14 ideas
2661 | Dialectic is speech cast in the form of logical argument [Cicero] |
Full Idea: Dialectic is speech cast in the form of logical argument. | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], I.viii.32) |
2673 | There cannot be more than one truth [Cicero] |
Full Idea: There cannot be more than one truth. | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xlviii.147) |
2669 | Dialectic assumes that all statements are either true or false, but self-referential paradoxes are a big problem [Cicero] |
Full Idea: It is a fundamental principle of dialectic that every statement is either true or false. So is this a true proposition or a false one: "If you say that you are lying and say it truly, you lie"? | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xxix.95) |
16078 | Clay is intrinsically and atomically the same as statue (and that lacks 'modal properties') [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: Arguments for statue being the clay are: that the clay is intrinsically like the statue, that the clay has the same atoms as the statue', that objects don't have modal properties such as being necessarily F, and the reference of 'property' changes. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], II) | |
A reaction: [my summary of the arguments she identifies - see text for details] Rudder Baker attempts to refute all four of these arguments, in defence of constitution as different from identity. |
16077 | The clay is not a statue - it borrows that property from the statue it constitutes [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: I argue that a lump of clay borrows the property of being a statue from the statue. The lump is a statue because, and only because, there is something that the lump constitutes that is a statue. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], n9) | |
A reaction: It is skating on very thin metaphysical ice to introduce the concept of 'borrowing' a property. I've spent the last ten minutes trying to 'borrow' some properties, but without luck. |
16080 | Is it possible for two things that are identical to become two separate things? [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: A strong intuition shared by many philosophers is that some things that are in fact identical might not have been identical. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], IV) | |
A reaction: This flies in the face of the Kripkean view that if Hesperus=Phosphorus then the identity is necessary. I don't think I have an intuition that some given thing might have been two things - indeed the thought seems totally weird. Amoeba? Statue/clay? |
16076 | Constitution is not identity, as consideration of essential predicates shows [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: I want to resuscitate an essentialist argument against the view that constitution is identity, of the form 'x is essentially F, y is not essentially F, so x is not y'. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], Intro) | |
A reaction: The point is that x might be essentially F and y only accidentally F. Thus a statue is essentially so, but a lump if clay is not essentially a statue. Another case where 'necessary' would do instead of 'essentially'. |
16081 | The constitution view gives a unified account of the relation of persons/bodies, statues/bronze etc [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: Constitution-without-identity is superior to constitution-as-identity in that it provides a unified view of the relation between persons and bodies, statues and pieces of bronze, and so on. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], IV) | |
A reaction: I have a problem with the intrinsic dualism of this whole picture. Clay needs shape, statues need matter - there aren't two 'things' here which have a 'relation'. |
16082 | Statues essentially have relational properties lacked by lumps [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: The statue has relational properties which the lump of clay does not have essentially. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], V) | |
A reaction: She has in mind relations to the community of artistic life. I don't think this is convincing. Is something only a statue if it is validated by an artistic community? That sounds like relative identity, which she doesn't like. |
2664 | If we have complete healthy senses, what more could the gods give us? [Cicero] |
Full Idea: If human nature were interrogated by some god as to whether it was content with its own senses in a sound and undamaged state or demanded something better, I cannot see what more it could ask for. | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.vii.19) |
2665 | How can there be a memory of what is false? [Cicero] |
Full Idea: How can there possibly be a memory of what is false? | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.vii.22) |
20800 | Every true presentation can have a false one of the same quality [Cicero] |
Full Idea: [The sceptical Academics say] what is false cannot be perceived, but every true presentation is such that there can be a false presentation of the same quality. | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.40) | |
A reaction: It was the stoics who focused the discussion on 'presentations'. This claim is purely theoretical; no one has ever experienced a false presentation of talking to a family member that was as vivid as the real thing. |
8638 | Thomae's idea of abstract from peculiarities gives a general concept, and leaves the peculiarities [Frege on Thomae] |
Full Idea: When Thomae says "abstract from the peculiarities of the individual members of a set of items", or "disregard those characteristics which serve to distinguish them", we get a general concept under which they fall. The things keep their characteristics. | |
From: comment on C.J. Thomae (works [1869], §34) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §34 | |
A reaction: Interesting. You don't have to leave out their distinctive fur in order to count cats. But you have to focus on some aspect of them, because they aren't 'three meats'. |
2672 | Virtues must be very detached, to avoid being motivated by pleasure [Cicero] |
Full Idea: None of the virtues can exist unless they are disinterested, for virtue driven to duty by pleasure as a sort of pay is not virtue at all but a deceptive sham and pretence of virtue. | |
From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xlvi.140) |