108 ideas
| 354 | Wisdom makes virtue and true goodness possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is wisdom that makes possible courage and self-control and integrity or, in a word, true goodness. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 069b) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle also says that prudence (phronesis) makes virtue possible. |
| 370 | Philosophy is a purification of the soul ready for the afterlife [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Souls which have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy will live after death without bodies. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 114b) | |
| A reaction: Purifying it of what? Error, or desire, or narrow-mindedness, or the physical? |
| 2196 | The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) | |
| A reaction: No wonder some people dislike philosophy. There is no question that the human race is often ludicrously over-confident about its attempts to understand, and a careful examination of the situation tends to undermine such confidence. |
| 2187 | If we suspect that a philosophical term is meaningless, we should ask what impression it derives from [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we entertain any suspicion that a philosophical term is without any meaning or idea, we need but enquire "from what impression is that supposed idea derived?" | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.17) |
| 2200 | All experimental conclusions assume that the future will be like the past [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 350 | In investigation the body leads us astray, but the soul gets a clear view of the facts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When philosophers investigate with the help of the body they are led astray, but through reflection the soul gets a clear view of the facts. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 065c) |
| 362 | The greatest misfortune for a person is to develop a dislike for argument [Plato] |
| Full Idea: No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than developing a dislike for argument. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 089d) |
| 4636 | All reasoning concerning matters of fact is based on analogy (with similar results of similar causes) [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are founded on a species of analogy, which leads us to expect from any cause the same events, which we have observed to result from similar causes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], §82) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Analogy notoriously becomes problematical when you have only one case (or a few) to go on, as when inferring other minds, or God's existence from natural design. |
| 8923 | Numbers are identified by their main properties and relations, involving the successor function [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The mathematically significant properties and relations of natural numbers arise from the successor function that orders them; the natural numbers are identified simply as the objects that answer to this basic function. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §1) | |
| A reaction: So Julius Caesar would be a number if he was the successor of Pompey the Great? I would have thought that counting should be mentioned - cardinality as well as ordinality. Presumably Peano's Axioms are being referred to. |
| 13155 | If you add one to one, which one becomes two, or do they both become two? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I cannot convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become two by the addition of the one to the other, ...or that when you divide one, the cause of becoming two is now the division. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |
| A reaction: Lovely questions, all leading to the conclusion that two consists of partaking in duality, to which you can come by several different routes. |
| 8926 | For mathematical objects to be positions, positions themselves must exist first [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The identification of mathematical objects with positions in structures rests upon the prior credibility of the thesis that positions are objects in their own right. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds devastating, but something has to get the whole thing off the ground. This is why Resnik's word 'patterns' is so appealing. Patterns stare you in the face, and they don't change if all the objects making it up are replaced by others. |
| 2197 | Reason assists experience in discovering laws, and in measuring their application [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Abstract reasonings are employed, either to assist experience in the discovery of natural laws, or to determine their influence in particular instances, where it depends upon any precise degree of distance or quantity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.27) |
| 7700 | We can't think about the abstract idea of triangles, but only of particular triangles [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Let any man try to conceive a triangle in general, which is neither Isoceles nor Scalenum, nor has any particular length or proportion of sides; and he will perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.122) | |
| A reaction: I think there is a basic error in this. I admit that I can only imagine a particular triangle, but it doesn't follow that I am thinking about one triangle. Ontology/epistemology confusion. I picture a shape while believing the shape to be irrelevant. |
| 21347 | If Simmias is taller than Socrates, that isn't a feature that is just in Simmias [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When you say Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, so you mean there is in Simmias both tallness and shortness? - I do. ...But surely he is not taller than Socrates because he is Simmias but because of the tallness he happens to have? | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102b-c) | |
| A reaction: He adds that both people must be cited. This appears to be what we now call a rejection relative height as an 'internal' relation, which is it would presumably be if it was a feature of one or of both men. |
| 13602 | We cannot form an idea of a 'power', and the word is without meaning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We can have no idea of connexion or power at all, and these words are absolutely without any meaning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.58) | |
| A reaction: I would say that this ignores a phenomenon of which Hume is well aware, which is the power of our own minds to generate thoughts and actions. Hume seems to be employing a verificationist theory of meaning |
| 360 | We must have a prior knowledge of equality, if we see 'equal' things and realise they fall short of it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We must have some previous knowledge of equality, before the time when we saw equal things, but realised that they fell short of it. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 075a) |
