89 ideas
| 13310 | Wisdom does not lie in books, and unread people can also become wise [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: What grounds could I possibly have for supposing that a person who has no acquaintance with books will never be a wise man? For wisdom does not lie in books. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088) | |
| A reaction: A useful warning to the likes of me, who may have retreated from the hurly-burly of the agora (see Callicles in Plato's 'Gorgias'), under the illusion that detachment is needed for wisdom. Maybe involvement is needed for wisdom. |
| 13295 | Wise people escape necessity by willing it [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing a wise man does reluctantly; he escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 054) | |
| A reaction: He is discussing death in this letter. The difficulty here is sliding into fatalism. For instance, if you are informed that you have cancer, it is tempting to become 'wise' and will your own death, but lots of people fight it, and win. |
| 13317 | Philosophy aims at happiness [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 090) | |
| A reaction: A startlingly forthright view. It seems to neglect what I take to be the main aim of philosophy, which is to achieve understanding. I presume true happiness would follow from that. Seneca must now explain why soporific pleasure is wrong. |
| 13293 | What philosophy offers humanity is guidance [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out for humanity? Counsel. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 048) | |
| A reaction: See Quine for a flat modern denial of this claim (Idea 9764). There is a modern tendency to see ethics and political thought operating at a meta- or metameta- level. I take the main ethical theories to be very illuminating of real life. |
| 13309 | That something is a necessary condition of something else doesn't mean it caused it [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: There's no reason for you to assume that, X being something without which Y could never have come about, Y came about as a result of the assistance of X. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088) | |
| A reaction: This thought originates with Carneades, reported by Cicero. This is a clear message to the likes of Mackie, who are in danger of thinking that giving the preconditions of something is sufficient to give its causes. |
| 13395 | If an analysis shows the features of a concept, it doesn't seem to 'reduce' the concept [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: An analysis of a concept tells us what the concept is by telling us what its constituents are and how they are combined. ..The features of the concept are present in the analysis, making it surprising the 'reductive' analyses are sought. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: He says that there are nevertheless reductive analyses, such as David Lewis's analysis of modality. We must disentangle conceptual analysis from causal analysis (e.g. in his example of the physicalist reduction of mind). |
| 13313 | Even philosophers have got bogged down in analysing tiny bits of language [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Even the philosophers have descended to the level of drawing distinctions between the uses of different syllables and discussing the proper meanings of prepositions and conjunctions. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088) | |
| A reaction: How wonderfully prescient! The vast industry of modern philosophy of language exactly fits Seneca's description. I don't quite share his contempt, of course, and I think Seneca would have a bit of sympathy with modern analysis (just a bit!). |
| 1502 | Parmenides was much more cautious about accepting ideas than his predecessors [Simplicius on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides would not agree with anything unless it seemed necessary, whereas his predecessors used to come up with unsubstantiated assertions. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A28) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.116.2- | |
| A reaction: from Eudemus |
| 13378 | It is a mistake to think that the logic developed for mathematics can clarify language and philosophy [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: It has often been uncritically assumed that logic that was initially a tool for clarifying mathematics could be seamlessly and uniformly applied in the effort to clarify ordinary language and philosophy, but this has been a real mistake. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not saying he's right (since you need stupendous expertise to make that call) but my intuitions are that he has a good point, and he is at least addressing a crucial question which most analytical philosophers avert their eyes from. |
| 13402 | We only grasp a name if we know whether to apply it when the bearer changes [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: We cannot be said to have a full grasp of a name unless we have a definite disposition to apply it or to withhold it under whatever conceivable changes the bearer of the name might come to undergo. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This is right, and an excellent counterproposal to the logicians' notion that names have to rigidly designate. As a bare minimum, you are not supposed to deny the identity of your parents because they have grown a bit older, or a damaged painting. |
| 13405 | The baptiser picks the bearer of a name, but social use decides the category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The person who introduces a proper name gets to pick its bearer, but its category - and consequently the meaning of the name - is determined by social use. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 7) | |
