtue of anything. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.2) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure if I can understand the concept of similarity if there is no answer to the question 'In what respect?' I suppose David Hume is happy to take resemblance as given and basic, but it could be defined as 'sharing identical properties'. |
| 7032 | Objects join sets because of properties; the property is not bestowed by set membership [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The set of red objects is the set of objects possessing a property: being red. Objects are members of the set in virtue of possessing this property; they do not possess the property in virtue of belonging to the set. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very effective denial of the claim that universals are sets. However, if 'being a Londoner' counts as a property, you can only have it by joining the London set. Being tall is more fundamental than being a Londoner. |
| 7008 | Trope theorists usually see objects as 'bundles' of tropes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers identifying themselves as trope theorists have, by and large, accepted some form of the 'bundle theory' of objects: an object is a bundle of compresent tropes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This view eliminates anything called 'matter' or 'substance' or a 'bare particular'. I think I agree with Heil that this doesn't give a coherent picture, as properties seem to be 'of' something, and bundles always raise the question of what unites them. |
| 7018 | Objects are substances, which are objects considered as the bearer of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I think of objects as substances, and a substance is an object considered as a bearer of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.2) | |
| A reaction: This is an area of philosophy I always find disconcerting, where an account of how we should see objects seems to have no connection at all to what physicists report about objects. 'Considered as' seems to make substances entirely conventional. |
| 9885 | The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: This remark follows after Idea 9884, which says the abstract/concrete distinction is a sliding scale. Personally I take the distinction to be fairly sharp, and it is therefore probably the single most important problem in the whole of human thought. |
| 9858 | Abstract objects nowadays are those which are objective but not actual [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Objects which are objective but not actual are precisely what are now called abstract objects. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Why can there not be subjective abstract objects? 'My favourites are x, y and z'. 'I'll decide later what my favourites are'. 'I only buy my favourites - nothing else'. |
| 9859 | It is absurd to deny the Equator, on the grounds that it lacks causal powers [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: If someone argued that assuming the existence of the Equator explains nothing, and it has no causal powers, so everything would be the same if it didn't exist, so we needn't accept its existence, we should gape at the crudity of the misunderstanding. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Not me. I would gape if someone argued that latitude 55° 14' (and an infinity of other lines) exists for the same reasons (whatever they may be) that the Equator exists. A mode of description can't create an object. |
| 9860 | 'We've crossed the Equator' has truth-conditions, so accept the Equator - and it's an object [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: 'We've crossed the Equator' is judged true if we are nearer the other Pole, so it not for philosophers to deny that the Earth has an equator, and we see that the Equator is not a concept or relation or function, so it must be classified as an object. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of linguistic philosophy in action (and so much the worse for that, I would say). A useful label here, I suggest (unoriginally, I think), is that we should label such an item a 'semantic object', rather than a real object in our ontology. |
| 9872 | Abstract objects need the context principle, since they can't be encountered directly [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To recognise that there is no objection in principle to abstract objects requires acknowledgement that some form of the context principle is correct, since abstract objects can neither be encountered nor presented. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an immensely important idea. I consider myself to be a philosopher of thought rather than a philosopher of language (Dummett's distinction, he being one of the latter). Thought connects to the world, but does it connect to abstracta? |
| 7019 | Maybe there is only one substance, space-time or a quantum field [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It would seem distinctly possible that there is but a single substance: space-time or some all-encompassing quantum field. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.2) | |
| A reaction: This would at least meet my concern that philosophers' 'substances' don't seem to connect to what physicists talk about. I wonder if anyone knows what a 'quantum field' is? The clash between relativity and quantum theory is being alluded to. |
| 7046 | Rather than 'substance' I use 'objects', which have properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I prefer the more colloquial 'object' to the traditional term 'substance'. An object can be regarded as a possessor of properties: as something that is red, spherical and pungent, for instance. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 15.3) | |
| A reaction: A nice move, but it seems to beg the question of 'what is it that has the properties?' Objects and substances do two different jobs in our ontology. Heil is just refusing to discuss what it is that has properties. |
| 7047 | Statues and bronze lumps have discernible differences, so can't be identical [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Applications of the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals apparently obliges us to distinguish the statue and the lump of bronze making it up. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.3) | |
| A reaction: In other words, statues and lumps of bronze have different properties. It is a moot point, though, whether there are any discernible differences between that statue at time t and its constituting lump of bronze at time t. |
| 7048 | Do we reduce statues to bronze, or eliminate statues, or allow statues and bronze? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Must we choose between reductionism (the statue is the lump of bronze), eliminativism (there are no statues, only statue-shaped lumps of bronze), and a commitment to coincident objects? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.5) | |
| A reaction: (Heil goes on to offer his own view). Coincident objects sounds the least plausible view. Modern statues are only statues if we see them that way, but a tree is definitely a tree. Trenton Merricks is good on eliminativism. |
