46 ideas
| 13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom [phronesis] is correctly given the name 'kalon' [beautiful], since it performs the works that we say are beautiful and welcome as such. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 416d) | |
| A reaction: 'Phronesis' in Aristotle is more like prudence, or common sense, rather than wisdom ['sophia']. 'Kalon' also means fine or noble. This translation seems fair enough, though. |
| 13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: Are good people any different from wise ones? No, they aren't. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 398b) | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates's 'intellectualism', his view that being good is entirely a matter of reason and knowledge, and not a matter of habit or emotion. Do we still accept the traditional assumption that wise people are thereby morally good? |
| 13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What would you call someone who knows how to ask and answer questions? Wouldn't you call him a dialectician? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 390c) | |
| A reaction: Asking good questions and giving good answers sound like two very different skills. I presume dialectic is the process of arriving at answers by means of asking the right questions. |
| 13776 | Truths say of what is that it is, falsehoods say of what is that it is not [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those statements that say of the things that are that they are, are true, while those that say of the things that are that they are not, are false. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385b) | |
| A reaction: It was quite a shock to discover this, because the famous Aristotle definition (Idea 586) is always quoted, and no modern writers seem to have any awareness of the Plato remark. Classical scholarship is very poor in analytic philosophy. |
| 13777 | A name is a sort of tool [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A name is a sort of tool. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 388a) | |
| A reaction: Idea 13775 gives a background for this metaphor, from earlier in the text. Wittgenstein has a famous toolkit metaphor for language. The whole of this text, 'Cratylus', is about names. |
| 13790 | A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The name-giver might have made a mistake at the beginning and then forced the other names to be consistent with it. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 436c) | |
| A reaction: Lovely. This is Gareth Evans's 'Madagascar' example. See Idea 9041. |
| 13791 | Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If things cannot be learned except from their names, how can we possibly claim that the name-givers or rule-setters have knowledge before any names had been given for them to know? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 438b) | |
| A reaction: Running through this is a hostility to philosophy of language, so I find it very congenial. We are animals who relate to the world before language takes a grip. We have full-blown knowledge of things, with no intervention of words. |
| 13789 | Anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 435d) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan, but it seems to be blatantly false. The best example is Gareth Evans's of joining in a conversation about a person ('Louis'?), and only gradually tuning in to the person to which the name refers. |
| 2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e) |
| 12747 | Monads are not extended, but have a kind of situation in extension [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Even if monads are not extended, they nonetheless have a certain kind of situation in extension. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8 | |
| A reaction: This is the kind of metaphysical mess you get into if you start from the wrong premisses (in this case, a dualism of the spiritual and the material). Later (Garber p.359) he says they are situated because they 'preside' over a mass. |
| 12748 | Only monads are substances, and bodies are collections of them [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: A monad alone is a substance; a body is substances not a substance. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704.01.21), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8 | |
| A reaction: So how many monads in a drop of urine, as Voltaire bluntly wondered. I take the Cartesian dualism (without interaction) that ran through Leibniz's career to be the source of most of his metaphysical problems. In late career it went badly wrong. |
| 13184 | The division of nature into matter makes distinct appearances, and that presupposes substances [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If there were no divisions of matter in nature, there would be no things that are different; just the mere possibility of things. It is the actual division into masses that really produces things that appear distinct, which presupposes simple substances. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704 or 1705) | |
| A reaction: This shows Leibniz to be a straightforward realist about the physical world, and certainly not an 'idealist', despite the mind-like character of monads. I take this to be an argument for reality from best explanation, which is all that's available. |
| 13188 | The only indications of reality are agreement among phenomena, and their agreement with necessities [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We don't have, nor should we hope for, any mark of reality in phenomena, but the fact that they agree with one another and with eternal truths. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1706.01.19) | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere he says that divisions in appearance imply divisions in matter. Now he adds two further arguments in favour of realism, but admits that nothing conclusive is available. Quite right. |
