23 ideas
| 192 | Only one thing can be contrary to something [Plato] |
| Full Idea: To everything that admits of a contrary there is one contrary and no more. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 332c) | |
| A reaction: The sort of thing for which a modern philosopher would demand a proof (and then reject when the proof couldn't be found), where a Greek is happy to assert it as self-evident. I can't think of a counterexample. |
| 190 | If asked whether justice itself is just or unjust, you would have to say that it is just [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If someone asked me 'Is justice itself just or unjust?' I should answer that it was just, wouldn't you? I agree. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 330c) |
| 20185 | The most important things in life are wisdom and knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be shameful indeed to say that wisdom and knowledge are anything but the most powerful forces in human activity. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 352d) | |
| A reaction: He lumps wisdom and knowledge together, and I think we can take 'knowledge' to mean something like understanding, because obviously mere atomistic propositional knowledge can be utterly trivial. |
| 20184 | The only real evil is loss of knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The only real kind of faring ill is the loss of knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 345b) | |
| A reaction: This must crucially involve the intellectualist view (of Socrates) that virtuos behaviour results from knowledge, and moral wickedness is the result of ignorance. It is hard to see how forgetting a phone number is evil. |
| 22179 | Explanatory facts also predict, and predictive facts also explain [Hempel, by Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Hempel said every scientific explanation is potentially a prediction - it would have predicted the phenomenon in question, had it not already been known. But also the information used to make a prediction is potentially an explanation. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 3 | |
| A reaction: Sounds too neatly glib to be quite true. If you explain a single event there is nothing to predict. You might predict accurately from a repetitive pattern, with no understanding at all of the pattern. |
| 6755 | For Hempel, explanations are deductive-nomological or probabilistic-statistical [Hempel, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Hempel proposes that explanations involve covering laws and antecedent conditions; this view (the 'covering law' view) has two versions, the deductive-nomological model and the probabilistic-statistical model of explanation. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: The obvious problem with this approach, it seem to me, is that the laws themselves need explanation, and I don't see how a law can be foundational unless there is a divine law-giver. Are the laws arbitrary and axiomatic? |
| 17083 | The covering-law model is for scientific explanation; historical explanation is quite different [Hempel] |
| Full Idea: To put forward the covering-law models of scientific explanation is not to deny that there are other contexts in which we speak of explanation. ….That it does not fit explaining the rules of Hanoverian succession is to miss the intent of our model. | |
| From: Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p. 412-3), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 1 | |
| A reaction: Important to get that clear. It then requires a clear demarcation between science and the rest, and it had better not rule out biology because it is having a love affair with physics. |
| 13052 | Hempel rejects causation as part of explanation [Hempel, by Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Hempel explicitly rejects the idea that causality plays any essential explanatory role. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p.352) by Wesley Salmon - Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1.1 | |
| A reaction: Hempel champions the 'covering-law' model of explanation. It strikes me that Hempel is so utterly wrong about this that his views aren't even a candidate for correctness, but then for a long time his views were orthodoxy. |
| 191 | Everything resembles everything else up to a point [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Everything resembles everything else up to a point. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 331d) |
| 5952 | Rather than being the whole soul, maybe I am its chief part? [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Is each of us not the soul, but the chief part of the soul, by which we think and reason and act, all the other parts of soul as well as of body being mere instruments of its power? | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1119) | |
| A reaction: Socrates is associated with the idea that I am my whole soul (Idea 1650). Plutarch represents an interesting development, which may lead both to the Christian 'soul' and to the Cartesian 'ego'. I think Plutarch is right, but what is the 'soul'? |
| 5951 | If atoms have no qualities, they cannot possibly produce a mind [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Perception, mind, intelligence and thought cannot so much as be conceived, even with the best will, as arising among void and atoms, things which taken separately have no quality. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1112) | |