| 9848 | Content is replaceable if identical, so replaceability can't define identity [Dummett, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Husserl says the only ground for assuming the replaceability of one content by another is their identity; we are therefore not entitled to define their identity as consisting in their replaceability. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: This is a direct challenge to Frege. Tricky to arbitrate, as it is an issue of conceptual priority. My intuition is with Husserl, but maybe the two are just benignly inerdefinable. |
| 9842 | Frege introduced criteria for identity, but thought defining identity was circular [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: In his middle period Frege rated identity indefinable, on the ground that every definition must take the form of an identity-statement. Frege introduced the notion of criterion of identity, which has been widely used by analytical philosophers. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: The objection that attempts to define identity would be circular sounds quite plausible. It sounds right to seek a criterion for type-identity (in shared properties or predicates), but token-identity looks too fundamental to give clear criteria. |
| 2133 | Knowledge must be of the permanent unchanging nature of things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who can see each thing in itself, in its permanent and unvarying nature, we'll say they have knowledge and are not merely entertaining beliefs. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 479e) |
| 7028 | If properties were qualities without dispositions, they would be undetectable [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A pure quality, a property altogether lacking in dispositionality, would be undetectable and would, in one obvious sense, make no difference to its possessor. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very forceful and simple reason why we cannot view properties simply as qualities of things. Heil wants properties to be dispositions and qualities; personally I would vote for them just being dispositions or powers. |
| 7029 | Can we distinguish the way a property is from the property? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear to me that we easily distinguish ways a property is from the property itself. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.6) | |
| A reaction: To defend properties as qualities, he is confusing ontology and epistemology. Presumably he means by 'ways a property is' what I would prefer to call 'ways a property seems to be'. I don't believe a smell is simply what it seems to be. |
| 7030 | Properties don't possess ways they are, because that just is the property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Objects possess properties, but I am sceptical of the idea that properties possess properties; just as a property is a way some object is, a property of a property would be a way a property is, but that is just the property itself. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a good defence of the idea that properties are qualities as well as dispositions. However, if we make the qualities of properties into secondary qualities, and the dispositions into primary qualities, the absurdity melts away. |
| 7051 | Objects only have secondary qualities because they have primary qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Secondary qualities are not distinct from primary qualities: an object's possession of a given secondary quality is a matter of its possession of certain complex primary qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.3) | |
| A reaction: The bottom line here is that, if essentialism is right, colours are not properties at all (see Idea 5456). Heil wants to subsume secondary properties within primary properties. I think we should sharply distinguish them. |
| 7044 | Secondary qualities are just primary qualities considered in the light of their effect on us [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Secondary qualities are just ordinary properties - roughly, Locke's primary qualities - considered in the light of their effects on us. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.10) | |
| A reaction: Unconvincing. If they only acquire their ontological status as primary qualities if they have to be considered in relation to something (us), then that is not a primary quality. |
| 7052 | Colours aren't surface properties, because of radiant sources and the colour of the sky [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Theories that take colours to be properties of the surfaces of objects have difficulty accounting for a host of phenomena including coloured light emitted by radiant sources and so-called film colours (the colour of the sky, for instance). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I never thought that colours might be actual properties of surfaces, but it is nice to have spelled out a couple of instances that make it very implausible. Neon and sodium lights I take to be examples of the first case. |
| 7053 | Treating colour as light radiation has the implausible result that tomatoes are not red [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Theories that tie colours to features of light radiation deal with radiant and diffused colours, but yield implausible results for objects; tomatoes are not red, on such a view, but merely reflect red light. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
| A reaction: I see absolutely no problem with the philosophical denial that tomatoes are actually red, while continuing to use 'red' of tomatoes in the normal way. When we analyse our processes of knowledge acquisition, we must give up 'common sense'. |
| 2162 | If theory and practice conflict, the best part of the mind accepts theory, so the other part is of lower grade [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When appearance and measure conflict…it is the best part of the mind which accepts measurements and calculations, and the part which opposes them, therefore, must be a low-grade part of the mind. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 603a) |
| 2140 | True belief without knowledge is like blind people on the right road [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Don't people who have a correct belief but no knowledge strike you as exactly like blind people who happen to be taking the right road? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 506c) | |
| A reaction: Good. I love the style of this. Most philosophical points can be made in one concise sentence, and it is only the industry of journals and academe that forces points to be extended so much. |
| 7066 | If the world is just texts or social constructs, what are texts and social constructs? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: For those who regard the world as text or a social construct, are texts and social constructs real entities? If they are, what are they? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice turn-the-tables question. The oldest attacks of all on scepticism and relativism consist of showing that the positions themselves rest on knowledge or truth. Nietzsche may be the best model for relativists. E.g. Idea 4420. |
| 7021 | If the world is theory-dependent, the theories themselves can't be theory-dependent [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If the world is somehow theory-dependent, this implies, on pain of a regress, that theories are not theory-dependent. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure where this puts the ontology of theories, but this is a nice question, of a type which never seems to occur to your more simple-minded relativist. |