| 12752 | Only unities have any reality [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is no reality in anything except the reality of unities. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704.06.30), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 9 | |
| A reaction: This seems to leave indeterminate stuff like air and water with no reality, as nicely discussed by Henry Laycock. Do we just force unities on the world because that is the only way our minds can cope with it? |
| 13187 | In actual things nothing is indefinite [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: In actual things nothing is indefinite. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1706.01.19) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the germ of the controversial modern view of Williamson, that vagueness is entirely epistemic, and that the facts of nature are entirely definite. Thus there is a tallest short giraffe, which I find a bit hard to grasp. |
| 13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If we undertake to cut something and make the cut in whatever way we choose and with whatever tool we choose, we will not succeed. If we cut according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with the natural tool, we'll succeed and cut correctly. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 387a) | |
| A reaction: I take this passage to be the creed for realists about the physical world - a commitment not merely to the existence of an external world, but to the existence of facts about it, which we may or may not be able to discover. |
| 19383 | A man's distant wife dying is a real change in him [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: No one can become a widower in India because of the death of his wife in Europe unless a real change occurs in him. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], GP ii 240), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist' | |
| A reaction: This is Leibniz heroically denying so-called 'Cambridge Change'. It is hard to see how a widower is changed if he has not yet heard the bad news. But his situation in life has changed. Compare eudaimonia, which you can lose without realising it. |
| 13179 | A complete monad is a substance with primitive active and passive power [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: What I take to be the indivisible or complete monad is the substance endowed with primitive power, active and passive, like the 'I' or something similar. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20) | |
| A reaction: I love powers, so I really like this quotation. By this date even Garber thinks that he has more or less arrived at his mature view of monads. I used to think monads were mad, but I now think he is closing in on the right answer - sort of. |
| 12749 | Derivate forces are in phenomena, but primitive forces are in the internal strivings of substances [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I relegate derivative forces to the phenomena, but I think that it is clear that primitive forces can be nothing other than the internal strivings of simple substances. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1705.01), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8 | |
| A reaction: I like 'internal strivings', which sounds to me like the Will to Power (Idea 7140). There seems to be an epistemological challenge in trying to disentangle the derivative forces from the primitive ones. |
| 12722 | Thought terminates in force, rather than extension [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I believe that our thought is completed and terminated more in the notion of the dynamic [i.e. force] than in that of extension. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], G II 170), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: Presenting this as the place where 'our thought' is 'terminated' seems to place it as mainly having a role in explanation, rather than in speculative metaphysics. |
| 19379 | The law of the series, which determines future states of a substance, is what individuates it [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: That there should be a persistent law of the series, which involves the future states of that which we conceive to be the same, is exactly what I say constitutes it as the same substance. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 4 'Applying' | |
| A reaction: The 'law of the series' is a bit dubious, but it is reasonable to say that a substance is individuated by its coherent progress of change over time. Disjointed change would imply an absence of substance. The law of the series is called 'primitive force'. |
| 13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Don't you think that just as each thing has a colour or some of those other qualities we mentioned, it also has a being or essence? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 423e) | |
| A reaction: The Greek here seems to be 'ousia', which I increasingly think should be translated as 'distinct identity', rather than as 'existence' or as 'essence'. Maybe the philosophical term 'haecceity' captures it best. |
| 22628 | Substance has to exist, with no intrinsic qualities or relations [McTaggart] |
| Full Idea: Something must exist, then, and have qualities, without being itself either a quality or a relation. And this is Substance. | |
| From: J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.1 [1921], §67), quoted by R.D. Ingthorsson - A Powerful Particulars View of Causation 7.2 | |
| A reaction: Ingthorsson quotes this as 'the most extreme analytic view', which is a long way from the Aristotelian view. This is the implausible bare substrate. |
| 13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
| 13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is the being or essence of each of the things that are something private to each person, as Protagoras tells us? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385e) | |