| A reaction: A nice articulation of the intuition of all anti-physicalists. Plutarch would have to rethink his position carefully if he learned of the sheer number of connections in the brain, and of the theory of natural selection. His challenge remains, though. |
| 20796 | Action needs an affinity for a presentation, and an impulse toward the affinity [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The sceptics say there are three movements of the soul: presentation, impulse and assent. …And action requires two things: a presentation of something to which one has an affinity, and an impulse toward what is presented as an object of affinity. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], 1122c) | |
| A reaction: Not much reasoning involved in this account, which the sceptics say is compatible with suspension of judgement. |
| 203 | Courage is knowing what should or shouldn't be feared [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge of what is and is not to be feared is courage. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 360d) |
| 202 | No one willingly and knowingly embraces evil [Plato] |
| Full Idea: No one willingly goes to meet evil, or what he thinks is evil. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 358d) | |
| A reaction: Presumably people who actively choose satanism can override this deep-seated attitude. But their adherence to evil usually seems to be rather restrained. A danger of tautology with ideas like this. |
| 193 | Some things are good even though they are not beneficial to men [Plato] |
| Full Idea: 'Do you mean by good those things that are beneficial to men?' 'Not only those. I call some things which are not beneficial good as well'. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 333e) | |
| A reaction: Examples needed, but this would be bad news for utilitarians. Good health is not seen as beneficial if it is taken for granted. Not being deaf. |
| 197 | Some pleasures are not good, and some pains are not evil [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There are some pleasures which are not good, and some pains which are not evil. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 351d) | |
| A reaction: Sadism and child birth. Though Bentham (I think) says that there is nothing good about the pain, since the event would obviously be better without it. |
| 200 | People tend only to disapprove of pleasure if it leads to pain, or prevents future pleasure [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The only reason the common man disapproves of pleasures is if they lead to pain and deprive us of future pleasures. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 354a) | |
| A reaction: Plato has a strong sense that some pleasures are just innately depraved and wicked. If those pleasure don't hurt anyone, it is very hard to pinpoint what is wrong with them. |
| 188 | Socrates did not believe that virtue could be taught [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: I do not believe that virtue can be taught. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 320b) |
| 204 | Socrates is contradicting himself in claiming virtue can't be taught, but that it is knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates is contradicting himself by saying virtue is not teachable, and yet trying to demonstrate that every virtue is knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 361b) |
| 189 | If we punish wrong-doers, it shows that we believe virtue can be taught [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Athenians inflict punishment on wrong-doers, which shows that they too think it possible to impart and teach goodness. | |
| From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 324c) |
| 5948 | The good life involves social participation, loyalty, temperance and honesty [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: To live the good life is to live a life of participation in society, of loyalty to friends, of temperance and honest dealing. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1108) | |
| A reaction: 'Participation in society' is the interesting one. This might translate as 'doing your duty', or as 'leading a well-rounded life'. Solitude is wrong if you are indebted to others, and it is unhealthy if you are not. Is solitude really immoral, though? |
| 5950 | If only atoms exist, how do qualities arise when the atoms come together? [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: If you accept atomism, you must show how bodies without quality have given rise to qualities of every kind by the mere fact of coming together. For example, how has the quality called 'hot' been imposed on the atoms? | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1111) | |
| A reaction: This argument is still significant in current philosophy of mind. If temperature is 'mean kinetic energy', you are left wondering where the energy came from, and why minds experience the heat. This is the 'Hard Question'. |
| 5955 | No one will ever find a city that lacks religious practices [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: A city without holy places and gods, without any observance of prayers, oaths, oracles, sacrifices for blessings received or rites to avert evils, no traveller has ever seen or will ever see. | |
| From: Plutarch (74: Reply to Colotes [c.85], §1125) | |
| A reaction: The nearest you might get would be Soviet Moscow, but in 1973 I saw a man there jeering at a woman who was kneeling in the street outside a closed church. Plutarch would be stunned at the decline in religious practices in modern Europe. |