| 1 | There is only one source for all beauty [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If anything is beautiful other than beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason but because it participates in that beautiful. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 100c) | |
| A reaction: The Greek word will be 'kalon' (beautiful, fine, noble). Like Aristotle, I find it baffling that such diversity could have a single source. Beautiful things have diverse aims. |
| 368 | Other things are named after the Forms because they participate in them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they participate in the forms. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102a) |
| 16516 | The ship which Theseus took to Crete is now sent to Delos crowned with flowers [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The day before the trial the prow of the ship that the Athenians send to Delos had been crowned with garlands. - Which ship is that? - It is the ship in which, the Athenians say, Theseus once sailed to Crete, taking the victims. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 058a) | |
| A reaction: Not philosophical, but this is the Ship of Theseus whose subsequent identity, Plutarch tells us, became a matter of dispute. |
| 2216 | We transfer the frequency of past observations to our future predictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where different effects have been found to follow from causes, which are to appearance exactly similar, all these various effects must occur to the mind in the same proportion in transferring the past to the future. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.47) |
| 2215 | There is no such thing as chance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as chance in the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.46) |
| 2209 | Belief is stronger, clearer and steadier than imagination [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.40) |
| 2207 | Belief can't be a concept plus an idea, or we could add the idea to fictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: What is the difference between fiction and belief? It can't be a peculiar idea annexed to a conception which commands our assent, and is wanting to fiction, for then the mind could voluntarily annex this idea to any fiction, and believe what it pleases. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2208 | Belief is just a particular feeling attached to ideas of objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When an object is present to memory or senses, custom carries the imagination to that object which is usually conjoined with it. This carries a feeling different from the loose reveries of fantasy, and in this consists the whole nature of belief. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2213 | Beliefs are built up by resemblance, contiguity and causation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief, where it reaches beyond the memory or senses, arises from resemblance, contiguity or causation, with the same transition of thought and vivacity of conception. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.44) |
| 3661 | 'Natural beliefs' are unavoidable, whatever our judgements [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume has a doctrine of "natural belief", about the sorts of things we can't help believing, in 'common' or everyday life, irrespective of our philosophical conclusions. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 357 | People are obviously recollecting when they react to a geometrical diagram [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The way in which people react to a geometrical diagram or anything like that is unmistakable proof of the theory of recollection. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 073a) |
| 359 | If we feel the inadequacy of a resemblance, we must recollect the original [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If someone sees a resemblance, but feels that it falls far short of the original, they must therefore have a recollection of the original. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 074e) |
| 9343 | To achieve pure knowledge, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things with the soul [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We are convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the original ideal which motivates the devotion to a priori knowledge - that it will lead to a 'pure' knowledge, which in Plato's case will be eternal and necessary knowledge, like taking lessons from the gods. Wrong. |
| 2191 | Relations of ideas are known by thought, independently from the world [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Relations of Ideas are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 2239 | If secondary qualities (e.g. hardness) are in the mind, so are primary qualities like extension [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is agreed that all sensible qualities of objects, such as hard or hot, are secondary, and exist in the mind and not in objects; but then this also follows for the primary qualities of extension and solidity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.122) | |
| A reaction: he mentions Berkeley |
| 2237 | It never occurs to people that they only experience representations, not the real objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Men instinctively suppose the very images presented by the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one is nothing but representations of the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2192 | All reasoning about facts is causal; nothing else goes beyond memory and senses [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond of our memory and senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.22) |
| 2184 | All ideas are copies of impressions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) |
| 23631 | Hume is loose when he says perceptions of different strength are different species [Reid on Hume] |
| Full Idea: When Hume divides all perceptions into two classes or species, distinguished by their degrees of force and vivacity, this is loose and unphilosophical. To differ in species is one thing, to differ in degree is another. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary 1 | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's 'impressions' and 'ideas'. As usual with Reid, this is a very astute criticism. Reid is a direct realist, so his solution is to view ideas as weakened impressions. If impressions are strong ideas, you get idealism (which is bad!). |
| 2182 | Impressions are our livelier perceptions, Ideas the less lively ones [Hume] |
| Full Idea: 'Impressions' are our more lively perceptions, when we hear, see, feel, love, hate, desire or will. 'Ideas' are less lively perceptions, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) |
