14 ideas
| 22764 | Ordinary speech is not exact about what is true; we say we are digging a well before the well exists [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: We must allow ordinary speech to use inexact terms, as it does not seek after what is really true but what is supposed to be true. We speak of digging a well or weaving a cloak, but there is no well or cloak when they are being dug or woven. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], II.129) | |
| A reaction: Nice examples. The imprecision is reduced if I say I am creating a well, because that implies something that is not yet complete. If I say I intend to dig a well, is that imprecise because the well does not exist? |
| 22762 | Some properties are inseparable from a thing, such as the length, breadth and depth of a body [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Some properties are inseparable from the things to which they belong - as are length, breadth and depth from bodies, for without their presence it is impossible to perceive Body. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], I.270) | |
| A reaction: For the opposite case he suggests a man running, talking or sleeping. He doesn't mention essential natures, but this is clearly correct. We might say that they are properties which need to be mentioned in a full definition. |
| 22759 | Fools, infants and madmen may speak truly, but do not know [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: The fool and the infant and the madman at times say something true, but they do not possess knowledge of the true. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], I.042) | |
| A reaction: This may be correct of someone who is insane, but seems unfair to the fool and the infant. At what age do children begin to know things? If speech was just random nonsense, an accidental truth seems impossible. |
| 22760 | Madmen are reliable reporters of what appears to them [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: The madman is a trustworthy criterion of the appearances which occur in madness. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], I.062) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to conceive of an genuinely insane person deliberately misreporting their hallucinations. They are, of course, the sole witness. |
| 22763 | We can only dream of a winged man if we have experienced men and some winged thing [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: He who in his sleep dreams of a winged man does not dream so without having seen some winged thing and a man. And in general it is impossible to find in conception anything which one does not possess as known by experience. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], II.058) | |
| A reaction: This precisely David Hume's empiricist account of the formation of concepts. Hume's example is a golden mountain, which he got from Aquinas. How do we dream of faces we have never encountered, or shapes we have never seen? |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 21332 | We don't get a love of 'order' from nature - which is thoroughly chaotic [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Even the love of 'order' which is thought to be a following of the ways of nature is in fact a contradiction of them. All which people are accustomed to deprecate as 'disorder' is precisely a counterpart of nature's ways. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116) | |
| A reaction: The Greeks elevated the idea that the cosmos was orderly, but almost entirely based on the regular movement of the planets. They turned a blind eye to the messy bits of nature. As you magnify nature, order and chaos seem to alternate. |
| 21333 | Evil comes from good just as often as good comes from evil [Mill] |
| Full Idea: If good frequently comes out of evil, the converse fact, evil coming out of good, is equally common. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.117) | |
| A reaction: Mill surmises that on the whole good comes from good, and evil from evil, but the point is that the evidence doesn't favour the production of increased good. |
| 21335 | Belief that an afterlife is required for justice is an admission that this life is very unjust [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The necessity of redressing the balance [of injustice] is deemed one of the strongest arguments for another life after death, which amounts to an admission that the order of things in this life is often an example of injustice, not justice. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874]) | |
| A reaction: It certainly seems that an omnipotent God could administer swift justice in this life. If the whole point is that we need freedom of will, then why is justice administered at a much later date? The freedom seems to be illusory. |
| 21334 | No necessity ties an omnipotent Creator, so he evidently wills human misery [Mill] |
| Full Idea: If a Creator is assumed to be omnipotent, if he bends to a supposed necessity, he himself makes the necessity which he bends to. If the maker of the world can all that he will, he wills misery, and there is no escape from the conclusion. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.119) | |
| A reaction: If you add that the Creator is supposed to be perfectly benevolent, you arrive at the paradox which Mackie spells out. Is the correct conclusion that God exists, and is malevolent? Mill doesn't take that option seriously. |
| 21329 | Nature dispenses cruelty with no concern for either mercy or justice [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All of this [cruel killing] nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.115) | |
| A reaction: The existence of an afterlife at least offers an opportunity to rectify any injustice, but that hardly meets the question of why there was injustice in the first place. It would be odd if it actually is justice, but none of us can see why that is so. |
| 21328 | Killing is a human crime, but nature kills everyone, and often with great tortures [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, nature does once to every being that lives, and frequently after protracted tortures such as the greatest know monsters purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.115) | |
| A reaction: We certainly don't condemn lions for savaging gazelles, but the concept of a supreme mind controlling nature forces the question. Theology needs consistency between human and divine morality, and the supposed derivation of the former from the latter. |
| 21330 | Nature makes childbirth a miserable experience, often leading to the death of the mother [Mill] |
| Full Idea: In the clumsy provision which nature has made for the perpetual renewal of animal life, ...no human being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or day, not unfrequently issuing in death. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116) | |
| A reaction: This is a very powerful example, which is rarely cited in modern discussions. |
| 21331 | Hurricanes, locusts, floods and blight can starve a million people to death [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Nature often takes the means by which we live. A single hurricane, a flight of locusts, or an inundation, or a trifling chemical change in an edible root, starve a million people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116) | |
| A reaction: [second sentence compressed] The 'edible root' is an obvious reference to the Irish potato famine. Some desertification had human causes, but these are telling examples. |