| 7026 | Science is sometimes said to classify powers, neglecting qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The sciences are sometimes said to be in the business of identifying and classifying powers; the mass of an electron, its spin and charge, could be regarded as powers possessed by the electron; science is silent on an electron's qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: Heil raises the possibility that qualities are real, despite the silence of science; he wants colour to be a real quality. I like the simpler version of science. Qualities are the mental effects of powers; there exist substances, powers and effects. |
| 7060 | One form of explanation is by decomposition [Heil] |
| Full Idea: One form of explanation is by decomposition. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a fancy word for taking it apart, presumably to see how it works, which implies a functional explanation, rather than to see what it is made of, which seeks an ontological explanation. Simply 'decomposing' something wouldn't in itself explain. |
| 2096 | Is the function of the mind management, authority and planning - or is it one's whole way of life? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Does the mind have a function - say, management, authority and planning? And isn't one's way of life a function of the mind? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353d) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is Plato, not some Darwinian materialist. This strikes me as the correct starting point - what does a mind appear to be for (with or without the help of Darwin)? Plato's proposals seem good (though we could cut 'authority'). |
| 6009 | Psychic conflict is clear if appetite is close to the body and reason fairly separate [Plato, by Modrak] |
| Full Idea: Plato makes psychic conflict intelligible by appeal to a conception of the soul such that the soul is closely connected to the body at the level of appetite and relatively separate from the body at the level of reason. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 339b) by Deborah K.W. Modrak - Classical theories of Mind | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about this at the level of biology or ontology, but at the phenomenal level this is obviously right. Hunger makes consciousness feel like a physical event, but doing arithmetic doesn't seem remotely physical. |
| 6041 | There is a third element to the mind - spirit - lying between reason and appetite [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is the third element of the mind a form of reason, so that there are only two elements to it, reason and appetite? There must be a third element, if spirit ('thumos') can be shown to be distinct - and you can see it in children when they are born. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 441a) | |
| A reaction: This is Plato's famous tripartite doctrine of the soul, though in other dialogues he says that there is only reason and appetite. The suspicion is that he fixed the soul having three parts, to match the three parts of his republic's social structure. |
| 2127 | The mind has parts, because we have inner conflicts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If someone is thirsty but something is making the mind resist the pull of its thirst, isn't this bound to be a different part of the mind from the thirsty part? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) | |
| A reaction: For Descartes there is one mind pulled by appetite and the 'natural light'. For Hume they don't seem to be 'parts' of anything. For Fodor there is an integrated team of modules. I like Fodor, and good integration is virtue. |
| 1737 | The soul seems to have an infinity of parts [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: There seem in a way to be an infinity of parts of the soul, and not only those that some have given, distinguishing the reasoning, spirited and desiderative parts, or with others the rational and irrational. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 439b) by Aristotle - De Anima 432a25 | |
| A reaction: This seems a nice response to Plato's proposal that the psuché has two or three parts. He could have said that the soul was a unity, and has no parts, but the proposal of infinite parts seems much closer to the modern neurological view of the mind. |
| 7010 | Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a view with which I am sympathetic, though I am not sure if it explains anything. It would be necessary to identify a disposition of basic matter that could be built up into the disposition of a brain to think about things. |
| 7054 | Intentionality now has internalist (intrinsic to thinkers) and externalist (environment or community) views [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays philosophers concerned with intentionality divide into two camps. Internalists epitomise a traditional approach to thought, as intrinsic features of thinkers; externalists say it depends on contextual factors (environment or community). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: This is basic to understanding modern debates (those that grow out of Putnam's Twin Earth). Externalism is fashionable, but I am reluctant to shake off my quaint internalism. Start by separating strict and literal meaning from speaker's meaning. |
| 7011 | Qualia are not extra appendages, but intrinsic ingredients of material states and processes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Properties of conscious experience, the so-called qualia, are not dangling appendages to material states and processes but intrinsic ingredients of those states and processes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to the view that qualia are intrinsic to the processes and NOT to the 'states'. Heil must be right, though. I am sure qualia are not just epiphenomena - they are too useful. |
| 7061 | Philosophers' zombies aim to show consciousness is over and above the physical world [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers' zombies (invented by Robert Kirk) differ from the zombies of folklore; they are intended to make clear the idea that consciousness is an addition of being, something 'over and above' the physical world. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.1 n1) | |
| A reaction: The famous defender of zombies is David Chalmers. You can't believe in zombies if you believe (as I do) that 'the physical entails the mental'. Could there be redness without something that is red? If consciousness is extra, what is conscious? |
| 7063 | Zombies are based on the idea that consciousness relates contingently to the physical [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of zombies is founded on the idea that consciousness is related contingently to physical states and processes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.3) | |
| A reaction: The question is, how do you decide whether the relationship is contingent or necessary? Hence the interest in whether conceivability entails possibility. Kripke attacks the idea of contingent identity, pointing towards necessity, and away from zombies. |
