18 ideas
| 1542 | Diogenes of Apollonia was the last natural scientist [Diogenes of Apollonia, by Simplicius] |
| Full Idea: Diogenes of Apollonia was more or less the last of those who made a study of natural science. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], A05) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.25.1 | |
| A reaction: He quotes Theophrastus |
| 489 | Each thing must be in some way unique [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: No one thing among things subject to change can possibly be exactly like any other thing, without becoming the same thing. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B05), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 153.8 | |
| A reaction: This is said to be the first ever formulation of the principle of identity of indiscernible. |
| 483 | Start a thesis with something undisputable [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: In starting any thesis, it seems to me, one should put forward as one's point of departure something incontrovertible. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B01), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.57 |
| 1544 | Perception must be an internal matter, because we can fail to perceive when we are preoccupied [Diogenes of Apollonia, by Theophrastus] |
| Full Idea: That it is the inner air that perceives, as being a fragment of the god, is shown by the fact that often when our minds are preoccupied with other matters we fail to see or hear. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], A19) by Theophrastus - On the Senses 42 |
| 21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans. |
| 24042 | The older Diogenes said the soul is air, made of the smallest particles [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: Diogenes [of Apollonia] took the soul to be air, thnking that of all things air is composed of the smallest particles and is a starting point. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], DK 64), quoted by Aristotle - De Anima 405a21 | |
| A reaction: This suggests that Diogenes of Apollonia was an atomist, if the soul is made of particles. See also Met 984a5, which says Anaxagoras had the same view. |
| 21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: There is still some hope for something like identity theory for sensations. But almost no one believes that strict identity theory will work for more complex mental states. Strict identity is stronger than type neurophysicalism. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
| A reaction: It is so hard to express the problem. What needs to be explained? How can one bunch of neurons represent many different things? It's not like computing. That just transfers the data to brains, where the puzzling stuff happens. |
| 15788 | Syntax and semantics are indeterminate, and modern 'semantics' is a bogus subject [Quine, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Quine has argued tirelessly that syntax and 'semantics' are indeterminate, and linguistic semantics of the sort that is currently in favor is a pseudoscience and a pipe dream. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Methodological Reflections on Current Linguistic Theory [1972]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 02 | |
| A reaction: I think the defence of such things is that they may not integrate into science very well (or even integrate at all), but semantics is intended to integrate into philosophy, and is motivated by philosophical concerns. Quine may be right! |
| 21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of 'good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism') | |
| A reaction: I take normativity not be the mere labelling of certain things as 'good', but as a way of responding to that fact, with some sort of motivation. |
| 21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Two explanations came forward in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Altruism is either 1) person-based reciprocal altruism, or 2) gene-based kin altruism. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Darwin') | |
| A reaction: Flanagan obviously thinks there is also 'genuine psychological atruism'. Presumably we don't explain mathematics or music or the desire to travel as either contracts or genetics, so we have other explanations available. |
| 21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative') | |
| A reaction: Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing. |
| 21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding') | |
| A reaction: I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated. |
| 5995 | Diogenes of Apollonia offered the first teleological account of cosmology [Diogenes of Apollonia, by Robinson,TM] |
| Full Idea: Credit for the first clear assertion of teleological explanation in cosmology goes to Diogenes of Apollonia, for whom air is the divine and intelligent ground of the real and disposes things in the best possible way. | |
| From: report of Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE]) by T.M. Robinson - Classical Cosmology (frags) | |
| A reaction: The first teleological explanation seems to be based on a conscious mind. There also emerges the possibility of some sort of non-conscious teleology, closer to the laws of physics than to God. |
| 488 | Air is divine, because it is in and around everything, and arranges everything [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: Air in itself seems to me to be God and to reach everywhere and to arrange everything and to be in everything. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B05), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 152.22- | |
| A reaction: So water and fire and air have been offered as the ultimate explanans, though no one seems to offer earth, which is too grubby and miserable (and was denied a Form by Plato). 'Air is God' could ground a nice modern religious sect. |
| 484 | Everything is ultimately a variation of one underlying thing [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that all existing things are created by the alteration of the same thing, and are the same thing. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B02), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 151.31- |
| 486 | Plants and animals can only come into existence if something fixes their species [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: No plant could grow out of the earth, and no animal or any other thing could come into being, unless it were so compounded as to be the same. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B02), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 151.31- |
| 485 | Things must retain their essential nature during change, or mixing would be impossible [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: If any existing thing were different in its own essential nature, and were not the same thing which was transformed in many ways and changed, in no way could things mix with one another. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B02), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 151.31- |
| 21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Buddhism rejected the idea of a creator God, and the unchanging self [atman]. They accept the appearance-reality distinction, reward for virtue [karma], suffering defining our predicament, and that liberation [nirvana] is possible through wisdom. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Buddhism') | |
| A reaction: [Compressed] Flanagan is an analytic philosopher and a practising Buddhist. Looking at a happiness map today which shows Europeans largely happy, and Africans largely miserable, I can see why they thought suffering was basic. |