| 2190 | All objects of enquiry are Relations of Ideas, or Matters of Fact [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 2246 | If books don't relate ideas or explain facts, commit them to the flames [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we take in hand any volume of divinity or metaphysics, ask 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Or experimental reason on matters of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 2189 | All ideas are connected by Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: To me, there appear to be only three principles of connection between ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], III.19) |
| 2186 | We cannot form the idea of something we haven't experienced [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. ….A Laplander or Negro has no notion of the relish of wine. ….A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.15) |
| 2702 | Only madmen dispute the authority of experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: None but a fool or a madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.31) |
| 2217 | When definitions are pushed to the limit, only experience can make them precise [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas and still find some ambiguity and obscurity, how can we render them altogether precise and determinate? Produce the impressions or original sentiments from which the ideas were copied. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.49) |
| 2205 | You couldn't reason at all if you lacked experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: An unexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were he absolutely unexperienced. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36 n.1) |
| 2194 | How could Adam predict he would drown in water or burn in fire? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Adam, though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water, that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 2183 | We can only invent a golden mountain by combining experiences [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting or diminishing the materials afforded us by the sense or experience. For example, a golden mountain or a virtuous horse come from joining ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) | |
| A reaction: The example of the Golden Mountain comes from Aguinas Quodlibeta 8.2.1. The original idea is in Sextus Empiricus. |
| 23421 | If a person had a gap in their experience of blue shades, they could imaginatively fill it in [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Suppose a person to be perfectly acquainted with all colours, except one particular shade of blue. It must be possible for him to raise up from his own imagination the idea of that particular shade, though never conveyed to him by the senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.16) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He dismisses this as 'so singular it is scarcely worth observing', but it is crucial. It isn't 'singular'. We do it all the time, by extrapolating from experiences and interpolating between them. Thus we extend knowledge beyond experience. |
| 3902 | Hume mistakenly lumps sensations and perceptions together as 'impressions' [Scruton on Hume] |
| Full Idea: The greatest weakness in Hume's philosophy is his use of the term 'impression' to refer to both sensations and perceptions. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 24 |
| 2206 | Reasons for belief must eventually terminate in experience, or they are without foundation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If I ask why you believe some fact, you must tell me a reason, which will be some other fact, connected with it. But this process must terminate in a fact which is present to your memory or senses; or you must allow that the belief is without foundation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.37) | |
| A reaction: A classic quotation of empirical foundationalism. The rival view would be that the process does not terminate at all, but nevertheless builds up a persuasive picture which is foundational. |
| 2235 | There is no certain supreme principle, or infallible rule of inference [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no original supreme principle that is self-evident and convincing; nor, if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by those very faculties of which sceptics are supposed to be already diffident. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.116) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be the chief exponent of empirical foundationalism attacking rational foundationalism. The problem of 'advancing beyond' basic beliefs is also a problem for Hume's position. |
| 10328 | We think testimony matches reality because of experience, not some a priori connection [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.i.89) | |
| A reaction: Well he would say that, wouldn't he? If there is no connection in testimony, presumably there can be no a priori connection with private experience, but there is a danger of never getting started, and ending in anti-realism. |
| 2230 | Good testimony needs education, integrity, motive and agreement [Hume, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Reliable testimony needs a good number of educated people, all of undoubted integrity, who have a lot to lose if they are caught lying, reporting very public events. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.II.92) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice checklist for flying saucer sightings etc: education, integrity, lying risky, very public. If any of those fail, it comes down to likelihood (apply Bayes?) and character assessment. |
| 2238 | Reason can never show that experiences are connected to external objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove that perceptions are connected with any external objects. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.121) |
| 2242 | Mitigated scepticism draws attention to the limitations of human reason, and encourages modesty [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A mitigated scepticism … can make dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding, and inspire them with more modesty and reserve. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.129) |
| 2243 | Mitigated scepticism sensibly confines our enquiries to the narrow capacity of human understanding [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Mitigated scepticism is an advantage to mankind, as it limits our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.130) |
| 2236 | Examples of illusion only show that sense experience needs correction by reason [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Trite sceptical examples, such as the oar bent in water, or double images when the eye is pressed, are only sufficient to prove that senses alone are not dependable, but we must correct their evidence with reason. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2240 | It is a very extravagant aim of the sceptics to destroy reason and argument by means of reason and argument [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It may seem a very extravagant attempt of the sceptics to destroy reason by argument and ratiocination; yet is this the grand scope of all their enquiries and disputes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.124) |