| 7064 | Functionalists deny zombies, since identity of functional state means identity of mental state [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists deny that zombies are possible since states of mind (including conscious states) are purely functional states. If two agents are in the same functional state, regardless of qualitative difference, they are in the same mental state. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.5) | |
| A reaction: In its 'brief' form this idea begins to smell of tautology. Only the right sort of functional state would entail a mental state, and how else can that functional state be defined, apart from its leading to a mental state? |
| 7027 | Functionalists say objects can be the same in disposition but differ in quality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A central tenet of functionalism is that objects can be dispositionally indiscernible but differ qualitatively as much as you please. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.3) | |
| A reaction: This refers to the multiple realisability of functions. Presumably we reconcile essentialism with the functionalist view by saying that dispositions result from combinations of qualities. A unique combination of qualities will necessitate a disposition. |
| 7062 | Functionalism cannot explain consciousness just by functional organisation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism has been widely criticized on the grounds that it is implausible to think that functional organization alone could suffice for conscious experience. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites Block's 'Chinese Mind' as an example. The obvious reply is that you can't explain consciousness with a lump of meat, or with behaviour, or with an anomalous property, or even with a non-physical substance. |
| 7059 | The 'explanatory gap' is used to say consciousness is inexplicable, at least with current concepts [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The expression 'explanatory gap' was coined by Joseph Levine in 1983. McGinn and Chalmers have invoked it in defence of the view that consciousness is physically inexplicable, and Nagel that it is inexplicable given existing conceptual resources. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8 n14) | |
| A reaction: Coining a few concepts isn't going to help, but discovering more about the brain might. With computer simulations we will 'see' more of the physical end of thought. Psychologists may break thought down into physically more manageable components. |
| 7012 | If a car is a higher-level entity, distinct from its parts, how could it ever do anything? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If we regard a Volvo car as a higher-level entity with its own independent reality, something distinct from its constituents (arranged in particular ways and variously connected to other things), we render mysterious how Volvos could do anything at all. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me perhaps the key reason why we have to be reductionists. The so-called 'bridge laws' from mind to brain are not just needed to explain the mind, they are also essential to show how a mind would cause behaviour. |
| 7043 | Multiple realisability is actually one predicate applying to a diverse range of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Cases of multiple realisability are typically cases in which some predicate ('is red', 'is in pain') applies to an object in virtue of that object's possession of any of a diverse range of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.8) | |
| A reaction: If the properties are diverse, why does one predicate apply to them? I take it that in the case of the pain, the predicate is ambiguous in applying to the behaviour or the phenomenal property. Same behaviour is possible with many qualia. |
| 7058 | Externalism is causal-historical, or social, or biological [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some externalists focus on causal-historical connections, others emphasise social matters (especially thinkers' linguistic communities), still others focus on biological function. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.5 n6) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. The social view strikes me as the one to take most seriously (allowing for contextual views of justification, and for the social role of experts). The problem is to combine the social view with realism and a robust view of truth. |
| 7057 | Intentionality is based in dispositions, which are intrinsic to agents, suggesting internalism [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that intentionality is grounded in the dispositionalities of agents. Dispositions are intrinsic to agents, so this places me on the side of the internalists and against the externalists. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a key idea, and the right view. The key question is whether we see intentionality as active or passive. The externalist view seems to see the brain as a passive organ which the world manipulates. If the brain is active, what is it doing? |
| 9849 | Maybe a concept is 'prior' to another if it can be defined without the second concept [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: One powerful argument for a thesis that one notion is conceptually prior to another is the possibility of defining the first without reference to the second. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: You'd better check whether you can't also define the second without reference to the first before you rank their priority. And maybe 'conceptual priority' is conceptually prior to 'definition' (i.e. definition needs a knowledge of priority). Help! |
| 9850 | An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: One might still have to decide priority between two equally simple (or complex) concepts. I begin to wonder whether 'priority' has any other than an instrumental meaning (according to which direction you wish to travel - is London before Edinburgh?). |
| 9873 | Abstract terms are acceptable as long as we know how they function linguistically [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To recognise abstract terms as perfectly proper items of a vocabulary depends upon allowing that all that is necessary for the lawful introduction of a range of expressions into the language is a coherent account of how they are to function in sentences. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: Why can't the 'coherent account' of the sentences include the fact that there must be something there for the terms to refer to? How else are we to eliminate nonsense words which obey good syntactical rules? Cf. Idea 9872. |
| 9993 | There is no reason why abstraction by equivalence classes should be called 'logical' [Dummett, by Tait] |
| Full Idea: Dummett uses the term 'logical abstraction' for the construction of the abstract objects as equivalence classes, but it is not clear why we should call this construction 'logical'. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind n 14 | |
| A reaction: This is a good objection, and Tait offers a much better notion of 'logical abstraction' (as involving preconditions for successful inference), in Idea 9981. |
| 9857 | We arrive at the concept 'suicide' by comparing 'Cato killed Cato' with 'Brutus killed Brutus' [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: We arrive at the concept of suicide by considering both occurrences in the sentence 'Cato killed Cato' of the proper name 'Cato' as simultaneously replaceable by another name, say 'Brutus', and so apprehending the pattern common to both sentences. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: This is intended to illustrate Frege's 'logical abstraction' technique, as opposed to wicked psychological abstraction. The concept of suicide is the pattern 'x killed x'. This is a crucial example if we are to understand abstraction... |
