67 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 |
| 13567 | Ontology should give insight into or an explanation of the world revealed by science [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A good ontology should provide insight into, or offer some kind of explanation of, the salient general features of the world that has been revealed to us by science. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I think I agree with this. The difficulty is that the most fundamental level revealed by science is a quantum one, so if you take a reductionist view then your ontology is both crazy, and resting on things which are not understood. |
| 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. |
| 13604 | Real possibility and necessity has the logic of S5, which links equivalence classes of worlds of the same kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The logic of real possibilities and necessities is just S5. This is because the accessibility relation for real possibilities links possible worlds of the same natural kind, which is an equivalence class. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: Most people, except Nathan Salmon, agree with this. With full accessibility, you seem to take epistemological problems out of the system, and just focus on reality. |
| 13606 | Humean conceptions of reality drive the adoption of extensional logic [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A Humean conception of reality lies behind, and motivates, the development of extensional logics with extensional semantics. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.04) | |
| A reaction: His proposal seems to be that it rests on the vision of a domain of separated objects. The alternative view seems to be that it is mathematics, with its absolute equality between 'objects', which drives extensionalism. |
| 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] |
| 13584 | The extension of a property is a contingent fact, so cannot be the essence of the property [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The extension of a property in any given world is just a contingent fact about that world; its extension is not the essence of the property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.07) | |
| A reaction: The Quinean idea, common among logicians, that a predicate is just a set defined for some model, may be useful in the logic, but is preposterous as an account of what a property actually is in nature, even if the set covers possible worlds. |
| 13587 | There is no property of 'fragility', as things are each fragile in a distinctive way [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no natural property of 'fragility'; glasses, parchments, ecosystems and spiders' webs are fragile in their own ways, but they have nothing intrinsic or structural in common. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: This is important (and, I think, correct) because we are inclined to say that something is 'intrinsically' fragile, but that still isn't enough to identify a true property. Ellis wants universals to be involved, and even a nominalist must sort-of agree. |
| 13577 | Typical 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, such as shape [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The paradigmatically 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, depending on how things are distributed in space and time. Shape is the obvious example. ...Other examples are number, size and configuration. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm finding it very frustrating that this concept is much discussed in current philosophy of science (e.g. by Bird), but it is exceedingly hard to pin down any exact account of these 'categorical' properties, or even why they are so-called. |
| 9436 | The property of 'being an electron' is not of anything, and only electrons could have it [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no property of being an electron. It could only be instantiated by electrons, so it does not seem genuine. And what is the thing that supposedly instantiates the property of being an electron? | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 75,92), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 7.3 | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. Bird launches an excellent attack on categorial properties. |
| 13582 | 'Being a methane molecule' is not a property - it is just a predicate [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In my view 'being a methane molecule' is not a property name, but a predicate that is constructed out of a natural kind name, and so pretends to name a property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.03) | |
| A reaction: I can't tell you how strongly I agree with this. How long have you got? This is so incredibly right that... You get the idea. He observes that such properties cannot be instantiated 'in' anything. |
| 13580 | Causal powers must necessarily act the way they do [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no question of a causal power's acting one way in one world and another way in a different world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Perhaps the very core idea of scientific essentialism. It doesn't feel quite right that when you ask for the source of this necessity, you are only told that it is necessary for the very identity of a power. The truth is that it is a primitive of nature. |
| 13598 | Causal powers are often directional (e.g. centripetal, centrifugal, circulatory) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Causal powers are often directional. For example, they may be centripetal, centrifugal, or circulatory. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: The examples all seem to raise a few questions, about whether the directionality arises from the context, rather than from the intrinsic power. |
| 13568 | Basic powers may not be explained by structure, if at the bottom level there is no structure [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the most fundamental things have no structure, and therefore no structure in virtue of which they have the powers they have. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Maybe the world has inexplicable powers, so there is a God? It seems obvious that there will be no explanation of the 'lowest level' of reality, and also obvious (to me and Leibniz, anyway) that this lowest level has to be active. |
| 13586 | Maybe dispositions can be explained by intrinsic properties or structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: One view is that there must be an intrinsic property or structure in virtue of which a given thing has the behavioural disposition in question. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Prior, Pargetter,Jackson 1982] A key question in the metaphysics of nature - whether dispositions should be taken as primitive, or whether we should try to explain them in other terms. I take powers and dispositions to be prior to properties. |
| 13585 | The most fundamental properties of nature (mass, charge, spin ...) all seem to be dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The properties of the most fundamental things in nature, including mass, charge, spin, and the like, would all appear to be dispositional. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.05) | |
