4 ideas
3534 | To be is to have causal powers [Alexander,S] |
Full Idea: To be is to have causal powers. | |
From: Samuel Alexander (works [1927], §4), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Nonreductivist troubles with ment.causation | |
A reaction: This is sometimes called Alexander's Principle. It is first found in Plato, and is popular with physicalists, but there are problem cases... A thing needs to exist in order to have causal powers. To exist is more than to be perceived. |
3398 | Epiphenomenalism makes the mind totally pointless [Alexander,S] |
Full Idea: Epiphenomenalism supposes something to exist in nature which has nothing to do and no purpose to serve. | |
From: Samuel Alexander (works [1927]), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.129 | |
A reaction: An objection, but not, I think, a strong one. The fact, for example, that sweat is shiny is the result of good evolutionary reasons, but I cannot think of any purpose which it serves. All events which are purposeful are likely to have side-effects. |
6017 | Nomos is king [Pindar] |
Full Idea: Nomos is king. | |
From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture | |
A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed. |
20486 | Only liberty, equality and sympathy can stand up to anti-social people [Kropotkin] |
Full Idea: Liberty, equality and practical human sympathy are the only effective barriers we can oppose to the anti-social instincts of certain among us. | |
From: Peter (Pyotr) Kropotkin (Law and Authority [1886], 1 'Anarchism'), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) | |
A reaction: One might state it more succinctly as 'only the social can oppose the anti-social'. The dominance in society of essentially anti-social people seems to have become a major political fact in 2017, in the UK and the USA. |