| A reaction: New 'division of labour'. The idea that a name has some sort of meaning seems right and important. If babies were switched after baptism, social use might fix the name to the new baby. The namer could stipulate the category at the baptism. Too neat. |
| 13399 | Examples show that ordinary proper names are not rigid designators [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: There are plenty of examples to show that ordinary proper names simply are not rigid designators. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: His examples are the planet Venus and the dust of which it is formed, and a statue made of clay. In other words, for some objects, perhaps under certain descriptions (e.g. functional ones), the baptised matter can change. Rigidity is an extra topping. |
| 13398 | We could make a contingent description into a rigid and necessary one by adding 'actual' to it [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: 'The winner of the Derby' satisfies some horse, but only accidentally. But we could 'rigidify' the description by inserting 'actual' into it, giving 'the actual winner of the Derby'. Winning is a contingent property, but actually winning is necessary. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this unusual proposal because instead of switching into formal logic in order to capture the ideas we are after, he is drawing on the resources of ordinary language, offering philosophers a way of speaking plain English more precisely. |
| 13392 | Philosophers reduce complex English kind-quantifiers to the simplistic first-order quantifier [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: There is a readiness of philosophers to 'translate' English, with its seeming multitude of kind-driven quantifiers, into first-order logic, with its single wide-open quantifier. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: As in example he says that reference to a statue involves a 'statue-quantifier'. Thus we say things about the statue that we would not say about the clay, which would involve a 'clay-quantifier'. |
| 448 | No necessity could produce Being either later or earlier, so it must exist absolutely or not at all [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: What necessity impelled Being, if it did spring from nothing, to be produced later or earlier? Thus it must be absolutely, or not at all. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 447 | Being must be eternal and uncreated, and hence it is timeless [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Being has no coming-to-be and no destruction, for it is whole of limb, without motion, and without end. And it never was, nor will be, because it is now, a whole all together, one, continuous; for what creation of it will you look for? | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 449 | Being is not divisible, since it is all alike [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Being is not divisible, since it is all alike. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 1503 | There is no such thing as nothing [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as nothing. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B06), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.86.27- |
| 445 | The realm of necessary non-existence cannot be explored, because it is unknowable [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: The other way of enquiry, that IT IS NOT, and IT is bound NOT TO BE, cannot be explored, for you could neither recognise nor express that which IS NOT. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B02), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.116.28- |
| 21820 | Parmenides at least saw Being as the same as Nous, and separate from the sensed realm [Parmenides, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides made some approach to the doctrine of Plato in identifying Being with Intellectual-Principle [Nous] while separating Real Being from the realm of sense. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
| A reaction: The point is that for Parmenides the One is the essence of Being, but for platonists there is something prior to and higher than Being. For Plato it is the Good; for Plotinus it is a revised (non-Being) concept of the One. |
| 13404 | To exist necessarily is to have an essence whose own essence must be instantiated [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: For a thing to exist necessarily is for it to have an entity-essence whose own entity-essence entails being instantiated. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the culmination of a lengthy discussion, and is not immediately persuasive. For Jubien the analysis rests on a platonist view of properties, which doesn't help. |
| 452 | All our concepts of change and permanence are just names, not the truth [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: All things that mortals have established, believing in their truth, are just a name: Becoming and Perishing, Being and Not-Being, and change of position, and alteration of bright colour. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 13386 | If objects are just conventional, there is no ontological distinction between stuff and things [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Under the Quinean (conventional) view of objects, there is no ontological distinction between stuff and things. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the bold nihilistic account of physical objects, which seems to push all of our ontology into language (English?). We could devise divisions into things that were just crazy, and likely to lead to the rapid extinction of creatures who did it. |