| A reaction: This goes with the Leibnizian claim that the most fundamental features of nature must be active in character. |
| 13596 | A causal power is a disposition to produce forces [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A causal power is a disposition of something to produce forces of a certain kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: Hence when Leibniz was putting all his emphasis on the origin of the forces in nature, he was referring to exactly what we mean by 'powers'. From Ellis's formulation, I take powers to be more basic than dispositions. Does he realise this? |
| 13599 | Powers are dispositions of the essences of kinds that involve them in causation [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The causal powers of an object are the dispositional properties of that object that are the real essences of the natural kinds of processes that involve that object in the role of cause. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: This is Ellis's formal definition at the end of his discussion of causal powers. He only seems to allow powers to the kind rather than to the individual. How do we account for the causal powers of unique genius? I say the powers are the essences. |
| 13573 | Universals are all types of natural kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The various kinds of universals are all natural kinds of one sort or another. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound right. What about the universals of mathematics, or universals which are a matter of social or linguistic convention? I think Ellis is trying to hijack the word 'universal' in response to Armstrong's more idealistic account. |
| 13572 | There are 'substantive' (objects of some kind), 'dynamic' (events of some kind) and 'property' universals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Three categories of universals: 'substantive' universals have instances that are members of natural kinds of objects or substances; 'dynamic' universals are kinds of events or processes; 'property' universals are tropes of real properties or relations. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: I would want to distinguish real properties from relations. It is important to remember that an object can traditionally instantiate a universal, and that they aren't just properties. |
| 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 |
| 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? |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 13571 | Scientific essentialism doesn't really need Kripkean individual essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: My current view is that individual essences (about which Kripke's essentialism has a lot to say) do not matter much from the point of view of a scientific essentialist. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [Kripke parenthesis on p.54] Presumably this is because science is only committed to dealing in generalities, and so natural kinds are needed for such things. I'm inclined to regard individual essences as prior in the pure ontology of the thing. |
| 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 |
| 13578 | The old idea that identity depends on essence and behaviour is rejected by the empiricists [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The old Aristotelian idea that the identity of a thing might depend on its essential nature, which would dispose it to behave in certain ways, is firmly rejected by empiricists. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: Ellis is accusing empiricists of having a falsely passive concept of objects. This dispute is best captured in the disagreement between Locke and Leibniz on the subject. |
| 13576 | Necessities are distinguished by their grounds, not their different modalities [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Strictly speaking, the distinction between two brands of necessity is one of grounds, rather than modality. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: This idea I associate with Kit Fine. I like it, because it allows 'necessity' to be a univocal concept, which seems right to me. The types of necessity arise from types of things which already occur in our ontology. |
| 13570 | Individual essences necessitate that individual; natural kind essences necessitate kind membership [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are necessities grounded in the individual real essences of things, and necessities grounded in the natural kind essences of things. In the first case, without the property it isn't that individual, and in the second it isn't a member of that kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the distinction we must hang onto to avoid a huge amount of confusion in this territory. I just say that ceasing to be that individual will presumably entail ceasing to be that kind, but not necessarily vice versa, so individual essences rule. |
| 21912 | Fichte, Schelling and Hegel rejected transcendental idealism [Lewis,PB] |
| Full Idea: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were united in their opposition to Kant's Transcendental Idealism. | |
| From: Peter B. Lewis (Schopenhauer [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: That is, they preferred genuine idealism, to the mere idealist attitude Kant felt that we are forced to adopt. |
| 21911 | Fichte, Hegel and Schelling developed versions of Absolute Idealism [Lewis,PB] |
| Full Idea: At the University of Jena, Fichte, Hegel and Schelling critically developed aspects of Kant's philosophy, each in his own way, thereby giving rise to the movement known as Absolute Idealism, see reality as universal God-like self-consciousness. | |
| From: Peter B. Lewis (Schopenhauer [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: Is asking how anyone can possibly have believed such a bizarre and ridiculous idea a) uneducated, b) stupid, c) unimaginative, or d) very sensible? It sounds awfully like Spinoza's concept of God. Also Anaxagoras. |
| 13607 | If events are unconnected, then induction cannot be solved [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: If one believes, as Hume did, that all events are loose and separate, then the problem of induction is probably insoluble. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.09) | |
| A reaction: This points to the essentialist solution of induction - that we can genuinely derive inductive truths if we can inductively identify the essences which give rise to the necessities of further cases. I take that to be a correct account. |
| 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] |
| 13597 | Good explanations unify [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: An acceptable explanation must have some unifying power. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: There is a tension here, between the particular and the general. If I say 'why did the building collapse' and you say 'gravity', you have certainly got a unifying explanation, but we want something narrower. |