| 2241 | The main objection to scepticism is that no good can come of it [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism is that no durable good can ever result from it. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.128) |
| 2198 | We assume similar secret powers behind similar experiences, such as the nourishment of bread [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow from them. …Thus, we expect bread to nourish us, from previous experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) |
| 2201 | Induction can't prove that the future will be like the past, since induction assumes this [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that any arguments from experience can prove the resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of this resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.32) |
| 2203 | If we infer causes from repetition, this explains why we infer from a thousand objects what we couldn't infer from one [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If after the constant conjunction of two objects (e.g. heat and flame) we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other,this explains why we can draw an inference from a thousand objects which we couldn't draw from one. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's best statement of the problem of the difficulty of demonstration the logic of induction. |
| 2204 | All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) |
| 2199 | Reason cannot show why reliable past experience should extend to future times and remote places [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The main question on which I would insist is why reliable past experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for ought we know, may be only in appearance similar. …No reasoning can show this. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 2202 | Fools, children and animals all learn from experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants - nay infants, nay even brute beasts - improve by experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.33) |
| 6350 | Premises can support an argument without entailing it [Pollock/Cruz on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Contrary to what Hume supposed, it must be possible for the premises of an argument to support a conclusion without logically entailing it. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extremely important point, made with nice clarity. It is why people who are good at logic are not necessarily good at philosophy. The latter is about thinking rationally, not following the laws of deduction. |
| 3598 | Hume just shows induction isn't deduction [Williams,M on Hume] |
| Full Idea: All that Hume has really shown with his argument is that induction is not deduction. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch.18 |
| 15859 | To investigate the causes of things, study what is best for them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. Then it befitted a man to investigate only ...what is best. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |
| A reaction: A reversal of the modern idea of 'best explanation'. Socrates is citing Anaxagoras's proposal to understand things by interpreting the workings of a supreme Mind. It is the religious version of best explanation. |
| 13154 | Do we think and experience with blood, air or fire, or could it be our brain? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is it with the blood that we think, or with the air or the fire that is in us? Or is it none of these, but the brain that supplies our senses of hearing and sight and smell. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097a) | |
| A reaction: In retrospect it seems surprising that such clever people hadn't worked this one out, given the evidence of anatomy, in animals and people, and given brain injuries. By the time of Galen they appear to have got the answer. |
| 2210 | A picture of a friend strengthens our idea of him, by resemblance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Upon the appearance of the picture of an absent friend, our idea of him is evidently enlivened by the resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) |
| 17712 | General ideas are the connection by resemblance to some particular [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], I.VII.17), quoted by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 08.2 | |
| A reaction: This is close to Berkeley's idea that we can only grasp particulars. Personally I think the idea of (psychological) abstraction is unavoidable. Irrelevant features of particulars need to ignored. |
| 8544 | Hume does not distinguish real resemblances among degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume regarded the notion of resemblance as unproblematic, ..but any two objects share infinitely many Cambridge (whimsical relational) properties, and resemble in infinite ways. He needs real resemblance, which needs degrees of resemblance. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causality and Properties §2 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] See Idea 191. We forgive Hume, because he is a pioneer, but this is obviously right. Draw a line between 'real' resemblances and rest will be tricky, and bad news for regularity accounts of laws and causation. |
| 2211 | When I am close to (contiguous with) home, I feel its presence more nearly [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When I am a few miles from home, whatever relates to it touches me more nearly than when I am two hundred leagues distance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.42) |
| 2212 | An object made by a saint is the best way to produce thoughts of him [Hume] |
| Full Idea: One of the best reliques which a devotee could procure would be the handiwork of a saint, because they were once at his disposal, and were moved and affected by him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.43) |
| 2214 | Our awareness of patterns of causation is too important to be left to slow and uncertain reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Our inference of like effects from like causes is so essential to the subsistence of human creatures that it is unlikely to be trusted to the fallacious deductions of reasoning, which are slow, develop late, and are liable to error. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.45) |
| 364 | One soul can't be more or less of a soul than another [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is one soul, even minutely, more or less of a soul than another? Not in the least. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 093b) | |