| A reaction: This kind of drastic personal relativism about essences doesn't sound very plausible, but the idea that essences are private to each culture, or to each language, must certainly be taken seriously. |
| 13182 | Changeable accidents are modifications of unchanging essences [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Everything accidental or changeable ought to be a modification of something essential or perpetual. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704.06.30) | |
| A reaction: Clear evidence that Leibniz is very much a traditional Aristotelian essentialist, and not as modal logicians tend to characterise him, as a super-essentialist who thinks all properties are essential. They are necessary for identity, but that's different. |
| 13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soc: Suppose we made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you; would there then be two Cratyluses, or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus? Crat: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 432c) | |
| A reaction: Don't think that science fiction examples are a modern development in philosophy. Plato has just invented the Startrek transporter. The two Cratyluses are the two spheres in Max Black's famous example. |
| 13178 | Things in different locations are different because they 'express' those locations [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Things that differ in place must express their place, that is, they must express the things surrounding, and thus they must be distinguished not only by place, that is, not by an extrinsic denomination alone, as is commonly thought. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20) | |
| A reaction: This is an unusual view, which has some attractions, as it enables the relations of a thing to individuate it, while maintaining that this is a real difference in character. |
| 19411 | In nature there aren't even two identical straight lines, so no two bodies are alike [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: In nature any straight line you may take is individually different from any other straight line you may find. Accordingly, it cannot come about that two bodies are perfectly equal and alike. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz was very good at persuasive examples! It remains unclear, though, why he takes the Identity of Indiscernibles to be a necessary truth, when he seems to have only observed it from experience. This is counter to his other principles. |
| 19412 | If two bodies only seem to differ in their position, those different environments will matter [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If two bodies differ only in their position, their individual relations to the environment must be taken into account, so that more is involved in their distinguishability than just position. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20) | |
| A reaction: This seems to allow that two bodies could be intrinsically type-identical (though differing in extrinsic features), which is contrary to his normal view. I suppose a different location in the gravitational field will make an intrinsic difference. |
| 19410 | Scientific truths are supported by mutual agreement, as well as agreement with the phenomena [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Among the most powerful indications of truth belongs the fact that scientific propositions agree with one another as well as with phenomena. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1699.03.24/04.03) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the case not only with science, but with all other truths. Leibniz is particularly keen on the interconnectedness of things, so coherence justification suits him especially well. But surely all scientists embrace this idea? |
| 13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It isn't even reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things are passing on and none remain. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 440a) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates Plato's horror at Heraclitus scepticism about the stable identity of things. It leads to the essentialism of Aristotle and Leibniz, who fear that there is no knowledge if we can't pin down individual identities. Know processes? |
| 13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who named the soul thought that when the soul is present in the body, it causes it to live and gives it the power to breathe the air and be revitalized [anapsuchon]. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 399d) | |
| A reaction: I quote this to emphasis that Greek psuché is very different from the consciousness which is largely discussed in modern philosophy of mind. I find it helpful to make a real effort to grasp the Greek concept. The feeling of life within you. |
| 13183 | Primitive forces are internal strivings of substances, acting according to their internal laws [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Primitive forces can be nothing but the internal strivings [tendentia] of simple substances, striving by means of which they pass from perception to perception in accordance with a certain law of their nature. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704 or 1705) | |
| A reaction: 'Perception' sounds a bit crazy, but he usually qualifies that sort of remark by saying that it is an 'analogy' with conscious willing souls. The 'internal strivings of substances' is a nice phrase for the basic powers in nature where explanations stop. |
| 19409 | Soul represents body, but soul remains unchanged, while body continuously changes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The essence of the soul is to represent bodies. ...The soul and the idea of the body do not signify the same thing. For the soul remains one and the same, while the idea of the body perpetually changes as the body itself changes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1699.03.24/04.03) | |