| 9833 | To abstract from spoons (to get the same number as the forks), the spoons must be indistinguishable too [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To get units by abstraction, units arrived at by abstraction from forks must the identical to that abstracted from spoons, with no trace of individuality. But if spoons can no longer be differentiated from forks, they can't differ from one another either. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Dummett makes the point better than Frege did. Can we 'think of a fork insofar as it is countable, ignoring its other features'? What are we left thinking of? Frege says it must still be the whole fork. 'Nice fork, apart from the colour'. |
| 7013 | The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The theory of language which I designate the 'Picture Theory' says that language pictures reality in roughly the sense that we can 'read off' features of reality from our ways of speaking about it. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: Heil, quite rightly, attacks this view very strongly. I think of it as the great twentieth century philosophical heresy, that leads to shocking views like relativism and anti-realism. |
| 9836 | Fregean semantics assumes a domain articulated into individual objects [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A Fregean semantics assumes a domain already determinately articulated into individual objects. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: A more interesting criticism than most of Dummett's other challenges to the Frege/Davidson view. I am beginning to doubt whether the semantics and the ontology can ever be divorced from the psychology, of thought, interests, focus etc. |
| 7002 | If propositions are states of affairs or sets of possible worlds, these lack truth values [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When pressed, philosophers will describe propositions as states of affairs or sets of possible worlds. But wait! Neither sets of possible worlds nor states of affairs - electrons being negatively charged, for instance - have truth values. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I see a problem. A pure proposition, expressed as, say "there is a giraffe on the roof" only acquires a truth value at the point where you assert it or believe it. There IS a possible world where there is a giraffe on the roof. |
| 5945 | The 'Republic' is a great work of rhetorical theory [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The 'Republic' is the greatest single achievement of ancient rhetorical theory. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: A lovely inversion of our normal reading of Plato! Is the real aim of philosophy the making of good speeches? Is the great aim to display the true beauty of the human mind, as the Olympics display the beauty of the body? |
| 23316 | For Plato and Aristotle there is no will; there is only rational desire for what is seen as good [Plato, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Neither Plato nor Aristotle has a notion of the will. …Willing is a form of desire which is specific to reason. If reason perceives something as good, it wills or desires it. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 577e) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 1 | |
| A reaction: [Frede cites 577e, Aris. 413c8, 1113a15-, 1136b6] How do they explain the apparent decisions of non-rational animals? No modern neuroscientist thinks there is a physical object called a person's 'will'. |
| 16 | We avoid evil either through a natural aversion, or because we have acquired knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Unless a man is born with a heaven-sent aversion to wrong-doing, or acquires the knowledge to refrain from it, he will never do right of his own free will. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 366c) | |
| A reaction: This is the territory explored so carefully by Aristotle (after he had read Republic!). It is hard to see what the knowledge could be, other than awareness of consequences. |
| 16565 | Without the surface decoration, poetry shows only appearances and nothing of what is real [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If you strip a poet's works of their musical colorings and take them by themselves, I think you know what they look like. …We say that a maker of an image - an imitator - knows nothing about that which is but only about its appearance. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 601a) | |
| A reaction: Knowing the appearances well is more than most people can manage, and aspirations to know the true reality may be an idle dream. Poets are, I presume, welcome in the Cave. |
| 2160 | Representation is two steps removed from the truth [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The province of representation is indeed two steps removed from the truth. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 602c) |
| 2135 | Truth is closely related to proportion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Truth is closely related to proportion. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 486d) |
| 2163 | Artists should be excluded from a law-abiding community, because they destroy the rational mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We are right to refuse admission to artists in any community which is going to respect convention, because he destroys the rational mind and feeds the irrational - it is like destroying good citizens by giving ruffians power. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 605b) |
| 2141 | I suggest that we forget about trying to define goodness itself for the time being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that we forget about trying to define goodness itself for the time being. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 506e) | |
| A reaction: This was a source of some humour in the ancient world (in the theatre). Goodness is like some distant glow, which can never be approached in order to learn of its source. |
| 1869 | The good cannot be expressed in words, but imprints itself upon the soul [Plato, by Celsus] |
| Full Idea: Plato points to the truth about the highest good when he says that it cannot be expressed in words, but rather comes from familiarity - like a flash from the blue, imprinting itself upon the soul. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Celsus - On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) VII | |
| A reaction: It is reasonable to be drawn to something inexpressible, such as an appealing piece of music, but not good philosophy to build a system around something so obscure. |
| 4115 | Plato found that he could only enforce rational moral justification by creating an authoritarian society [Williams,B on Plato] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, the problem of making the ethical into a force was the problem of making society embody rational justification, and that problem could only have an authoritarian solution. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch. 2 | |
| A reaction: Plato's citizens were largely illiterate. We can be more carrot and less stick. |
