63 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. |
| 22285 | Impredicative definitions are circular, but fine for picking out, rather than creating something [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The circularity in a definition where the property being defined is used in the definition is now known as 'impredicativity'. ...Some cases ('the tallest man in the room') are unproblematic, as they pick him out, and don't conjure him into existence. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 07 'Impred') | |
| A reaction: [part summary] |
| 22301 | The Identity Theory says a proposition is true if it coincides with what makes it true [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The Identity Theory of truth says a proposition is true just in case it coincides with what makes it true. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 23 'Abs') | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is how 'there are trees in the wood' can somehow 'coincide with' or 'be identical to' the situation outside my window. The theory is sort of right, but we will never define the relationship, which is no better than 'corresponds'. |
| 22324 | It has been unfortunate that externalism about truth is equated with correspondence [Potter] |
| Full Idea: There has been an unfortunate tendency in the secondary literature to equate externalism about truth with the correspondence theory. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 65 'Truth') | |
| A reaction: Quite helpful to distinguish internalist from externalist theories of truth. It is certainly the case that robust externalist views of truth have unfortunately been discredited merely because the correspondence account is inadequate. |
| 10775 | The axiom of choice now seems acceptable and obvious (if it is meaningful) [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: The main objection to the axiom of choice was that it had to be given by some law or definition, but since sets are arbitrary this seems irrelevant. Formalists consider it meaningless, but set-theorists consider it as true, and practically obvious. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §3) |
| 10766 | Logic is either for demonstration, or for characterizing structures [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: One can distinguish at least two quite different senses of logic: as an instrument of demonstration, and perhaps as an instrument for the characterization of structures. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) | |
| A reaction: This is trying to capture the proof-theory and semantic aspects, but merely 'characterizing' something sounds like a rather feeble aspiration for the semantic side of things. Isn't it to do with truth, rather than just rule-following? |
| 10767 | Elementary logic is complete, but cannot capture mathematics [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: Elementary logic cannot characterize the usual mathematical structures, but seems to be distinguished by its completeness. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) |
| 10769 | Second-order logic isn't provable, but will express set-theory and classic problems [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: The expressive power of second-order logic is too great to admit a proof procedure, but is adequate to express set-theoretical statements, and open questions such as the continuum hypothesis or the existence of big cardinals are easily stated. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) |
| 22279 | Frege's sign |--- meant judgements, but the modern |- turnstile means inference, with intecedents [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Natural deduction systems generally depend on conditional proof, but for Frege everything is asserted unconditionally. The modern turnstile |- is allowed to have antecedents, and hence to represent inference rather than Frege's judgement sign |---. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 03 'Axioms') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Shockingly, Frege's approach seems more psychological than the modern approach. I would say that the whole point of logic is that it has to be conditional, because the truth of the antecedents is irrelevant. |
| 22291 | Deductivism can't explain how the world supports unconditional conclusions [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Deductivism is a good account of large parts of mathematics, but stumbles where mathematics is directly applicable to the world. It fails to explain how we detach the antecedent so as to arrive at unconditional conclusions. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 12 'Deduc') | |
| A reaction: I suppose the reply would be that we have designed deductive structures which fit our understanding of reality - so it is all deductive, but selected pragmatically. |
| 10762 | In sentential logic there is a simple proof that all truth functions can be reduced to 'not' and 'and' [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: In sentential logic there is a simple proof that all truth functions, of any number of arguments, are definable from (say) 'not' and 'and'. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §0) | |
| A reaction: The point of 'say' is that it can be got down to two connectives, and these are just the usual preferred pair. |
| 10776 | The main quantifiers extend 'and' and 'or' to infinite domains [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: The symbols ∀ and ∃ may, to start with, be regarded as extrapolations of the truth functional connectives ∧ ('and') and ∨ ('or') to infinite domains. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §5) |
| 10774 | There are at least five unorthodox quantifiers that could be used [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: One might add to one's logic an 'uncountable quantifier', or a 'Chang quantifier', or a 'two-argument quantifier', or 'Shelah's quantifier', or 'branching quantifiers'. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed - just listed for reference, if you collect quantifiers, like collecting butterflies] |
| 22295 | Modern logical truths are true under all interpretations of the non-logical words [Potter] |
| Full Idea: In the modern definition, a 'logical truth' is true under every interpretation of the non-logical words it contains. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 19 'Frege's') | |
| A reaction: What if the non-logical words are nonsense, or are used inconsistently ('good'), or ambiguously ('bank'), or vaguely ('bald'), or with unsure reference ('the greatest philosopher' becomes 'Bentham')? What qualifies as an 'interpretation'? |
| 10777 | Skolem mistakenly inferred that Cantor's conceptions were illusory [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: Skolem deduced from the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem that 'the absolutist conceptions of Cantor's theory' are 'illusory'. I think it is clear that this conclusion would not follow even if elementary logic were in some sense the true logic, as Skolem assumed. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §7) | |
| A reaction: [Tharp cites Skolem 1962 p.47] Kit Fine refers to accepters of this scepticism about the arithmetic of infinities as 'Skolemites'. |
| 10773 | The Löwenheim-Skolem property is a limitation (e.g. can't say there are uncountably many reals) [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: The Löwenheim-Skolem property seems to be undesirable, in that it states a limitation concerning the distinctions the logic is capable of making, such as saying there are uncountably many reals ('Skolem's Paradox'). | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) |
| 10765 | Soundness would seem to be an essential requirement of a proof procedure [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: Soundness would seem to be an essential requirement of a proof procedure, since there is little point in proving formulas which may turn out to be false under some interpretation. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) |
| 10763 | Completeness and compactness together give axiomatizability [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: Putting completeness and compactness together, one has axiomatizability. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §1) |
| 10770 | If completeness fails there is no algorithm to list the valid formulas [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: In general, if completeness fails there is no algorithm to list the valid formulas. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) | |