| 13403 | The category of Venus is not 'object', or even 'planet', but a particular class of good-sized object [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The category of Venus is not 'physical object' or 'mereological sum', but narrower. Surprisingly, it is not 'planet', since it might cease to be a planet and still merit the name 'Venus'. It is something like 'well-integrated, good-sized physical object'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Jubien is illustrating Idea 13402. This is a nice demonstration of how one might go about the task of constructing categories - by showing the modal profiles of things to which names have been assigned. Categories are file names. |
| 13375 | The idea that every entity must have identity conditions is an unfortunate misunderstanding [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The pervasiveness, throughout philosophy, of the assumption that entities of various kinds need identity conditions is one unfortunate aspect of Quine's important philosophical legacy. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Lowe seems to be an example of a philosopher who habitually demands individuation conditions for everything that is referred to. Presumably the alternative is to take lots of things as primitive, but this seems to be second best. |
| 13393 | Any entity has the unique property of being that specific entity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: For any entity of any sort, abstract or concrete, I assume there is a property of being that specific entity. For want of a better term, I will call such properties entity-essences. They are 'singulary' - not instantiable by more than one thing at a time. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Baffling. Why would someone who has mocked all sorts of bogus philosophical claims based on logic then go on to assert the existence of such weird things as these? I can't make sense of this property being added to a thing's other properties. |
| 13388 | It is incoherent to think that a given entity depends on its kind for its existence [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: It is simply far-fetched - even incoherent - to think that, given an entity, of whatever kind, its being a single entity somehow consists in its satisfying some condition involving the kind to which it belongs (or concepts related to that kind). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: Well said. I can't see how philosophers have allowed themselves to drift into such a daft view. Kinds blatantly depend on the individuals that constitute them, so how could the identity of the individuals depend on their kind? |
| 13384 | Objects need conventions for their matter, their temporal possibility, and their spatial possibility [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: We need a first convention to determine what matter constitutes objects, then a second to determine whether there are different temporal possibilities for a given object, then a third for different spatial possibilities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is building up a Quinean account of objects, as mere matter in regions of spacetime, which are then precisely determined by a set of social conventions. |
| 13385 | Basically, the world doesn't have ready-made 'objects'; we carve objects any way we like [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: There is a certain - very mild - sense in which I don't think the physical world comes with ready-made objects. I think instead that we (conventionally) carve it up into objects, and this can be done any way we like. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I have no idea how one could begin to refute such a view. Obviously there are divisions (even if only of physical density) in the world, but nothing obliges us to make divisions at those points. We happily accept objects with gaps in them. |
| 13383 | If the statue is loved and the clay hated, that is about the object first qua statue, then qua clay [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If a sculptor says 'I love the statue but I really hate that piece of clay - it is way too hard to work with' ...the statement is partly is partly about that object qua statue and partly about that object qua piece of clay. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: His point is that identity is partly determined by the concept or category under which the thing falls. Plausible. Lots of identity muddles seem to come from our conceptual scheme not being quite up to the job when things change. |
| 13400 | If one entity is an object, a statue, and some clay, these come apart in at least three ways [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: A single entity is a physical object, a piece of clay and a statue. We seem to have that the object could be scattered, but not the other two; the object and the clay could be spherical, but not the statue; and only the object could have different matter. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: His proposal, roughly, is to reduce object-talk to property-talk, and then see the three views of this object as referring to different sets of properties, rather than to a single thing. Promising, except that he goes platonist about properties. |
| 13401 | The idea of coincident objects is a last resort, as it is opposed to commonsense naturalism [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I find it surprising that some philosophers accept 'coincident objects'. This notion clearly offends against commonsense 'naturalism' about the world, so it should be viewed as a last resort. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.2 n9) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear why he invokes 'naturalism', but I pass on his intuition because it seems right to me. |
