Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'Against the Mathematicians' and 'De Re Aedificatoria'

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4 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / b. Basic beliefs

20795	Some things are their own criterion, such as straightness, a set of scales, or light [Sext.Empiricus]
	Full Idea: Dogmatists say something can be its own criterion. The straight is the standard of itself, and a set of scales establishes the equality of other things and of itself, and light seems to reveal not just other things but also itself.
	From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Mathematicians [c.180], 442)
	A reaction: Each of these may be a bit dubious, but deserves careful discussion.

13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 6. Scepticism Critique

20794	How can sceptics show there is no criterion? Weak without, contradiction with [Sext.Empiricus]
	Full Idea: The dogmatists ask how the sceptic can show there is no criterion. If without a criterion, he is untrustworthy; with a criterion he is turned upside down. He says there is no criterion, but accepts a criterion to establish this.
	From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Mathematicians [c.180], 440)
	A reaction: This is also the classic difficulty for foundationalist views of knowledge. Is the foundation justified, or not?

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 4. Beauty

18555	The beautiful is that from which nothing can be subtracted and to which nothing can be added [Alberti]
	Full Idea: The beautiful is that from which nothing can be taken away and to which nothing can be added but for the worse.
	From: Leon Battista Alberti (De Re Aedificatoria [1485]), quoted by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 9
	A reaction: Scruton rejects this Platonic tradition of beauty as organic wholeness, because you can't say how it would be 'worse' without invoking beauty, which makes it circular. Scruton appears to be correct.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention

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.