7 ideas
| 9198 | It is no longer possible to be a sage, but we can practice the exercise of wisdom [Hadot] |
| Full Idea: Personally I firmly believe, perhaps naively, that it is possible for modern man to live, not as a sage (sophos) - most of the ancients did not hold this to be possible - but as a practitioner of the ever-fragile exercise of wisdom. | |
| From: Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a way of life [1987], 7) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me quite plausible that the philosophical life might yet become a widespread ideal, even though philosophers seem to still be sheltering from storms two thousand years after Plato gave us that image. |
| 9197 | The logos represents a demand for universal rationality [Hadot] |
| Full Idea: The logos represents a demand for universal rationality. | |
| From: Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a way of life [1987], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: That is at one end of the spectrum. At the other, in parts of 'Theaetetus', it is just a polite request to be given a few reasons, instead of a splattering of hopes and prejudices. |
| 10365 | We might use 'facta' to refer to the truth-makers for facts [Mellor, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Mellor offers a distinction between 'facts' and 'facta' (the latter being the truth-makers for facts). | |
| From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1 | |
| A reaction: The idea is that 'facta' can do the work in causation, because 'facts' are not part of the world. This seems a very helpful terminology, which should be encouraged, since 'fact' is plainly ambiguous in current usage. |
| 3178 | A fast machine could pass all behavioural tests with a vast lookup table [Block, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Ned Block proposes a machine (a 'blockhead') which could pass the Turing Test just by looking up responses in a vast look-up table. | |
| From: report of Ned Block (works [1984]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 5.3 | |
| A reaction: Once you suspected you were talking to a blockhead, I think you could catch it out in a Turing Test. How can the lookup table keep up to date with immediate experience? Ask it about your new poem. |
| 9196 | The pleasure of existing is the only genuine pleasure [Hadot] |
| Full Idea: For epicureans, the only genuine pleasure there is is the pleasure of existing. | |
| From: Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a way of life [1987], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't know Hadot's source for this claim, but it is a nice idea, which I shall endeavour to incorporate into my own attitude to daily living. I'm not quite clear, though, why the pleasure of music is not a 'genuine' one. |
| 4785 | Causal statements relate facts (which are whatever true propositions express) [Mellor, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Mellor argues that causal statements relate facts, where facts may be seen as whatever true propositions express. | |
| From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.6 | |
| A reaction: Choose between 'facts', 'objects', 'conserved quantities, 'events' (the usual one) or 'processes'. I rather like processes (Salmon) as they are a better prospect as the building blocks of an ontology. |
| 8408 | Probabilistic causation says C is a cause of E if it increases the chances of E occurring [Mellor, by Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The basic idea of probabilistic causation is that a sufficient condition of C's being a cause of E is that C and E are actual, individual events, and the objective chance of E's occurring is greater given the occurrence of C than it would be without C. | |
| From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Michael Tooley - Causation and Supervenience 5.3 | |
| A reaction: Mellor has to include objective 'chances' in his ontology to support his theory. As it stands this looks like a weak theory, since the event might not occur despite C happening, and some less likely event might turn out to be the actual cause. |