| A reaction: This idea is attractive because unconsciousness and death seem to be abrupt procedures, and so appear to be all-or-nothing, but I would personally view extreme Alzheimer's as an erasing of the soul, though a minimum level of it seems all-or-nothing. |
| 2222 | The doctrine of free will arises from a false sensation we have of freedom in many actions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for from a false sensation or seeming experience which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference, in many of our actions. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.72) |
| 2223 | Liberty is merely acting according to the will, which anyone can do if they are not in chains [Hume] |
| Full Idea: By liberty we can only mean a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will, …which is universally allowed to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.73) |
| 3655 | Hume makes determinism less rigid by removing the necessity from causation [Trusted on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's account of the causal relation makes determinism less rigid because there is no longer a logical necessity in the succession of events. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.II.75) by Jennifer Trusted - Free Will and Responsibility Ch.4 |
| 2220 | Only experience teaches us about our wills [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.52) | |
| A reaction: I can, of course, produce inductive generalisations about what my will can achieve, based on some limited experiences. "I know I can master that". Hobbes (and others) say we have no experience of a 'will'. Hume should be more sceptical! |
| 2224 | Praise and blame can only be given if an action proceeds from a person's character and disposition [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where actions proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor his infamy, if evil. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) |
| 2225 | If you deny all necessity and causation, then our character is not responsible for our crime [Hume] |
| Full Idea: According to the principle which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a man is pure and unattainted after having committed the most horrid of crimes, since his actions are not derived from his character. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: The idea that responsibility involves actions which are 'derived from his character' strikes me as good. Once you give up free will, it is almost the only sensible way to go. |
| 2226 | Repentance gets rid of guilt, which shows that responsibility arose from the criminal principles in the mind [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Repentance and reformation can wipe off every crime, but that is because criminal acts prove criminal principles in the mind, so alteration of these principles removes that proof, and the acts cease to be criminal. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: A bit overstated, because a heinous crime will always taint our impression of someone's character. The person may cease to be criminal, but surely not the original acts? |
| 361 | It is a mistake to think that the most violent pleasure or pain is therefore the truest reality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When anyone's soul feels a keen pleasure or pain it cannot help supposing that whatever causes the most violent emotion is the plainest and truest reality - which it is not. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 084c) | |
| A reaction: Do people think that? Most people distinguish subjective from objective. Wounded soldiers are also aware of victory or defeat. |
| 351 | War aims at the acquisition of wealth, because we are enslaved to the body [Plato] |
| Full Idea: All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth, and we want this because of the body, to which we are slave. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) |
| 2233 | No government has ever suffered by being too tolerant of philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A state ought to tolerate every principle of philosophy, nor is there any instance that a government has suffered in its political interests by such indulgence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.114) |
| 2195 | We can discover some laws of nature, but never its ultimate principles and causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) |
| 2245 | A priori it looks as if a cause could have absolutely any effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we just reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 4772 | If a singular effect is studied, its cause can only be inferred from the types of events involved [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Only when two species of objects are constantly conjoined can we infer one from the other; were an entirely singular effect presented, which could not be comprehended under a species, I do not see that we could form any conjecture concerning its cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: A key issue in causation. Note that Hume is willing to discuss causation in a freakishly unique happening, but only if he can spot a 'type' in the each of the events. I don't like it, but the man has a good point… |
| 13156 | Fancy being unable to distinguish a cause from its necessary background conditions! [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing, and the condition without which it could not be a cause. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 099c) | |
| A reaction: Not as simple as he thinks. It seems fairly easy to construct a case where the immediately impacting event remains constant, and the background condition is changed. Even worse when negligence is held to be the cause. |
| 8341 | Hume never even suggests that there is no such thing as causation [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: At no point (in Sect VII of 'Enquiries') does Hume even hint at the thesis that there is (or even might be) no such thing as causation. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion 21.3 | |
| A reaction: If, as some people think, Hume is a phenomenalist, then we wouldn't expect him to actually deny the existence of such things. The standard position (cf. Ayer on religion) is that such things are not even worth mentioning. |
| 8344 | At first Hume said qualities are the causal entities, but later he said events [Hume, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: In the Enquiries Hume clearly suggests that causes and effects are entities that can be named or described by singular terms; probably events, since one can follow another; but in the Treatise it seems to be the quality or circumstance which is the cause. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Donald Davidson - Causal Relations §1 | |
| A reaction: A quality would have to have an associated power if it was going to trigger an effect. But then so would an event (unless inertia carried across?). Qualities are more distinct. Events can last for years. |