| 13601 | Explanations of particular events are not essentialist, as they don't reveal essential structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Explanations of particular events in history, geology, or evolution, are causal explanations, requiring belief in some causal mechanisms. But they are not essentialist explanations because they do not seek to lay bare the essential structure of anything. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.05) | |
| A reaction: The explanation might be two-stage, as when we explain an earthquake by a plate boundary rupture, which is in turn explained by a theory of plate techtonics. The relationship between mechanistic and essentialist explanation needs study. |
| 13569 | To give essentialist explanations there have to be natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no essentialist explanations constructed in any field where the subject matter is not naturally divided into kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A crux. I like individual essences, such as the character of a particular person. However, Ellis may be right, since while we may identify an individual essence as the source of a behaviour, we may not then be able to give any 'explanation'. |
| 13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most model theories abstract from reality in order to focus on the essential nature of some kind of process or system of relations. ... The point of idealizing in this case is not to simplify, but to eliminate what is not essential. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.03) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea a lot. It is where scientific essentialism cashes out in actual scientific practice. Ellis's example is the idealised Carnot heat engine, which never can exist, but which captures what is essential about the process. |
| 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 |
| 13583 | There might be uninstantiated natural kinds, such as transuranic elements which have never occurred [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are reasons to believe that there are natural kinds that might never be instantiated, such as a transuranic element, capable of existing for some fraction of a second, but which has never actually existed anywhere. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.05) | |
| A reaction: He cautiously claims that kinds are ontologically prior to their individual members. I would say that there is no natural kind of the type that he describes. He says you have at least some grounds for predicting what kinds are possible. |
| 13574 | Natural kinds are distinguished by resting on essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are distinguished from other sorts of things by their associations with essential properties and real essences. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree with this. I rest my notion of natural kind on the elementary realising that to know all about this kind you only have to examine one sample of it, as in the Upanishads. The source of such a phenomenon is an open question. |
| 13575 | If there are borderline cases between natural kinds, that makes them superficial [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be any borderline cases between the real essences of different natural kinds because, if there were, the distinctions between the kinds would be superficial, like the blue/green distinction. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.05) | |
| A reaction: His particular target here is biological natural kinds, in which he doesn't believe, because they blur across time, in the evolutionary process. Personally I am inclined to relax the notion of a natural kind, otherwise they are too basic to explain. |
| 13595 | Laws don't exist in the world; they are true of the world [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Laws are not things that exist in the world; they are things that are true of the world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm happy with this formulation. The one to get rid of is the idea of laws which could precede creation of the universe, and survive its demise. That might be possible, but we have absolutely no grounds for the claim. Humeans ought to agree. |
| 13566 | A proton must have its causal role, because without it it wouldn't be a proton [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I assume it is metaphysically impossible for a proton to have a different causal role, ...which is plausible because a proton would appear to have no identity at all apart from its role in causal processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key idea in scientific essentialism, which links essentialism of identity with essentialism in the laws of nature. Could a proton become not-quite-a-proton? |
| 13579 | What is most distinctive of scientific essentialism is regarding processes as natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: What is most distinctive of the scientific version of essentialism is that scientific essentialists are realists about natural kinds of processes, as well as natural kinds of objects and substances. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether other scientific essentialists would agree with this, but I am happy to go along with it. A process like melting or sublimation seems to be a standard widespread phenomenon which is always intrinsically the same, as kinds must be. |
| 13581 | Scientific essentialism is more concerned with explanation than with identity (Locke, not Kripke) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialism is less concerned with questions of identity, and more with questions of explanation, than is the essentialism of Aristotle or of Kripke. It is closest to the kind of essentialism described by Locke. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Locke is popularly held to be anti-essentialist, but that is only because of his epistemological problems. I think Ellis is here misreading Aristotle, and I would ally Aristotle, Locke (cautiously), Leibniz, Ellis and Fine against Kripkeans on this one. |
| 13594 | The ontological fundamentals are dispositions, and also categorical (spatio-temporal and structural) properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We do not claim, as some do, that fundamental dispositional properties are the ontological basis of all properties. On the contrary, there are equally fundamental categorical properties - for example, spatio-temporal relations and structures. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: The source of disagreement between Bird and Ellis. Bird denies the existence of 'categorical properties'. I think I am with Bird. Space and time are as much part of the given as the elements, and then categorical properties result from dispositions. |
| 13603 | A primary aim of science is to show the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialists hold that one of the primary aims of science is to define the limits of the possible. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: I like this. It breaks down into the study of modal profiles, and it can work for abstracta as well as for the physical world. It even covers the study of character, and you could say that it is the subject matter of Jane Austen. |
| 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 |