| 13380 | Parts seem to matter when it is just an object, but not matter when it is a kind of object [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: When thought of just as an object, the parts of a thing seem definitive and their arrangement seems inconsequential. But when thought of as an object of a familiar kind it is reversed: the arrangement is important and the parts are inessential. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is analogous to the Ship of Theseus, where we say that the tour operator and the museum keeper give different accounts of whether it is the same ship. The 'kind' Jubien refers to is most likely to be a functional kind. |
| 13376 | We should not regard essentialism as just nontrivial de re necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I argue against the widely accepted characterization of the doctrine of 'essentialism' as the acceptance of nontrivial de re necessity | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. The notion of an essence is powerful if clearly distinguished. The test is: can everything being said about essences be just as easily said by referring to necessities? If so, you are talking about the wrong thing. |
| 1504 | Something must be unchanging to make recognition and knowledge possible [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides and Melissus were the first to appreciate that there must be unchanging entities, if recognition and knowledge are to exist. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A25) by Aristotle - On the Heavens 298b14 |
| 13381 | Thinking of them as 'ships' the repaired ship is the original, but as 'objects' the reassembly is the original [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Thinking about the original ship as a ship, we think we continue to have the 'same ship' as each part is replaced; ...but when we think of them as physical objects, we think the original ship and the outcome of the reassembly are one and the same. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that you cannot eliminate how we are thinking of the ship as influencing how we should read it. My suggestion is to think of Theseus himself valuing either the repaired or the reassembled version. That's bad for Jubien's account. |
| 13382 | Rearranging the planks as a ship is confusing; we'd say it was the same 'object' with a different arrangement [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: That the planks are rearranged as a ship elevates the sense of mystery, because arrangements matter for ships, but if they had been arranged differently we would have the same intuition - that it still counts as the same object. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Implausible. Classic case: can I have my pen back? - smashes it to pieces and hands it over with 'there you are' - that's not my pen! - Jubien says it's the same object! - it isn't my pen, and it isn't the same object either! Where is Shelley's skylark? |
| 13379 | If two objects are indiscernible across spacetime, how could we decide whether or not they are the same? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If a bit of matter has a qualitatively indistinguishable object located at a later time, with a path of spacetime connecting them, how could we determine they are identical? Neither identity nor diversity follows from qualitative indiscernibility. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: All these principles expounded by Leibniz were assumed to be timeless, but for identity over time the whole notion of things retaining identity despite changing has to be rethought. Essentialism to the rescue. |
| 444 | The first way of enquiry involves necessary existence [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: The first way of enquiry is the one that IT IS, and it is not possible for IT NOT TO BE, which is the way of credibility, for it follows truth. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B02), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.116.28- | |
| A reaction: also Proclus 'Timeus' |
| 13394 | Entailment does not result from mutual necessity; mutual necessity ensures entailment [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typically philosophers say that for P to entail Q is for the proposition that all P's are Q's to be necessary. I think this analysis is backwards, and that necessity rests on entailment, not vice versa. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: His example is that being a horse and being an animal are such that one entails the other. In other words, necessities arise out of property relations (which for Jubien are necessary because the properties are platonically timeless). Wrong. |
| 450 | Necessity sets limits on being, in order to give it identity [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Powerful necessity holds Being in the bonds of a limit, which constrains it round about, because divine law decrees that Being shall not be without boundary. For it is not lacking, but if it were spatially infinite, it would lack everything. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 13391 | Modality concerns relations among platonic properties [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I think modality has to do with relations involving the abstract part of the world, specifically with relations among (Platonic) properties. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [Sider calls Jubien's the 'governance' view, since abstract relations govern the concrete] I take Jubien here (having done a beautiful demolition job on the possible worlds account of modality) to go spectacularly wrong. Modality starts in the concrete. |
| 13374 | To analyse modality, we must give accounts of objects, properties and relations [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate analysis of possibility and necessity depends on two important ontological decisions: the choice of an analysis of the intuitive concept of a physical object, and the other is the positing of properties and relations. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: In the same passage he adopts Quine's view of objects, leading to mereological essentialism, and a Platonic view of properties, based on Lewis's argument for taking some things at face value. One might start with processes and events instead. |