| 3662 | Hume says we can only know constant conjunctions, not that that's what causation IS [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's regularity theory of causation is only a theory about causation so far as we can know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects, not about causation as it is in the objects. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 4771 | In both of Hume's definitions, causation is extrinsic to the sequence of events [Psillos on Hume] |
| Full Idea: What needs to be stressed is that in both of Hume's definitions of cause, an individual sequence of events is deemed causal only because something extrinsic to the sequence occurs (be it conjunctions, or a mental link). | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §1.9 | |
| A reaction: Simple but important. Hume's basic claim is that there is no 'causation' in events, apart from the events themselves. Hence no necessity, on top of the apparent contingency. |
| 5194 | Hume's definition of cause as constantly joined thoughts can't cover undiscovered laws [Ayer on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's second definition of cause (one object always 'conveys the thought' of another) implies that it is inconceivable that there should be causal laws which have never yet been thought of, and this is not so. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a good criticism of Hume, but also a bit of a problem for a strong empiricist like Ayer. There may also be causal laws which we cannot discover, but logical positivism will not allow me to speculate about that. |
| 2221 | A cause is either similar events following one another, or an experience always suggesting a second experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A cause is an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second, or, an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) |
| 2234 | It is only when two species of thing are constantly conjoined that we can infer one from the other [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is only when two species of object are found to be constantly conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: what is a species? |
| 2193 | No causes can be known a priori, but only from experience of constant conjunctions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Without exception, knowledge of cause and effect is not attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 8422 | Cause is where if the first object had not been, the second had not existed [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We may define a cause to be where .....if the first object had not been, the second never had existed. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.60) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's second definition, cited by Lewis as the ancestor of his counterfactual theory. It feels all wrong to me. 'If there had been no window, there would have been no window-breakage'? |
| 2218 | In observing causes we can never observe any necessary connections or binding qualities [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we look towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able to discover any power or necessary connexion, any quality which binds the effect to the cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.50) |
| 15249 | Hume never shows how a strong habit could generate the concept of necessity [Harré/Madden on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's contemporary critics are correct. He never really shows how it is possible for a habit, however strong it may be, to generate the concept of necessity. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 3.II | |
| A reaction: This is a powerful objection which hadn't occurred to me. Presumably eighteenth century critics are referred to? I suppose if a necessity is what 'cannot be otherwise', a very deeply ingrained habit might seem that way - but in me, not in the world. |
| 8339 | Hume's regularity theory of causation is epistemological; he believed in some sort of natural necessity [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's Regularity theory of causation is about causation as we know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects. As far as causation as it is in the objects is concerned, Hume firmly believed in some sort of natural necessity or causal power. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C | |
| A reaction: Strawson's controversial reinterpretation of Hume. We are confusing his epistemology with his ontology. Hume is simply being sceptical about our ability to bridge the gap to achieve understanding of natural necessity. A very different view of Hume. |
| 369 | If the Earth is spherical and in the centre, it is kept in place by universal symmetry, not by force [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the earth is spherical and in the middle of the heavens, it needs neither air nor force to keep it from falling. The uniformity of heaven and equilibrium of earth are sufficient support. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 108e) |
| 2244 | It can never be a logical contradiction to assert the non-existence of something thought to exist [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Whatever 'is' may 'not be'. No negation of a fact can involve a contradiction. The non-existence of any being, without exception, is as clear and distinct an idea as its existence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 2232 | You can't infer the cause to be any greater than its effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we infer a cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other. …a body of ten ounces raised in a scale proves the counterbalance exceeds ten ounces, but not that it exceeds a hundred. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.105) |
| 2227 | A miracle violates laws which have been established by continuous unchanging experience, so should be ignored [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can possible be imagined. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 2228 | All experience must be against a supposed miracle, or it wouldn't be called 'a miracle' [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 2229 | To establish a miracle the falseness of the evidence must be a greater miracle than the claimed miraculous event [Hume] |
| Full Idea: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.91) |
| 2185 | The idea of an infinite, intelligent, wise and good God arises from augmenting the best qualities of our own minds [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.14) |
| 363 | Whether the soul pre-exists our body depends on whether it contains the ultimate standard of reality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The theory that our soul exists even before it enters the body surely stands or falls with the soul's possession of the ultimate standard of reality. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 092d) |