14 ideas
| 16123 | Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The rule is that when one perceives first the community between the members of a group of many things, one should not desist until one sees in it all those differences that are located in classes. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285b) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to recommend the opposite as well - see community even when there appears to be nothing but differences. I take this to be analysis, just as much as modern linguistic approaches are. Analyse the world, not language. |
| 16125 | To reveal a nature, divide down, and strip away what it has in common with other things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Let's take the kind posited and cut it in two, .then follow the righthand part of what we've cut, and hold onto things that the sophist is associated with until we strip away everything he has in common with other things, then display his peculiar nature. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 264e) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be close to Aristotle's account of definition, when he is trying to get at what-it-is-to-be some thing. But if you strip away everything the definiendum has in common with other things, will anything remain? |
| 16124 | No one wants to define 'weaving' just for the sake of weaving [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I don't suppose that anyone with any sense would want to hunt down the definition of 'weaving' for the sake of weaving itself. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285d) | |
| A reaction: The point seems to be that the definition brings out the connections between weaving and other activities and objects, thus enlarging our understanding. |
| 15538 | Semantic indecision explains vagueness (if we have precisifications to be undecided about) [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Semantic indecision will suffice to explain the phenomenon of vagueness. [note] Provided that there exist the many precisifications for us to be undecided between. If you deny this, you will indeed have need of vague objects. | |
| From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'Two solutions') | |
| A reaction: [He mentions Van Inwagen 1990:213-83] There seem to be three solutions to vague objects: that they really are vague, that they are precise but we can't know precisely, or Lewis's view. I like Lewis's view. Do animals have any problem with vagueness? |
| 15537 | If cats are vague, we deny that the many cats are one, or deny that the one cat is many [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To deny that there are many cats on the mat (because removal of a few hairs seems to produce a new one), we must either deny that the many are cats, or else deny that the cats are many. ...I think both alternatives lead to successful solutions. | |
| From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'The paradox') | |
| A reaction: He credits the problem to Geach (and Tibbles), and says it is the same as Unger's 'problem of the many' (Idea 15536). |
| 15536 | We have one cloud, but many possible boundaries and aggregates for it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Many surfaces are equally good candidates to be boundaries of a cloud; therefore many aggregates of droplets are equally good candidates to be the cloud. How is it that we have just one cloud? And yet we do. This is Unger's (1980) 'problem of the many'. | |
| From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'The problem') | |
| A reaction: This is the problem of vague objects, as opposed to the problem of vague predicates, or the problem of vague truths, or the problem of vague prepositions (like 'towards'). |
| 5961 | The soul gets its goodness from god, and its evil from previous existence. [Plato] |
| Full Idea: From its composer the soul possesses all beautiful things, but from its former condition, everything that proves to be harsh and unjust in heaven. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 273b) | |
| A reaction: A neat move to explain the origins of evil (or rather, to shift the problem of evil to a long long way from here). This view presumably traces back to the views of Empedocles on good and evil. Can the soul acquire evil in its current existence? |
| 6386 | In no important way can psychology be reduced to the physical sciences [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: There is no important sense in which psychology can be reduced to the physical sciences. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Material Mind [1973], p.259) | |
| A reaction: In no 'important' way can the beauty of the Lake District be reduced to geology - but it is geology. 'Important' to whom? To a metaphysician, I would say psychology does reduce to physics, and that is important, but it is not important to a psychologist. |
| 283 | The question of whether or not to persuade comes before the science of persuasion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The science of whether one must persuade or not must rule over the science capable of persuading. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 304c) | |
| A reaction: Plato probably thinks that reason has to be top of the pyramid, but there is always the Nietzschean/romantic question of why we should place such a value on what is rational. |
| 15539 | Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The cardinal principle of pragmatics is that the right way to take what is said, if at all possible, is the way that makes sense of the message. | |
| From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'A better solution') | |
| A reaction: Thus when someone misuses a word, suggesting nonsense, we gloss over it, often without even mentioning it, because the underlying sense is obvious. A good argument for the existence of propositions. Lewis doesn't mention truth. |
| 282 | Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The bodiless things, being the most beautiful and the greatest, are only shown with clarity by speech and nothing else. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 286a) | |
| A reaction: Unfortunately this will be true of warped and ugly ideas as well. |
| 281 | The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is by preserving the mean that arts produce everything that is good and beautiful. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 284b) |
| 22559 | Democracy is the worst of good constitutions, but the best of bad constitutions [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato judged that when the constitution is decent, democracy is the worst of them, but when they are bad it is the best. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 302e) by Aristotle - Politics 1289b07 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle denies that a good oligarchy is superior. What of technocracy? The challenge is to set up institutions which ensure the health of the democracy. The big modern problem is populists who lie. |
| 279 | Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is fitting for only the most divine things of all to be always the same and in the same state and in the same respects, and the nature of body is not of this ordering. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 269b) |