46 ideas
| 23890 | For Plato true wisdom is supernatural [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that Plato regards true wisdom as something supernatural. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.61 | |
| A reaction: Taken literally, I assume this is wrong, but we can empathise with the thought. Wisdom has the feeling of rising above the level of mere knowledge, to achieve the overview I associate with philosophy. |
| 3060 | Plato never mentions Democritus, and wished to burn his books [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Plato, who mentions nearly all the ancient philosophers, nowhere speaks of Democritus; he wished to burn all of his books, but was persuaded that it was futile. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.7.8 |
| 23891 | Two contradictories force us to find a relation which will correlate them [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: Where contradictions appear there is a correlation of contraries, which is relation. If a contradiction is imposed on the intelligence, it is forced to think of a relation to transform the contradiction into a correlation, which draws the soul higher. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.70 | |
| A reaction: A much better account of the dialectic than anything I have yet seen in Hegel. For the first time I see some sense in it. A contradiction is not a falsehood, and it must be addressed rather than side-stepped. A kink in the system, that needs ironing. |
| 18200 | Very large sets should be studied in an 'if-then' spirit [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Sets of a very high type or very high cardinality (higher than the continuum, for example), should today be investigated in an 'if-then' spirit. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Philosophy of Logic [1971], p.347), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics | |
| A reaction: Quine says the large sets should be regarded as 'uninterpreted'. |
| 18199 | Indispensability strongly supports predicative sets, and somewhat supports impredicative sets [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: We may say that indispensability is a pretty strong argument for the existence of at least predicative sets, and a pretty strong, but not as strong, argument for the existence of impredicative sets. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Philosophy of Logic [1971], p.346), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.2 |
| 8857 | We must quantify over numbers for science; but that commits us to their existence [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable for science..., therefore we should accept such quantification; but this commits us to accepting the existence of the mathematical entities in question. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Philosophy of Logic [1971], p.57), quoted by Stephen Yablo - Apriority and Existence | |
| A reaction: I'm not surprised that Hartry Field launched his Fictionalist view of mathematics in response to such a counterintuitive claim. I take it we use numbers to slice up reality the way we use latitude to slice up the globe. No commitment to lines! |
| 5791 | Reduction is either by elimination, or by explanation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: One sense of 'reduction' is eliminative, in getting rid of a phenomenon by showing that it is really something else (as the earth's rotation eliminates 'sunsets'), but another sense does not get rid of it (as in the explanation of solidity by molecules). | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: These are bad analogies. You can't 'eliminate' a sunset - you just accept that the event is relative to a viewpoint. If we are discussing ontology, we will not admit the existence of sunsets, but we won't have an ontological category of 'solidity' either. |
| 5799 | Eliminative reduction needs a gap between appearance and reality, as in sunsets [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Eliminative reductions require a distinction between reality and appearance; for example, the sun appears to set but the reality is that the earth rotates. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.10) | |
| A reaction: A bad analogy. You don't 'eliminate' sunsets. It is just 'Galilean' relativity - you thought it was your train moving, then you discover it was the other one. You don't eliminate hallucinations when you show that they don't correspond to reality. |
| 14502 | Plato's idea of 'structure' tends to be mathematically expressed [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: 'Structure' tends to be characterized by Plato as something that is mathematically expressed. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects V.3 iv | |
| A reaction: [Koslicki is drawing on Verity Harte here] |
| 5790 | A property is 'emergent' if it is caused by elements of a system, when the elements lack the property [Searle] |
| Full Idea: An emergent property of a system is causally explained by elements of the system, but it is not a property of the elements, and cannot be explained by a summation of their properties. The behaviour of H2O explains liquidity, but molecules aren't liquid. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: The genie is 'emergent' from the lamp, and so (in Searle's meaning) is the lamp's solidity. I agree that the mind is 'emergent' in Searle's very weak sense, if that only means that one neuron can't be conscious, but lots together can. |
| 3039 | When Diogenes said he could only see objects but not their forms, Plato said it was because he had eyes but no intellect [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When Diogenes told Plato he saw tables and cups, but not 'tableness' and 'cupness', Plato replied that this was because Diogenes had eyes but no intellect. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.2.6 |
| 20906 | Platonists argue for the indivisible triangle-in-itself [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Platonists, on the basis of purely logical arguments, posit the existence of an indivisible 'triangle in itself'. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 316a15 | |
| A reaction: A helpful confirmation that geometrical figures really are among the Forms (bearing in mind that numbers are not, because they contain one another). What shape is the Form of the triangle? |
| 17948 | Plato's Forms meant that the sophists only taught the appearance of wisdom and virtue [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato's theory of Forms allowed him to claim that the sophists and other opponents were trapped in the world of appearance. What they therefore taught was only apparent wisdom and virtue. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.118 |
| 556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there is the same Form for the Forms and for their participants, then they must have something in common. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 563 | If gods are like men, they are just eternal men; similarly, Forms must differ from particulars [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: We say there is the form of man, horse and health, but nothing else, making the same mistake as those who say that there are gods but that they are in the form of men. They just posit eternal men, and here we are not positing forms but eternal sensibles. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 997b |