| 13389 | The love of possible worlds is part of the dream that technical logic solves philosophical problems [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I believe the contemporary infatuation with possible worlds in philosophy stems in part from a tendency to think that technical logic offers silver-bullet solutions to philosophical problems. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I would say that the main reason for the infatuation is just novelty. As a technical device it was only invented in the 1960s, so we are in a honeymoon period, as we would be with any new gadget. I can't imagine possible worlds figuring much in 100 years. |
| 13390 | Possible worlds don't explain necessity, because they are a bunch of parallel contingencies [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental problem is that in world theory, what passes for necessity is in effect just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien's general complaint is that there is no connection between the possible worlds and the actual world, so they are irrelevant, but this is a nicely different point - that lots of contingent worlds can't add up to necessity. Nice. |
| 451 | Thinking implies existence, because thinking depends on it [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: To think is the same as the thought that IT IS, for you will not find thinking without Being, on which it depends for its expression. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 1506 | Parmenides treats perception and intellectual activity as the same [Theophrastus on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides treats perception and intellectual activity as the same. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A46) by Theophrastus - On the Senses 3.1 | |
| A reaction: cf Theaetetus pt 1 |
| 3058 | Only reason can prove the truth of facts [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Reason alone will prove the truth of facts. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.3.3 |
| 13297 | To the four causes Plato adds a fifth, the idea which guided the event [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: To the four Aristotelian causes Plato adds a fifth in the model - what he himself calls the 'idea' - this being what the sculptor had constantly before his eyes as he executed the intended work. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 065) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting interpretation. I take the four 'causes' to be primarily the four 'explanations', and it exactly fits how we should understand Plato, as offer a crucial underlying explanation. The statue is Aristotle's example. |
| 13307 | If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088) | |
| A reaction: This is Descartes's non-spatial argument, which I take to be one of the four main props to his mind-body dualism. As always, it is expressed with beautiful concision by Seneca. |
| 13396 | Analysing mental concepts points to 'inclusionism' - that mental phenomena are part of the physical [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: We have (physicalist) 'inclusionism' when the mental is included in the physical, and mental phenomena are to be found among physical phenomena. Only inclusionism is compatible with a genuine physicalist analysis of mental concepts. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: This isn't the thesis of conceptual dualism (which I like), but an interesting accompaniment for it. Jubien is offering this as an alternative to 'reductive' analysis, translating all the mental concepts into physical language. He extends 'physical'. |
| 21399 | Referring to a person, and speaking about him, are very different [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: It makes a very great difference whether you refer to the person directly, or speak about him. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 117.13), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.3.2 | |
| A reaction: We seem to think that the distinctiveness of reference was first spotted by Frege. Not so. |
| 13377 | First-order logic tilts in favour of the direct reference theory, in its use of constants for objects [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: First-order logic tilts in favor of the direct reference account of proper names by using individual constants to play the intuitive role of names, and by 'interpreting' the constants simply as the individuals that are assigned to them for truth-values. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the kind of challenge to orthodoxy that is much needed at the moment. We have an orthodoxy which is almost a new 'scholasticism', that logic will clarify our metaphysics. Trying to enhance the logic for the job may be a dead end. |
| 13325 | Trouble in life comes from copying other people, which is following convention instead of reason [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: One of the causes of the troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the example of others; instead of being set to rights by reason we're seduced by convention. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 123) | |
| A reaction: An interesting practical spin and critique of the standard metaethical idea that morality is just convention. If you think morality is convention, presumably your moral duty is to imitate your neighbours. Nice deconstruction. |
| 22239 | Humans acquired the concept of virtue from an analogy with bodily health and strength [Seneca, by Allen] |
| Full Idea: Seneca held that human beings owe the original acquisition of the concept of virtue to an analogy with bodily health and strength | |
| From: report of Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 120.5) by James Allen - Soul's Virtue and the Health of the Body p.76 | |