| A reaction: This seems to rest on the Cartesian Ego, as the essence of mind which does not change. And yet elsewhere he describes the Ego as a mere abstraction from introspected mental life. |
| 11873 | Our notions may be formed from concepts, but concepts are formed from things [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: You assert that the notion of substance is formed from concepts, and not from things. But are not concepts themselves formed from things? | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1699.06.23), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 5.7 | |
| A reaction: A nice remark, which is true even of highly abstruse, abstract or fanciful concepts. You are still left with the question of how far away from reality you have moved when you construct things from your reality-based concepts. |
| 13186 | Universals are just abstractions by concealing some of the circumstances [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: In forming universals the soul only abstracts certain circumstances by concealing innumerable others. ..A spherical body complete in all respects is nowhere in nature; the soul forms such a notion by concealing aberrations. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704 or 1705) | |
| A reaction: This is Leibniz's affirmation of traditional 'abstraction by ignoring', which everyone seems to have believed in before Frege, and which I personally think is simply correct, even though it is deeply unfashionable and I keep it to myself. |
| 13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
| Full Idea: 'Areté' signifies lack of perplexity [euporia, ease of movement], and that the flow of a good soul is unimpeded. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 415d) | |
| A reaction: Some highly dubious etymology going on here, and throughout 'Cratylus', but it gives a nice feeling for the way Socrates and Plato saw virtue. |
| 13185 | Even if extension is impenetrable, this still offers no explanation for motion and its laws [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Even if we grant impenetrability is added to extension, nothing complete is brought about, nothing from which a reason for motion, and especially the laws of motion, can be given. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704 or 1705) | |
| A reaction: When it comes to the reasons for the so-called 'laws of nature', scientists give up, because they've only got mathematical descriptions, whereas the philosopher won't give up (even though, embarassingly, the evidence is running a bit thin). |
| 13177 | An entelechy is a law of the series of its event within some entity [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I recognize a primitive entelechy in the active force found in motion, something analogous to the soul, whose nature consists in a certain law of the same series of changes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1699.03.24) | |
| A reaction: This is his 'law-of-the-series', which is a speculative attempt to pin down the character of the active essence of things which gives rise to activity. The law of such activity is within the things themselves, as scientific essentialists claim. |
| 13093 | The only permanence in things, constituting their substance, is a law of continuity [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is permanent in things except the law itself, which involves a continuous succession ...The fact that a certain law persists ...is the very fact that constitutes the same substance. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle and Leibniz are the very clear ancestors of modern scientific essentialism. I've left out a few inconvenient bits, about containing 'the whole universe', and containing all 'future states'. For Leibniz, laws are entirely rooted in things. |
| 13096 | The force behind motion is like a soul, with its own laws of continual change [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I recognise, in the active force which exerts itself through motion, the primitive entelechy or in a word, something analogous to the soul, whose nature consists in a certain perpetual law of the same series of changes through which it runs unhindered. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1699), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 6.1.3 | |
| A reaction: This is a hugely metaphysical account of force, contrasting with Newton's largely mathematical account. He very often says that force is 'analogous' to the soul, rather than that it actually is a soul. He never quite believes that monads are real minds. |
| 13180 | Space is the order of coexisting possibles [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Extension is the order of coexisting possibles. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20) | |
| A reaction: [In his next letter he uses the word 'space' instead of 'extension'] This is a rather startling different and modal definition of space. Cf Idea 13181. |
| 13181 | Time is the order of inconsistent possibilities [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Time is the order of inconsistent possibilities. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 13180. This sounds wonderfully bold and interesting, but I can't make much sense of it. One might say it is 'an' order for such things, but 'the' order is weird. |
| 13779 | The natural offspring of a lion is called a 'lion' (but what about the offspring of a king?) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that it is right to call a lion's offspring a 'lion' and a horse's offspring a 'horse' (I'm talking about natural offspring, not some monster). ...but by the same argument any offspring of a king should be called a 'king'. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 393b) | |
| A reaction: The standard modern difficulty is whether all descendants of dinosaurs are still called 'dinosaur', which they are not. |
| 13783 | Even the gods love play [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Even the gods love play. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 406c) |