54 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. |
| 5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Any good philosophy will need to offer wisdom about who we are as well as about how we ought to be. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 14) | |
| A reaction: This sop should be accepted gratefully by fans of bioethics, who seem inclined to think that describing 'how we are' is all that needs to be said. Maybe the key wisdom lies in the relationship between the 'is' and the 'ought' of human nature. |
| 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 |
| 5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The inability of science to provide ethical wisdom is partly responsible for our resistance to the scientific image. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 14) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. A.J. Ayer, for example, declared "I believe in science", and his account of ethics was vacuously nihilistic. A description of the mechanisms of moral life is not the same as ethical wisdom. |
| 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. |
| 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] |
| 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 |
| 5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Explanation does not entail prediction. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 73n) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the inverse of this is also true, as we might be able to predict through pure induction, without knowing why something happened. We predict that smoking is likely to cause cancer. Complex things might be explicable but unpredictable. |
| 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] |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century the dominant idea that causation is collisionlike made mental causation almost impossible to envision. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.136) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This makes Descartes' interaction theory look rather bold, and Leibniz's and Malebranche's rejection of it understandable. Personally I still think of causation as collisionlike, except that the collisions are of very very tiny objects. |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to explain why certain brain events are uniquely experienced by you subjectively: only you are properly hooked up to your own nervous system to have your own experiences. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 87) | |
| A reaction: This is in reply to Nagel's oft quoted claim that mind can only be understood as "what it is like to be" that mind. I agree with Flanagan, and it is nice illustration of how philosophers can confuse themselves with high-sounding questions. |
| 5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: We only have a sense of our self as continuous, but not as exactly the same. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.178) | |
| A reaction: Russell said this too, and it seems to me to be right. Personal identity is far too imprecise for me to assert that I remember my ten-year-old self as being identical to me now. Only physical objects like teddy bears can pass that test. |
| 5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The self is an abstraction from the story of a person's life that isolates and magnifies the experiences, traits and aspirations that are assigned importance. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.240) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to see personal identity as the central controller of brain activity, the aspect of the biological machine which keeps all the mental events focused on what matters, which is health, safety and happiness. |
| 5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is a bad mistake to think we are born with a self; the self develops, and acquiring it requires living in the world. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.260) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. He is mistaking a complex cultural concept of the self as the subject for autobiography etc. for the basic biological self which even small animals must have if their brains are to serve any useful purpose in their lives. |
| 5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: According to Buddhism, the idea of a permanent, constant self is an illusion, and a morally dangerous one. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.161) | |
| A reaction: We are familiar with the idea that it might be an illusion, but I am unconvinced by 'morally dangerous'. If you drop both free will and personal identity, I can't see any sort of focus for moral life left, but I am willing to be convinced. |
| 5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The standard view of free will is that I have something like complete control over what I do. A stronger view (not widely held) is that I also have complete control over what I think and what I feel. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 60n) | |
| A reaction: To claim free control of feelings looks optimistic, but it does look as if we can decide to think about something, such as a philosophical problem. Deciding what to say comes somewhere between thought and action. |
| 5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Free will is said to give us self-control, self-expression, individuality, reasons-sensitivity, rational deliberation, rational accountability, moral accountability, the capacity to do otherwise, unpredictability, and political freedom. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.104) | |
| A reaction: Nice list. His obvious challenge is to either say we can live happily without some of these things, or else show how we can have them without 'free will'. Personally I agree with Flanagan that we meet the challenge. |
| 5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Most people believe we have free will, and that this consists in the ability to circumvent natural law. The trouble is that the only device ever philosophically invented that can do this sort of job is an incorporeal soul or mind. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right. We currently have a western world full of people who have rejected dualism, but still cling on to free will, because they think morality depends on it. I think morality depends on personal identity, but not on free will. |