| A reaction: I.e. the theory is not effectively enumerable. |
| 10771 | Compactness is important for major theories which have infinitely many axioms [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: It is strange that compactness is often ignored in discussions of philosophy of logic, since the most important theories have infinitely many axioms. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) | |
| A reaction: An example of infinite axioms is the induction schema in first-order Peano Arithmetic. |
| 10772 | Compactness blocks infinite expansion, and admits non-standard models [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: The compactness condition seems to state some weakness of the logic (as if it were futile to add infinitely many hypotheses). To look at it another way, formalizations of (say) arithmetic will admit of non-standard models. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) |
| 10764 | A complete logic has an effective enumeration of the valid formulas [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: A complete logic has an effective enumeration of the valid formulas. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) |
| 10768 | Effective enumeration might be proved but not specified, so it won't guarantee knowledge [Tharp] |
| Full Idea: Despite completeness, the mere existence of an effective enumeration of the valid formulas will not, by itself, provide knowledge. For example, one might be able to prove that there is an effective enumeration, without being able to specify one. | |
| From: Leslie H. Tharp (Which Logic is the Right Logic? [1975], §2) | |
| A reaction: The point is that completeness is supposed to ensure knowledge (of what is valid but unprovable), and completeness entails effective enumerability, but more than the latter is needed to do the key job. |
| 22310 | The formalist defence against Gödel is to reject his metalinguistic concept of truth [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Gödel's theorem does not refute formalism outright, because the committed formalist need not recognise the metalinguistic notion of truth to which the theorem appeals. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 45 'Log') | |
| A reaction: The theorem was prior to Tarski's account of truth. Potter says Gödel avoided explicit mention of truth because of this problem. In general Gödel showed that there are truths outside the formal system (which is all provable). |
| 22298 | Why is fictional arithmetic applicable to the real world? [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Fictionalists struggle to explain why arithmetic is applicable to the real world in a way that other stories are not. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 21 'Math') | |
| A reaction: We know why some novels are realistic and others just the opposite. If a novel aimed to 'model' the real world it would be even closer to it. Fictionalists must explain why some fictions are useful. |
| 22287 | If 'concrete' is the negative of 'abstract', that means desires and hallucinations are concrete [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The word 'concrete' is often used as the negative of 'abstract', with the slightly odd consequence that desires and hallucinations are thereby classified as concrete. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 12 'Numb') | |
| A reaction: There is also the even more baffling usage of 'abstract' for the most highly generalised mathematics, leaving lower levels as 'concrete'. I favour the use of 'generalised' wherever possible, rather than 'abstract'. |
| 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] |
| 22284 | 'Greater than', which is the ancestral of 'successor', strictly orders the natural numbers [Potter] |
| Full Idea: From the successor function we can deduce its ancestral, the 'greater than' relation, which is a strict total ordering of the natural numbers. (Frege did not mention this, but Dedekind worked it out, when expounding definition by recursion). | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 07 'Def') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 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 |
| 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? |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 22281 | A material conditional cannot capture counterfactual reasoning [Potter] |
| Full Idea: What the material conditional most significantly fails to capture is counterfactual reasoning. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 04 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: The point is that counterfactuals say 'if P were the case (which it isn't), then Q'. But that means P is false, and in the material conditional everything follows from a falsehood. A reinterpretation of the conditional might embrace counterfactuals. |
| 22327 | Knowledge from a drunken schoolteacher is from a reliable and unreliable process [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge might result from a reliable and an unreliable process. ...Is something knowledge if you were told it by a drunken schoolteacher? | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 66 'Rel') | |
| A reaction: Nice example. The listener must decide which process to rely on. But how do you decide that, if not by assessing the likely truth of what you are being told? It could be a bad teacher who is inspired by drink. |
| 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] |
| 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. |
| 22273 | Traditionally there are twelve categories of judgement, in groups of three [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The traditional categorisation of judgements (until at least 1800) was as universal, particular or singular; as affirmative, negative or infinite; as categorical, hypothetical or disjunctive; or as problematic, assertoric or apodictic. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 02 'Trans') | |
| A reaction: Arranging these things in neat groups of three seems to originate with the stoics. Making distinctions like this is very much the job of a philosopher, but arranging them in neat equinumerous groups is intellectual tyranny. |
| 22290 | The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can't refer to a concept, because it is saturated [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Frege's mirroring principle (that the structure of thoughts mirrors that of language) has the uncomfortable consequence that since the phrase 'the concept "horse"' is saturated, it cannot refer to something unsaturated, which includes concepts. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 16 'Conc') |
| 22283 | Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Compositionality is best seen as saying the semantic value of a string is explained by the strings lower down its parsing tree. It is unimportant whether a string is always parsed in terms of its own substrings. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 05 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: That is, the analysis must explain the meaning, but the analysis can contain more than the actual ingredients of the sentence (which would be too strict). |
| 22282 | 'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Some authors urge the strong notion of 'direct compositionality', which requires that the content of a sentence be explained in terms of the contents of the component parts of that very sentence. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 05 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: The alternative is that meaning is fully explained by an analysis, but that may contain more than the actual components of the sentence. |
| 22296 | Compositionality is more welcome in logic than in linguistics (which is more contextual) [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The principle of compositionality is more popular among philosophers of logic than of language, because the subtle context-sensitivity or ordinary language makes providing a compositional semantics for it a daunting challenge. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 21 'Lang') | |
| A reaction: Logicians love breaking complex entities down into simple atomic parts. Linguistics tries to pin down something much more elusive. |
| 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 |