| A reaction: This is an unusual view, even for a stoic, but shows how close the concepts of health and virtue were. Notice that it is strength as well as health. Plato just emphasises mental and physical harmony. |
| 13294 | We know death, which is like before birth; ceasing to be and never beginning are the same [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: I already know what death is like - it will be the same after me as it was before me. ..Only an utter idiot would think a lamp was worse off when it was put out than before it was lit. ..What does it matter whether you cease to be or never begin? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 054) | |
| A reaction: These sentiments are, interestingly, derived from the epicureans, rather than from the stoic tradition, but to us they probably look close together, where they looked like opponents at the time. |
| 13299 | Living is nothing wonderful; what matters is to die well [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: There's nothing so very great about living - all your slaves and all the animals do it. What is, however, a great thing is to die in a manner which is honourable, enlightened and courageous. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 077) | |
| A reaction: You get the feeling that Seneca actually thought suicide was better than a natural death. Did he actually seek his own death? It is an odd interpretation of his own stoic injunction to 'live according to nature'. |
| 13300 | It is as silly to lament ceasing to be as to lament not having lived in the remote past [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Wouldn't you think a man a prize fool if he burst into tears because he didn't live a thousand years ago? A man is such a fool for shedding tears because he isn't going to be alive a thousand years from now. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 077) | |
| A reaction: These thoughts are traditional, dating back to Epicurus, but Seneca is exceptionally going at finding new variations and examples to reinforce the basic thought. |
| 13321 | Is anything sweeter than valuing yourself more when you find you are loved? [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Can anything be sweeter than to find that you are so dear to your wife that this makes you dearer to yourself? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 104) | |
| A reaction: Another lovely penetrating remark from Seneca. I suppose a symptom of low self-esteem might be 'why does she love someone as worthless as me?', but that would be unusual. |
| 13292 | Selfishness does not produce happiness; to live for yourself, live for others [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: No one can lead a happy life if he thinks only of himself and turns everything to his own purposes. You should live for the other person if you wish to live for yourself. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 048) | |
| A reaction: It is important to see this as a key aspect of the ancient aspiration to virtue. The end result is not far from Christianity. It is simplistic to see the quest for virtue as a crass self-obsessed quest for self-improvement. We are social. |
| 13303 | A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 078) | |
| A reaction: Seneca is a very penetrating thinker about ordinary life - an aspect of philosophy which is nowadays totally neglected by the most eminent philosophers. |
| 13302 | Life is like a play - it is the quality that matters, not the length [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: As it is with a play, so it is with life - what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 077) | |
| A reaction: A very nice epigram, culminating the wonderful Letter 77 on the subject of death. A play needs to be a decent length if it is to exhibit its qualities. It would be heartbreaking if all of Shakespeare's plays were just 20-minute sketches. |
| 13301 | We are scared of death - except when we are immersed in pleasure! [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: You are scared of death - but how heedless of it you are while you are dealing with a dish of choice mushrooms! | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 077) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple observation, from the greatest philosopher of death. Maybe hospices should concentrate on sex, drugs and rock and roll. |
| 13323 | The whole point of pleasure-seeking is novelty, and abandoning established ways [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: The whole object of luxurious living is the delight it takes in irregular ways and in not merely departing from the correct course but going to the farthest point away from it, and in eventually even taking a stand diametrically opposed to it. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 122) | |
| A reaction: A rather conservative and puritanical remark, but worthy of contemplation even for committed hedonists. It is just a sad facts that most pleasures diminish with familiarity. Small children make delightful remarks. Imagine if they repeated them. |
| 13318 | Nature doesn't give us virtue; we must unremittingly pursue it, as a training and an art [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Nature does not give a man virtue; the process of becoming a good man is an art. ...Virtue only comes to a character which has been thoroughly schooled and trained and brought to a pitch of perfection by unremitting practice. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 090) | |
| A reaction: This is an important gloss from a leading stoic on the slogan of 'live according to nature'. One might say that the natural life must be 'tracked' (as Philip Larkin says we track happiness). The natural life is, above all, the rational life, for stoics. |