| 4547 | Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value [Nietzsche on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 518d) by Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power (notebooks) §572 | |
| A reaction: A most interesting comment. It epitomises the Nietzschean reading of Plato, in which the will to power leads the sense of value, which in turn creates the metaphysics. |
| 2094 | A thing's function is what it alone can do, or what it does better than other things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The function of anything is what it alone can do, or what it can do better than anything else. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353a) | |
| A reaction: I take this concept to be the lynchpin of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Note that it arises earlier, in Plato. Perhaps he should say what it is 'meant to do'. |
| 2095 | If something has a function then it has a state of being good [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Anything which has been endowed with a function also has a state of being good. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 353b) | |
| A reaction: 'ought' from 'is'? |
| 2129 | Goodness is mental health, badness is mental sickness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Goodness is a state of mental health, bloom and vitality; badness is a state of mental sickness, deformity and infirmity. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 444e) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the closeness of goodness to health for the Greeks. The key point is that health is a deeply natural concept, which bridges the fact-value divide. |
| 12 | If we were invisible, would the just man become like the unjust? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Glaucon: with a ring of invisibility 'the just man would differ in no way from the unjust'. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 360c) | |
| A reaction: I think a highly altruistic person would behave well with the ring, but I'm sure Glaucon would claim that these habits would wear off after a while. But I doubt that. |
| 2168 | Clever criminals do well at first, but not in the long run [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Clever criminals are exactly like those runners who do well on the way up the track, and then flag on the way back. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 613b) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is some concept of natural justice lurking behind this comparison. Apart from the money, though, it is hard to imagine any professional criminal leading a flourishing life. |
| 2144 | Goodness makes truth and knowledge possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is goodness which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 508e) | |
| A reaction: If we take truth to be the hallmark of successful thinking, then I have no idea what this means. I can't see how truth would disappear in an amoral cosmos. |
| 2143 | Good has the same role in the world of knowledge as the sun has in the physical world [Plato] |
| Full Idea: As goodness stands in the intelligible realm to intelligence and the things we know, so in the visible realm the sun stands to sight and the things we see. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 508c) | |
| A reaction: The claim seems to be that only goodness makes the world intelligible, but that strikes as closer to mysticism than to objective observation. |
| 2164 | Bad is always destructive, where good preserves and benefits [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Badness always manifests in destruction and corruption, while goodness always manifests in preservation and benefit. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 608e) | |
| A reaction: Suspicions of tautology in this one. Can we have any concepts of good or bad which are not linked to desirable or undesirable outcomes? |
| 2147 | The sight of goodness leads to all that is fine and true and right [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The sight of goodness shows that it is responsible for everything that is right and fine,…and it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge. It is necessary for intelligent conduct of private and public affairs. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 517c) | |
| A reaction: As so often with Plato, I am baffled by such a claim. I sometimes see things in the world which strike me as right or fine, but I cannot conceive of a separate 'sight of goodness'. |
| 2137 | The main aim is to understand goodness, which gives everything its value and advantage [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The most important thing to try to understand is the character of goodness, because this is where anything which is moral (or whatever) gets its value and advantages from. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505a) | |
| A reaction: I think I'm with Aristotle on this. I understand a good lunch or a good person, but pure goodness just seems to be an empty placeholder. A vote in favour. |
| 4007 | For Plato we abandon honour and pleasure once we see the Good [Plato, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, once we see the Good, we cease to be fascinated by and absorbed in the search for honour and pleasure as we were before. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505d) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §3.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the quasi-religious aspect of the Good - that it is more like a vision than a reason |
| 2139 | Every person, and every activity, aims at the good [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Good is something which everyone is after, and is the goal of all their activities. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505d) | |
| A reaction: An obvious danger of tautology. If a blood crazed army is 'after' a massacre of some sort, that seems to qualify. What proportion is needed for 'everyone'? |
| 2138 | Pleasure is commonly thought to be the good, though the more ingenious prefer knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The usual view of goodness is that it is pleasure, while there's also a more ingenious view that it is knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505b) | |
| A reaction: Pleasure clearly has an attraction for everyone (even puritans), and is thus a plausible natural candidate. Is this pure or instrumental knowledge? Hard to justify the former. |
| 2070 | Even people who think pleasure is the good admit that there are bad pleasures [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who define good as pleasure are clearly confused, and are compelled to admit that there are bad pleasures, so that the same thing is both good and bad. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 505c) | |
| A reaction: The issue is whether the pleasure can be disentangled from the action. 'It was a hideous murder, but at least the murderer enjoyed it'. Sounds wrong to me. |
| 2157 | Nice smells are intensive, have no preceding pain, and no bad after-effect [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Nice smells have no preceding feeling of pain, they are very intense, and they leave no distress when they are over. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 584b) | |
