16 ideas
| 21405 | Cicero sees wisdom in terms of knowledge, but earlier Stoics saw it as moral [Cicero, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Cicero (drawing on Panaetius) treats wisdom as if its province were primarily a disinterested pursuit of knowledge. But earlier Stoics gave purely moral definitions of wisdom. | |
| From: report of M. Tullius Cicero (On Duties ('De Officiis') [c.44 BCE], 1.11-20) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 5 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that after long discussion most ancient (and even modern) philosophers would conclude that it is both. The 'intellectualism' of Socrates hovers in the background, implying that healthy knowledge produces virtue. |
| 20871 | Unfortunately we choose a way of life before we are old enough to think clearly [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: At the beginning of adolescence when our deliberative capacities are weak we decide on the way of life that we find attractive. So one gets entangled in a definite manner and pattern of life before one is able to judge which one is best. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Duties ('De Officiis') [c.44 BCE], 1.117) | |
| A reaction: Hence it is important to have lots of means for bailing out of education courses, jobs, and even marriage. At least university postpones the key life choices till the early twenties. |
| 18005 | Philosophy aims to become more disciplined about categories [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], Intro p.8), quoted by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.2 | |
| A reaction: I rather like this. It fits the view the idea that metaphysics aims to give the structure of reality. If there are not reasonably uniform categories for things, then reality is indescribable. Improving our categories seems a thoroughly laudable aim. |
| 14297 | A dispositional property is not a state, but a liability to be in some state, given a condition [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: To possess a dispositional property is not to be in a particular state;..it is to be bound or liable to be in a particular state, or undergo a particular change, when a particular condition is realized. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], II (7)) | |
| A reaction: Whether this view is correct is the central question about dispositions. Ryle's view is tied in with Humean regularities and behaviourism about mind. The powers view, which I favour, says a disposition is a drawn bow, an actual state of power. |
| 14300 | No physical scientist now believes in an occult force-exerting agency [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: The old error treating the term 'Force' as denoting an occult force-exerting agency has been given up in the physical sciences. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], V (1)) | |
| A reaction: Since 1949 they seem to have made a revival, once they are divested of their religious connotations. The word 'agency' is the misleading bit. Even Leibniz's monads weren't actual agents - he always said that was 'an analogy'. |
| 3570 | Maybe knowledge is belief which 'tracks' the truth [Nozick, by Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Nozick suggests that knowledge is just belief which 'tracks the truth' (hence leaving out justification). | |
| From: report of Robert Nozick (Philosophical Explanations [1981]) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch. 2 |
| 2748 | A true belief isn't knowledge if it would be believed even if false. It should 'track the truth' [Nozick, by Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Nozick says Gettier cases aren't knowledge because the proposition would be believed even if false. Proper justification must be more sensitive to the truth ("track the truth"). | |
| From: report of Robert Nozick (Philosophical Explanations [1981], 3.1) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 3.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a bad idea. I see a genuine tree in my garden and believe it is there, so I know it. That I might have believed it if I was in virtually reality, or observing a mirror, won't alter that. |
| 2622 | Can one movement have a mental and physical cause? [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: The dogma of the Ghost in the Machine maintains that there exist both minds and bodies; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements, and mental causes of corporeal movements. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], I (3)) | |
| A reaction: This nicely identifies the problem of double causation, which can be found in Spinoza (Idea 4862). The dualists have certainly got a problem here, but they can deny a conflict. The initiation of a hand movement is not mechanical at all. |
| 1353 | Reporting on myself has the same problems as reporting on you [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: My reports on myself are subject to the same kinds of defects as are my reports on you. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This may be true of memories or of motives, but it hardly seems to apply to being in pain, where you might be totally lying, where the worst I could do to myself is exaggerate. "You're fine; how am I?" |
| 1354 | We cannot introspect states of anger or panic [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: No one could introspectively scrutinize the state of panic or fury. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: It depends what you mean by 'scrutinize'. No human being ever loses their temper or panics without a background thought of "Oh dear, I'm losing it - it would probably be better if I didn't" (or, as Aristotle might say, "I'm angry, and so I should be"). |
| 2624 | I cannot prepare myself for the next thought I am going to think [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: One thing that I cannot prepare myself for is the next thought that I am going to think. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], VI (7)) |
| 2620 | Dualism is a category mistake [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: The official theory of mind (as private, non-spatial, outside physical laws) I call 'the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine'. I hope to prove it entirely false, and show that it is one big mistake, namely a 'category mistake'. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], I (2)) | |
| A reaction: This is the essence of Ryle's eliminitavist behaviourism. Personally I agree that the idea of a separate 'ghost' running the machine is utterly implausible, but it isn't a 'category mistake'. The mind clearly exists, but the confusion is about what it is. |
| 2388 | Behaviour depends on desires as well as beliefs [Chalmers on Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Another problem for Ryle (from Chisholm and Geach) is that no mental state could be defined by a single range of behavioural dispositions, independent of any other mental states. (Behaviour depends upon desires as well as beliefs). | |
| From: comment on Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949]) by David J.Chalmers - The Conscious Mind 1.1.2 | |
| A reaction: The defence of behaviourism is to concede this point, but suggest that behavioural dispositions come in large groups of interdependent sets, some relating to beliefs, others relating to desires, and each group leads to a behaviour. |
| 3354 | You can't explain mind as dispositions, if they aren't real [Benardete,JA on Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Ryle is tough-minded to the point of incoherence when he combines a dispositional account of the mind with an anti-realist account of dispositions. | |
| From: comment on Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.22 | |
| A reaction: A nice point, but it strikes me that Ryle was, by temperament at least, an eliminativist about the mind, so the objection would not bother him. Maybe a disposition and a property are the same thing? |
| 2387 | How can behaviour be the cause of behaviour? [Chalmers on Ryle] |
| Full Idea: A problem for Ryle is that mental states may cause behaviour, but if mental states are themselves behavioural or behavioural dispositions, as opposed to internal states, then it is hard to see how they could do the job. | |
| From: comment on Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949]) by David J.Chalmers - The Conscious Mind 1.1.2 | |
| A reaction: I strongly approve of this, as an objection to any form of behaviourism or functionalism. If you identify something by its related behaviour, or its apparent function, this leaves the question 'WHY does it behave or function in this way?' |
| 6031 | The essence of propriety is consistency [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The whole essence of propriety is quite certainly consistency. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Duties ('De Officiis') [c.44 BCE], 1.110) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me the key intuition on which Kant built his deontological ethical theory. However, opponents say the consistency requires principles, and these are the enemies of truly good human behaviour, which involves Aristotle's 'particulars'. |