| 565 | The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Forms could not be changeless if they were in changing things. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 998a |
| 557 | A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 9607 | The greatest discovery in human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects [Brown,JR on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The greatest discovery in the history of human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch. 2 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 2860! Given the diametrically opposed views, it is clearly likely that Plato's central view is the most important idea in the history of human thought, even if it is wrong. |
| 13263 | We can grasp whole things in science, because they have a mathematics and a teleology [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Due to the mathematical nature of structure and the teleological cause underlying the creation of Platonic wholes, these wholes are intelligible, and are in fact the proper objects of science. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: I like this idea, because it pays attention to the connection between how we conceive objects to be, and how we are able to think about objects. Only examining these two together enables us to grasp metaphysics. |
| 13261 | Plato sees an object's structure as expressible in mathematics [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The 'structure' of an object tends to be characterised by Plato as something that is mathematically expressible. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be pure Pythagoreanism (see Idea 644). Plato is pursuing Pythagoras's research programme, of trying to find mathematics buried in every aspect of reality. |
| 13265 | Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the source of unity in a complex object [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the project of how to account, in completely general terms, for the source of unity within a mereologically complex object. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.5 | |
| A reaction: Plato seems to have simply asserted that some sort of harmony held things together. Aristotles puts the forms [eidos] within objects, rather than external, so he has to give a fuller account of what is going on in an object. He never managed it! |
| 593 | Plato's holds that there are three substances: Forms, mathematical entities, and perceptible bodies [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato's doctrine was that the Forms and mathematicals are two substances and that the third substance is that of perceptible bodies. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1028b |
| 13260 | Plato says wholes are either containers, or they're atomic, or they don't exist [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato considers a 'container' model for wholes (which are disjoint from their parts) [Parm 144e3-], and a 'nihilist' model, in which only wholes are mereological atoms, and a 'bare pluralities' view, in which wholes are not really one at all. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
| A reaction: [She cites Verity Harte for this analysis of Plato] The fourth, and best, seems to be that wholes are parts which fall under some unifying force or structure or principle. |
| 11237 | Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato argues that only universals have essence. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 11238 | Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle have a shared general conception of essence: the essence of a thing is what that thing is simply in virtue of itself and in virtue of being the very thing it is. It answers the question 'What is this very thing?' | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 17085 | A good explanation totally rules out the opposite explanation (so Forms are required) [Plato, by Ruben] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, an acceptable explanation is one such that there is no possibility of there being the opposite explanation at all, and he thought that only explanations in terms of the Forms, but never physical explanations, could meet this requirement. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 2 | |
| A reaction: [Republic 436c is cited] |
| 5792 | Explanation of how we unify our mental stimuli into a single experience is the 'binding problem' [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The 'binding problem' is how to explain how the brain binds all our different stimuli into a single unified experience of an object. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This may be the best way of expressing what philosophers call (after Chalmers) the 'Hard Question'. Large objects are held together by gravity, and small objects by electro-magnetism. We don't see a 'binding problem' in the function of a leaf. |
| 5786 | A system is either conscious or it isn't, though the intensity varies a lot [Searle] |
| Full Idea: A system is either conscious or it isn't, but within the field of consciousness there are states of intensity ranging from drowsiness to full awareness. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I think this all-or-nothing view is the last vestiges of Cartesian dualism, and is quite wrong. Heaps of neuroscience (about blindsight, subliminal awareness, neurosis etc.) says we will never understand the mind if we think it is only the conscious part. |
| 5794 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, which only exists from a subjective viewpoint [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness has a first-person or subjective ontology, by which I mean that conscious states only exist when experienced by a subject and they exist only from the first-person point of view of that subject. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.5 App) | |
| A reaction: I think this is nonsense, and I don't think Searle believes it. He ruthlessly attacks so-called 'eliminativists', but the definition he gives here would make him an eliminativist about other minds. There is no such thing as 'first-person' ontology. |
| 5795 | There isn't one consciousness (information-processing) which can be investigated, and another (phenomenal) which can't [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There are not two kinds of consciousness, an information-processing consciousness that is amenable to scientific investigation and a phenomenal, what-it-subjectively-feels-like form of consciousness that will forever remain mysterious. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl.1) | |
| A reaction: Fodor appears to be the main target of this remark. The view that we can explain intentionality but not qualia is currently very fashionable. I am sympathetic to Searle here. Consciousness isn't an epiphenomenon, it is essential to all thought. |
| 5788 | The use of 'qualia' seems to imply that consciousness and qualia are separate [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I am hesitant to use the word 'quale/qualia', because it gives the impression that there are two separate phenomena, consciousness and qualia. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is trying to resist going back to 'sense-data', sitting uneasily between reality and our experience of it. Personally I am quite happy with qualia as an aspect of consciousness - just as I am happy with consciousness as an 'aspect' of brain. |