| A reaction: A nice example for extreme puritans to contemplate. Objections to enjoying nice smells seem almost inconceivable. Puritans will, I suppose, say 'slippery slope'. |
| 2134 | Philosophers are concerned with totally non-physical pleasures [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A person concerned with learning is concerned with purely mental pleasure, having nothing to do with pleasures reaching the mind through the body - assuming the person is a genuine philosopher. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 485d) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to find any argument which can demonstrate that mental pleasures are superior to physical ones. Mill notably failed to do it. |
| 2156 | There are three types of pleasure, for reason, for spirit and for appetite [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Each of the three mental categories (reason, spirit, appetite) has its own particular pleasure, so that there are three kinds of pleasure. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 580d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why the types of pleasure are distinguished by mental faculties, rather than by the variety of sources of the pleasure. |
| 2158 | Pleasure-seekers desperately seek illusory satisfaction, like filling a leaky vessel [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure-seekers desperately and violently seek satisfaction in unreal things for a part of themselves which is also unreal - a leaky vessel they're trying to fill. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 586b) | |
| A reaction: Plato dreams of some enduring 'satisfaction' which never fades. He should have attended more to Heraclitus, and less to Parmenides. |
| 2123 | Excessive pleasure deranges people, making the other virtues impossible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Self-discipline and excessive pleasure cannot go together, because pleasure deranges people just as much as distress. Excessive pleasure cannot partner any of the other virtues. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 402e) | |
| A reaction: This invites an examination of the word 'excessive', which seems too subjective. Aristotle says any good is improved by the addition of pleasure. Pleasure can certainly derange people. |
| 2166 | We should behave well even if invisible, for the health of the mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There's nothing better for the mind than morality, and a person ought to behave morally whether or not he owns Gyges' ring. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 612b) |
| 5 | Justice is merely the interests of the stronger party [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Thrasymachus: Justice or right is simply what is in the interest of the stronger party. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 338c) | |
| A reaction: Not sure whether this is cynicism about the brutal realities of life, or cynicism about the very concept of justice. |
| 19946 | Morality is a compromise, showing restraint, to avoid suffering wrong without compensation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The origin and nature of morality is a compromise between the ideal of doing wrong without paying for it, and the worst situation, which is having wrong done to one while lacking the means of exacting compensation. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 359a) | |
| A reaction: This idea is from Glaucon, and is not endorsed by Socrates. Hobbes thought it was right, though he emphasised safety. Game theory makes this approach to moraliy much more plausible. |
| 2097 | Isn't it better to have a reputation for goodness than to actually be good? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Unless I gain a reputation for morality, my actually being moral will do me no good, but an immoral person who has managed to get a reputation for morality is said to have a wonderful life. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365b) |
| 7 | Surely you don't return a borrowed weapon to a mad friend? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If one borrowed a weapon from a friend who subsequently went out of his mind and then asked for it back, surely one ought not to return it? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 331c) | |
| A reaction: Only a Kantian would think of disagreeing with this obvious truth. There is no promise here, but an implicit moral commitment. Such things should always have an all-things-being-equal clause. |
| 8 | Is right just the interests of the powerful? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Thrasymachus: right is the interest of the established government. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 339a) | |
| A reaction: To believe this you would have to believe the powerful control not what is judged to be right, but also the ordinary language which expresses such judgements. Marxism explains that. |
| 15 | Sin first, then sacrifice to the gods from the proceeds [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The thing to do is to sin first and sacrifice afterwards from the proceeds. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365e) | |
| A reaction: A bit like Graham Greene's Catholicism. One Greek view of the gods seems to be that they are quite myopic and naïve. |
| 5944 | For Plato, virtue is its own reward [Lawson-Tancred on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The 'Republic' is the first sustained philosophical defence of the idea that virtue is its own reward. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], Ch.9) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Plato's Republic and Greek Enlightenment | |
| A reaction: Sceptics might say that at the heart of his claim is the idea that the virtuous life is the best means of achieving long-term pleasure (as opposed to short-sighted hedonism). What is it about people which could make virtue attractive to them? |
| 2155 | True goodness requires mental unity and harmony [Plato] |
| Full Idea: True goodness requires mental unity and harmony. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 554e) |
| 2126 | A good community necessarily has wisdom, courage, self-discipline and morality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A good community has everything which is good, so it necessarily has wisdom, courage, self-discipline and morality. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 427e) |
| 2092 | Simonides said morality is helping one's friends and harming one's enemies [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Simonides claims that morality is doing good to one's friends and harm to one's enemies. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 332d) |
| 23562 | If the parts of our soul do their correct work, we will be just people, and will act justly [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Each one of us in whom each part is doing its own work will himself be just and do his own. …So it is appropriate for the rational part to rule …and for the spirited part to obey. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 441d) | |
| A reaction: 'Do his own' must mean play his own part in society correctly, because his internal faculties are also correctly focused on their role. So balancing the three parts in persons and society is not just an analogy, but one leads to the other. See 443e. |