| 13324 | Living contrary to nature is like rowing against the stream [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 102) | |
| A reaction: A classic statement of the well-known stoic slogan, but expressed with Seneca's characteristic elegance. There is always a slight hidden of dubious fatalism in the slogan. 'Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!' - Dylan Thomas. |
| 13305 | Character is ruined by not looking back over our pasts, since the future rests on the past [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: What really ruins our characters is the fact that none of us looks back over his life. We think a little about what we are going to do, and fail to think about what we have done, yet plans for the future depend on the past. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 083) | |
| A reaction: One always assumes that writings about the wisdom of daily life will be one mass of clichés, but Seneca proves otherwise. With a pang I realise that I may be too guilty of not thinking about the past. I've even been proud of it. |
| 13308 | It's no good winning lots of fights, if you are then conquered by your own temper [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: What's the use of overcoming opponent after opponent in the wrestling or boxing rings if you can be overcome by your temper? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088) | |
| A reaction: He has such a nice way of presenting what might be traditional and commonplace ideas. If you see life as a battle, then you should think very carefully about who the opponents are - because they may be hiding within. |
| 13312 | Excessive curiosity is a form of intemperance [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088) | |
| A reaction: This comes as a bit of a surprise, given the high value that philosophers place on knowledge. I'm reminded of Auberon Waugh's criticism of the Scots as a 'wildly over-educated people'. I think the problem is what you could have been doing instead. |
| 13315 | To govern used to mean to serve, not to rule; rulers did not test their powers over those who bestowed it [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: In the Golden Age, to govern was to serve, not to rule. No one used to try out the extent of his power over those to whom he owed that power in the first place. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 090) | |
| A reaction: I spent my professional career trying to persuade people that management should be a subjection to the managed. Wake up! The second half of this idea is the interesting bit - the temptation to just 'try out' your powers gets to them all. |
| 13322 | Both teachers and pupils should aim at one thing - the improvement of the pupil [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: A person teaching and a person learning should have the same end in view: the improvement of the latter. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 108) | |
| A reaction: [He cites a philospher called Attalus for this remark] This is worthy to be up in the hall of every educational institution in the world, and especially in the staff rooms. |
| 13290 | One joy of learning is making teaching possible [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 006) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't quite distinguish between bad learning and good learning, but I take a commitment to wanting to teach what you know as an essential part of wanting to know. |
| 13298 | Suicide may be appropriate even when it is not urgent, if there are few reasons against it [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: There are many occasions on which a man should leave life not only bravely but for reasons which are not as pressing as they might be - the reasons which restrain us being not so pressing either. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 077) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting and startling claim from the great champion of suicide, who nobly and memorably committed suicide himself. But we all dread a loved one miscalculating Seneca's dialectic, and dying when living would have been better. |
| 13319 | If we control our own death, no one has power over us [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: No one has power over us when death is in our own power. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 091) | |
| A reaction: A classic slogan for the stoic view of suicide, an idea that crops up in Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'. He doesn't seem to have understood that they can take away your shoelaces. |
| 13320 | Sometimes we have a duty not to commit suicide, for those we love [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: There are times when, however pressing one's reasons to the contrary, one's dying breath must be held back as it is passing one's lips, even if this is torture, simply out of consideration for one's dear ones. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 104) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, a highly significant counterbalance to his normal acceptance of suicide. I wish anyone who is planning suicide would heed it. They have no idea how much suffering will usually result from their action. |
| 5081 | There could be movement within one thing, as there is within water [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Why does it follow from there being only one thing that it is unmoving, since, for example, water moves internally while remaining one? | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 186a16 | |
| A reaction: One suspects that Parmenides wasn't used to critical questions like this, and would have sharpened up his theory if it had been subjected to criticism. How big was the One? Maybe Aristotle is the real father of philosophy. |
| 1509 | The one can't be divisible, because if it was it could be infinitely divided down to nothing [Parmenides, by Simplicius] |