| 5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is unimaginable to me that, despite the feeling that we control what we do, such a strong conception of ourselves as unmoved movers would have been added to our self-image unless we had first conceived of God along these lines. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.107) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right, though there are signs in fifth century Greece of contradictory evidence. The 'unmoved mover' seems unformulated before Plato's 'Laws' (idea 1423), but there is an implied belief in free will a hundred years earlier. |
| 5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: I would say that that my consciousness doesn't seem either physical or non-physical, ..but the belief that the mind is non-physical partly took hold because that fits well with thinking of human agents as free. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.102) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right. I personally think there is no such thing as free will, and that belief in it has been the single greatest delusion amongst philosophers (and others) for the last two thousand years. Dualism has now gone, and free will is next. |
| 5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Behaviourism was notorious in its heyday for having nothing to say about mental causation. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.141) | |
| A reaction: This is a bit unfair, as Ryle (idea 2622, following Spinoza, 4862) was one of the first to point out the paradox of 'double causation'. You have to be a mentalist to worry about mental causation, and eliminativists aren't bothered. |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Although everyone thinks cars and bodies obey the principles of causation, no one thinks it a deficiency that we don't know strict laws of automechanics or anatomy. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 65) | |
| A reaction: This attacks Davidson's claim that there are no strict psycho-physical laws, and I agree with Flanagan. Huge dreams of free will and human dignity are being pinned on the flimsy point that we have no strict laws here. But brains are very complicated. |
| 5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: One may be committed to the truth of physicalism without being committed to the claim that the essence of an experience is captured fully by a description of its neural realiser. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 90) | |
| A reaction: This is a reply to the Leibniz Mill question (idea 2109) about what is missing from a materialist view. Flanagan's point is that just as the essence of a panorama is the view from the hill, so the essence of consciousness requires you to be that brain. |
| 5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: One can question the idea that emotions are non-rational, fickle and flighty; on the contrary, emotions normally seem to be very apt. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 16) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern view of emotion which is emerging from neuroscience, which is greatly superior to traditional views, apart from Aristotle, who felt that wisdom and virtue arose precisely when emotions were apt for the situation. |
| 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. |
| 5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: There are two main pictures of the good person: there is the 'good character', and there is the 'principled actor'. ..The first picture is non-intellectualist, and the second is intellectualist. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.145) | |
| A reaction: The second ideal elevates the principle itself above the actor who carries it out. Presumably consistency is a virtue, so a good character will at least pay some attention to principles. A good magistrate comes out the same in both views. |
| 3284 | There is no one theory of how to act (or what to believe) [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: To look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Fragmentation of Value [1977], p.135) | |
| A reaction: Depends on your level of generality. Values and virtues are general guides which should be brought to every action, with 'higher' values guiding choice of what is relevant. |
| 5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.301n) | |
| A reaction: I take cognitivism to be (strictly) the view that morals are knowable in principle. Our intellects might not be up to the task (and so we might have to ask the gods what is right). There is also the possibility that morals might be known by intuition. |
| 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 |
| 5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Ethics is the normative science that studies the objective conditions that lead to flourishing of persons. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 17) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice slogan for the virtue theory account of the nature of ethics. I think it is the view with which I agree. I am intrigued that he has smuggled the word 'science' in, which is a nice challenge to conventional views of science. |
| 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 |
| 5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of a cycle of rebirths and reincarnations that are normally required before one achieve nirvana was only proposed in the eighth century CE, and then spread like wildfire among Hindus and, to a lesser extent, among Buddhists. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.166n) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. Plato had proposed it in the fourth century BCE. Presumably Hindus had always been dualists, and then suddenly saw and exciting possibility that followed from it. The doctrine strikes me as (to put it mildly) implausible. |
| 5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the soul could be easily trashed if science does not countenance essences, but science does countenance essences in the form of what are known as 'natural kinds' (such as water, salt and gold). | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.181) | |
| A reaction: The existence of any essences at all does indeed make the existence of a soul naturally possible, but scientific natural kinds are usually postulated on a basis of chemical stability. Animals, for example, are no longer usually classified that way. |