| 19889 | People need society because the individual has too many needs [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Society originates because the individual is not self-sufficient, but has many needs which he cannot supply himself. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 369b) | |
| A reaction: Notice that Plato has the liberal individualist approach to problem, of starting with isolated individuals, and asking why they need to gang together. This is despite the dependency of children, and the proximity of extended families. |
| 19890 | All exchanges in a community are for mutual benefit [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In the community all mutual exchanges are made on the assumption that the parties to them stand to gain. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 369c) | |
| A reaction: The sole purpose of his society appears to be trading, either of goods or of services. The assumption is that if each individual were self-sufficient there would be no society, which strikes me as unlikely. Aristotle offers a better picture. |
| 10 | After a taste of mutual harm, men make a legal contract to avoid it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Once people experience committing wrong and suffering it, they see the disadvantages are unavoidable and the benefits unobtainable, ...so they enter into a contract, guaranteeing no permitting or receiving wrong, ...and they then make laws and decrees. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 359a) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the earliest statement of the social contract idea. Here it both sets up the state and creates morality. This is Glaucon speaking, and is NOT endorsed by Socrates. |
| 23561 | People doing their jobs properly is the fourth cardinal virtue for a city [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The power that consists in everyone's doing his own work rivals wisdom, moderation, and courage in its contribution to the virtue of the city. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 433d) | |
| A reaction: Making conscientious the fourth cardinal virtue. Well said! My maxim for the modern world is that nearly all human misery consists of either bad health or other people not doing their jobs properly. You know I'm right. |
| 2132 | Only rule by philosophers of integrity can keep a community healthy [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Unless communities have philosophers as kings, or the people who are currently called kings and rulers practise philosophy with enough integrity, there can be no end to political troubles. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 473d) |
| 2149 | Reluctant rulers make a better and more unified administration [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The less keen the would-be rulers of a community are to rule, the better and less divided the administration of that community are bound to be. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 520d) |
| 2131 | Is there anything better for a community than to produce excellent people? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is anything better for a community than for it to engender women and men who are exceptionally good? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 456e) |
| 2148 | To gain knowledge, turn away from the world of change, and focus on true goodness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: To gain knowledge we must turn the mind away from the world of becoming, until it becomes capable of bearing the sight of real being and reality at its most bright, which we are saying is goodness. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 518c) |
| 2152 | Dialectic is the highest and most important part of the curriculum [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic occupies the highest position and forms, as it were, the copestone of the curriculum. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 534e) |
| 2153 | Compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 536e) |
| 7016 | The standard view is that causal sequences are backed by laws, and between particular events [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The notion that every causal sequence if backed by a law, like the idea that causation is a relation among particular events, forms a part of philosophy's Humean heritage. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: This nicely pinpoints a view that needs to come under attack. I take the view that there are no 'laws' - other than the regularities in behaviour that result from the interaction of essential dispositional properties. Essences don't need laws. |
| 18257 | Why should the limit of measurement be points, not intervals? [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: By what right do we assume that the limit of measurement is a point, and not an interval? | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |
| 7036 | The real natural properties are sparse, but there are many complex properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I am sympathetic to the idea that the real properties are 'sparse'; ...but if, in counting kinds of property, we include complex properties as well as simple properties, the image of sparseness evaporates. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems right to me, and invites the obvious question of which are the sparse real properties. Presumably we let the physicists tell us that, though Heil wants to include qualities like phenomenal colour, which physicists ignore. |
| 2630 | If Plato's God is immaterial, he will lack consciousness, wisdom, pleasure and movement, which are essential to him [Cicero on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato holds God to be without a body, immaterial; but this is an incomprehensible idea. Such a god would inevitably lack any consciousness, any wisdom and any pleasure (…or motion), all of which are bound up in our idea of God. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.30 |
| 14 | If the gods are non-existent or indifferent, why bother to deceive them? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there are no gods or if they care nothing for human affairs, why should we bother to deceive them? | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 365d) | |
| A reaction: There is incipient deism here, as well as atheism. |
| 2165 | Something is unlikely to be immortal if it is imperfectly made from diverse parts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Something is unlikely to be immortal if it's a compound, formed imperfectly from diverse parts. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 611b) |
| 13 | Is the supreme reward for virtue to be drunk for eternity? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: (the poets think) 'the supreme reward of virtue was to be drunk for eternity'. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 363d) | |
| A reaction: A perceptive thought. Most people consider the best life to contain endless fun and physical pleasure, so a boozy bawdy holiday in the sunshine ticks all the boxes. |
| 2120 | God is responsible for the good things, but we must look elsewhere for the cause of the bad things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: God and God alone must be held responsible for the good things, but responsibility for bad things must be looked for elsewhere, and not attributed to God. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 379c) |