10 ideas
| 304 | Beautiful things must be different from beauty itself, but beauty itself must be present in each of them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Are fine things different from or identical to fineness? They are different from fineness itself, but fineness itself is in a sense present in each of them. | |
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 301a) |
| 22308 | Only the actual exists, so possibilities always reduce to actuality after full analysis [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Possibility always marks insufficient analysis: when analysis is completed, only the actual can be relevant, for the simple reason that there is only the actual, and that the mere possibility is nothing. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Papers of 1913 [1913], VII.26), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 42 'Logic' | |
| A reaction: Quine agreed with Russell on this. You won't get far in life if you deny possibilities. The answer is to recognise that the actual is dynamic, and not passive. |
| 16120 | Knowing how to achieve immortality is pointless without the knowledge how to use immortality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there exists the knowledge of how to make men immortal, but without the knowledge of how to use this immortality, there seems to be no value in it. | |
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 289b) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be not a gormless utilitarianism about knowledge, but a plea for holism, that knowledge only has value as part of some larger picture. The big view is the important view. He's wrong, though. Work out the use later. |
| 303 | Say how many teeth the other has, then count them. If you are right, we will trust your other claims [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If each of you says how many teeth the other has, and when they are counted we find you do know, we will believe your other claims as well. | |
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 294c) | |
| A reaction: This is the clairvoyant problem for reliabilism, if truth is delivered for no apparent reason. Useful, but hardly knowledge. HOW did you know the number of teeth? |
| 302 | What knowledge is required to live well? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What knowledge would enable us to live finely for the rest of our lives? | |
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 293a) | |
| A reaction: A successful grasp of other people's points of view might lead to respect for them. Also a realisation that we are not isolated individuals. We really are all in it together. |
| 301 | Only knowledge of some sort is good [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is good except knowledge of some sort. | |
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 292b) | |
| A reaction: I've heard it suggested that truth is the only value. This is the Socratic idea that moral goodness is a matter of successful rational judgement. Not convinced, but interesting. |
| 305 | Something which lies midway between two evils is better than either of them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Something which is composed of two factors which are bad for different purposes and lies midway between them is better than either of the factors. | |
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 306a) |
| 17371 | Some kinds are very explanatory, but others less so, and some not at all [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory significance, hence naturalness, comes in degrees: positing some kinds may be very explanatory, positing others, only a little bit explanatory, positing others still, not explanatory at all. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: He mentions 'cousin' as a natural kind that is not very explanatory of anything. It interests us as humans, but not at all in other animals, it seems. ...Nice thought, though, that two squirrels might be cousins... |
| 17372 | The higher categories are not natural kinds, so the Linnaean hierarchy should be given up [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: The signs are that the higher categories are not natural kinds and so the Linnaean hierarchy must be abandoned. ...This is not abandoning a hierarchy altogether, it is not abandoning a tree of life. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: Devitt's underlying point is that the higher and more general kinds do not have an essence (a specific nature), which is the qualification to be a natural kind. They explain nothing. Essence is the hallmark of natural kinds. Hmmm. |
| 17373 | Species pluralism says there are several good accounts of what a species is [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Species pluralism is the view that there are several equally good accounts of what it is to be a species. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 7) | |
| A reaction: Devitt votes for it, and cites Dupré, among many other. Given the existence of rival accounts, all making good points, it is hard to resist this view. |