| 5789 | I now think syntax is not in the physics, but in the eye of the beholder [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me now that syntax is not intrinsic to the physics of the system, but is in the eye of the beholder. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, in that whether strung beads are a toy or an abacus depends on the user. It doesn't follow that the 'beholder' stands outside the physics. A beholder is another physical system, of a particular type of high complexity. |
| 5798 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, so it cannot be reduced without omitting something [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness has a first-person or subjective ontology and so cannot be reduced to anything that has third-person or objective ontology. If you try to reduce or eliminate one in favour of the other you leave something out. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.10) | |
| A reaction: Misconceived. There is no such thing as 'first-person' ontology, though there are subjective viewpoints, but then a camera has a viewpoint which is lost if you eliminate it. If consciousness is physical events, that leaves viewpoints untouched. |
| 5787 | There is non-event causation between mind and brain, as between a table and its solidity [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The solidity of a table is explained causally by the behaviour of the molecules of which it is composed, but the solidity is not an extra event, it is just a feature of the table. This non-event causation models the relationship of mind and brain. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He calls it 'non-event' causation, while referring to the 'behaviour of molecules'. Ask a physicist what a 'feature' is. Better to think of it as one process 'emerging' as another process at the macro-level. |
| 5797 | The pattern of molecules in the sea is much more complex than the complexity of brain neurons [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The pattern of molecules in the ocean is vastly more complex than any pattern of neurons in my brain. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice warning for anyone foolish enough to pin their explanatory hopes simply on 'complexity', but we would not be so foolish. A subtler account of complexity (e.g. by Edelman and Tononi) might make brains much more complex than oceans. |
| 5796 | If tree rings contain information about age, then age contains information about rings [Searle] |
| Full Idea: You could say that tree-rings contain information about the age of a tree, but you could as well say that the age of a tree in years contains information about the number of rings in a tree stump. ..'Information' is not a real causal feature of the world. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.5) | |
| A reaction: A nice point for fans of 'information' to ponder. However, you cannot deny the causal connection between the age and the rings. Information has a subjective aspect, but you cannot, for example, eliminate the role of DNA in making organisms. |
| 1651 | Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato put high on his agenda a project which did not figure in Socrates' programme at all: the hygienic conditioning of the passions. This cannot be an intellectual process, as argument cannot touch them. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.88 | |
| A reaction: This is the standard traditional view of any thinker who exaggerates the importance and potential of reason in our lives. |
| 3324 | Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato is liable to the charge of having been duped by a figure of speech, albeit the most profound of all, the trope of reification. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: That might be a plausible account if his view was ridiculous, but given how many powerful friends Plato has, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, we should assume he was cleverer than that. |
| 7503 | Plato never refers to examining the conscience [Plato, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Plato never speaks of the examination of conscience - never! | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.276 | |
| A reaction: Plato does imply some sort of self-evident direct knowledge about that nature of a healthy soul. Presumably the full-blown concept of conscience is something given from outside, from God. In 'Euthyphro', Plato asserts the primacy of morality (Idea 337). |
| 2173 | As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Once gods and fate and social expectation were no longer there, Plato felt it necessary to discover ethics inside human nature, not just as ethical knowledge (Socrates' view), but in the structure of the soul. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.43 | |
| A reaction: anti Charles Taylor |
| 9274 | Plato's legacy to European thought was the Good, the Beautiful and the True [Plato, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Plato's legacy to European thought was a trio of capital letters - the Good, the Beautiful and the True. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.8 | |
| A reaction: It seems to have been Baumgarten who turned this into a slogan (Idea 8117). Gray says these ideals are lethal, but I identify with them very strongly, and am quite happy to see the good life as an attempt to find the right balance between them. |
| 94 | Pleasure is better with the addition of intelligence, so pleasure is not the good [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato says the life of pleasure is more desirable with the addition of intelligence, and if the combination is better, pleasure is not the good. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1172b27 | |
| A reaction: It is obvious why we like pleasure, but not why intelligence makes it 'better'. Maybe it is just because we enjoy intelligence? |
| 17947 | Plato decided that the virtuous and happy life was the philosophical life [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato came to the conclusion that virtue and happiness consist in the life of philosophy itself. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.117 | |
| A reaction: This view is obviously ridiculous, because it largely excludes almost the entire human race, which sees philosophy as a cul-de-sac, even if it is good. But virtue and happiness need some serious thought. |
| 6015 | Plato, unusually, said that theoretical and practical wisdom are inseparable [Plato, by Kraut] |
| Full Idea: Two virtues that are ordinarily kept distinct - theoretical and practical wisdom - are joined by Plato; he thinks that neither one can be fully possessed unless it is combined with the other. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Richard Kraut - Plato | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that this doctrine comes from Socrates, whose position is widely reported as 'intellectualist'. Aristotle certainly held the opposite view. |
| 2912 | Plato is boring [Nietzsche on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato is boring. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols 9.2 |
| 1526 | Almost everyone except Plato thinks that time could not have been generated [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: With a single exception (Plato) everyone agrees about time - that it is not generated. Democritus says time is an obvious example of something not generated. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 251b14 |