| Full Idea: Since the one is everywhere alike, then if it is divisible, it will be equally divisible everywhere….so let it be divided everywhere. It is obvious that nothing will remain and the whole will vanish, and so (if it is compound) it is composed of nothing. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.139.5- | |
| A reaction: he is quoting Porphyry |
| 20900 | Defenders of the One say motion needs the void - but that is not part of Being [Parmenides, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Defenders of the One say that there could not be motion without a void, and that void is what does not exist, and that nothing that is not belongs to being. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325a26 | |
| A reaction: This is why motion is an illusion, a view also supported by the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea. Aristotle goes on to give Democritus's response to this idea. Parmenides was contemplating 'void', before Democritus got to it. |
| 226 | The one is without any kind of motion [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: The one is without any kind of motion. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Parmenides 139a |
| 1505 | Reason sees reality as one, the senses see it as many [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Since he is forced to be guided by appearances, he assumes that the one exists from the viewpoint of reason, but that a plurality exists from the viewpoint of the sense, and so he posits two principles and causes - hot and cold. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A24) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 986b27- | |
| A reaction: A profound thought. Empiricists emphasies experience, and end up with fragmented reality. Reason explains experience, and in the process sees the world as unities (like objects), though a single unity is going too far. |
| 453 | Reality is symmetrical and balanced, like a sphere, with no reason to be greater one way rather than another [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Since there is a spatial limit, it is complete on every side, like the mass of a well-rounded sphere, equally balanced from its centre in every direction; for it is not bound to be at all either greater or less in this direction or that. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 555 | People who say that the cosmos is one forget that they must explain movement [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Those who assert that the universe is one and a single nature, when they try to give the causes of generation and destruction, miss out the cause of movement. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 988b |
| 1792 | He taught that there are two elements, fire the maker, and earth the matter [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He taught that there were two elements, fire and earth; and that one of them occupies the place of the maker, the other that of the matter. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Pa.2 |
| 5115 | It is feeble-minded to look for explanations of everything being at rest [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: For people to ignore the evidence of their senses and look for an explanation for everything being at rest is feeble-minded. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 253a32 | |
| A reaction: Not exactly an argument, but an interestingly robust assertion of commonsense against dodgy arguments. Aristotle is not exactly an empiricist, but he is on that side of the fence. |
| 13217 | The void can't exist, and without the void there can't be movement or separation [Parmenides, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers thought what is must be one and immovable. The void, they say, is not: but unless there is a void what is cannot be moved, nor can it be many, since there is nothing to keep things apart. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325a06 | |
| A reaction: Somehow this doesn't seem very persuasive any more! I suppose we would distinguish various degrees of void, and assert the existence of sufficient void to allow movement and separation. We must surely agree that total nothingness doesn't exist. |
| 13311 | Does time exist on its own? Did anything precede it? Did it pre-exist the cosmos? [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Look how many questions there are on time. Does it have an existence of its own? Does anything exist prior to time, independently of it? Did it begin with the universe, or did it exist even before then? | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that the questions have shifted or become any clearer after two thousand years, despite Einstein and co. Note that discussions of time were not initiated by Augustine. |
| 22918 | What could have triggered the beginning [of time and being]? [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: What need would have aroused it later or sooner, starting from nothing to come into being? | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 02 'Everything' | |
| A reaction: [Barnes 1982:178] This remains an excellent question. The last I heard was a 'quantum fluctuation', but that seems to be an event, which therefore needs time. |
| 1794 | He was the first to discover the identity of the Morning and Evening Stars [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He appears to have been the first to discover that Hesperus and Lucifer were the same star. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Pa.3 | |
| A reaction: This is the famous example used by Frege to discuss reference and meaning. |
| 1791 | He was the first person to say the earth is spherical [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He was the first person who asserted that the earth was of a spherical form. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Pa.2 |