Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'The Essential Child' and 'Conditional Assertion and Restricted Quantification'

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63 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 1. Nature of Wisdom
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.
1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 2. Ancient Philosophy / b. Pre-Socratic philosophy
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
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
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.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 2. Categorisation
Even fairly simple animals make judgements based on categories [Gelman]
     Full Idea: All organisms form categories: even mealworms have category-based preferences, and higher-order animals such as pigeons or octopi can display quite sophisticated categorical judgements.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims')
     A reaction: [She cites some 1980 research to support this] This comes as no surprise, as I take categorisation as almost definitive of what a mind is. My surmise is that some sort of 'labelling' system is at the heart of it (like Googlemail labels!).
Children accept real stable categories, with nonobvious potential that gives causal explanations [Gelman]
     Full Idea: By five children assume that a variety of categories have rich inductive potential, are stable over outward transformations, include crucial nonobvious properties, have innate potential, privilege causal features, can be explained causally, and are real.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Intro')
     A reaction: This is Gelman's helpful summary of the findings of research on childhood essentialising, and says the case for this phenomenon is 'compelling'.
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 3. Structural Relations
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]
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 6. Platonic Forms / a. Platonic Forms
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
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?
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
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 6. Platonic Forms / b. Partaking
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
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 6. Platonic Forms / c. Self-predication
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
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 6. Platonic Forms / d. Forms critiques
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
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
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 2. Abstract Objects / a. Nature of abstracta
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.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
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.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / a. Intrinsic unification
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.
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!
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / c. Types of substance
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
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / c. Wholes from parts
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.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 1. Essences of Objects
In India, upper-castes essentialize caste more than lower-castes do [Gelman]
     Full Idea: The notion of caste in India is more essentialized among upper-caste than lower-caste individuals.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Intro')
     A reaction: In a book defending fairly innate essentialism in the human race, Gelman offers this point as a warning that large cultural ingredients can be involved. Racism is the classic difficulty with essentialism.
Essentialism is either natural to us, or an accident of our culture, or a necessary result of language [Gelman]
     Full Idea: The two views contrasting with essentialism naturally emerging in childhood are the claim that essentialism is a historical accident emerging from Western philosophy, and that essentialism is an inherent consequence of naming things.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Background')
     A reaction: Helpful. I take Idea 15682 to rule out the idea that it is just a feature of western culture. I can't conceive of early man surviving without essentialism. I don't think it rules out the naming view. Animals may do what emerges in us as full 'naming'.
Children's concepts include nonobvious features, like internal parts, functions and causes [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Children incorporate a variety of nonobvious features into their concepts, including internal parts, functions, causes, and ontological distinctions.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims')
     A reaction: This remark sums up the general thesis of her book, which she supports with a wealth of first-hand evidence. It supports my view, that the desire and need for explanation is at the root of essentialist concepts. It's hard wired in us.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 2. Types of Essence
Essentialism: real or representational? sortal, causal or ideal? real particulars, or placeholders? [Gelman]
     Full Idea: We map types of essentialism by asking is it in the world or in our representations, is it sortal or causal or ideal, and is it specific particulars or placeholders for the unknown?
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims')
     A reaction: I am struck by the way that this practising experimental psychologist gets to ask questions and make distinctions much more extensively than most armchair philosophers on the subject. She focuses on the representational, causal, placeholder view.
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
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 5. Essence as Kind
Essentialism says categories have a true hidden nature which gives an object its identity [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Essentialism is the view that categories have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly but that gives an object its identity.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Intro')
     A reaction: I think the introduction of categories here is a misunderstanding. Does an uncategorisable thing therefore have no identity (even though it has properties)? If categories give objects their identity, what gives categories their identity?
Sortals are needed for determining essence - the thing must be categorised first [Gelman]
     Full Idea: I suggest that sortals are likewise required for determining essence. One cannot answer the question 'What is the essence of this?' without supplying the sortal - of this 'what'.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims')
     A reaction: I remain baffled by this view. I take the category to be an inductive generalisation from other similar individuals. It can't get off the ground if you don't start with the individuals. Sortals are just a shorthand.
Kind (unlike individual) essentialism assumes preexisting natural categories [Gelman]
     Full Idea: With kind essentialism the person assumes that the world is divided up into preexisting natural categories. Individual essentialism seems not to require any such commitment to kind realism.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Essentialism')
     A reaction: This pinpoints my difficulty: how do we decide whether some category or attributed essence is part of a preexisting natural kind? Some natural kinds are self-evident, like water (roughly), but others need subtle teasing out. How is the teasing done?
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier
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
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / c. Essentials are necessary
Kinship is essence that comes in degrees, and age groups are essences that change over time [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Kinship is essentialized, but admits of degrees, ...and people can be essentialist even about categories they do not view as fixed over time, such as age groupings.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 03 'Summary')
     A reaction: Given my notion of essence are necessarily explanatory, I embrace both of these points. Being very athletic comes in degrees, and changes over times.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
Essentialism comes from the cognitive need to categorise [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Essentialism has its source in the cognitive requirement of categorization in certain domains - particularly as they affect the young learner.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Essentialist')
     A reaction: I think the phenomenon is better understood as part of the cognitive requirement to understand and explain. Categorisation is just one way to aid explanation. Children try to understand (essentially) a new animal without categorisation.
We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children [Gelman]
     Full Idea: We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children. ...Mothers teach children about kinds, not about essences, and mothers help children identify which categories are richly structured.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 07 'Conclusions')
     A reaction: This is a psychologist who specialises in this topic. If you think essentialism is inculcated by a our culture, you will have to blame the fathers.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Essentialism is useful for predictions, but it is not the actual structure of reality [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Essentialism is a reasoning heuristic that allows us to make fairly good predictions much of the time, but it should not be confused with the structure of reality.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Discussion')
     A reaction: She particularly cites biology as the area where it might be inaccurate. I'm beginning to think that the operations of induction are the place to look for an good understanding of essentialism.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential
Peope favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is [Gelman]
     Full Idea: People favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is. ...An object looking like a knife is less likely to be called 'a knife' if it is described as having been created by accident.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Essentialism')
     A reaction: I like this because it talks, suggestively, of 'historical paths' rather than of 'origin'. Thus we might judge a person's identity by their traumatic experience rather than by their birth. This doesn't challenge necessity of origin, but affects labels.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding
There is intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist and deontological understanding [Gelman]
     Full Idea: The modes of understanding (or modes of construal) which have been proposed are intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist (perhaps), and deontological.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Broadening')
     A reaction: She cites psychological research to support this, and calls it 'a relatively small number' of modes. Compare Aristotle's four modes of cause/explanation.
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 4. Memory
Memories often conform to a theory, rather than being neutral [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Memory is notorious for conforming to theory (rather than memory being a neutral source of information).
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 09 'Theory')
     A reaction: This observation by a psychologist is music to sceptics about objectivity. Memory is so fundamental to our basic epistemology that it could even be the nature of thought itself.
14. Science / C. Induction / 1. Induction
Inductive success is rewarded with more induction [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Inductive success is rewarded with more induction.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Broadening')
     A reaction: I love this one. Neat, accurate, and central to how we understand the world. I take inductive success to be stored as labels, concepts, categories, words and general truths, which are then our resource for further attempts.
14. Science / C. Induction / 3. Limits of Induction
Children overestimate the power of a single example [Gelman]
     Full Idea: We suggest that children overestimate the power of a single example.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role')
     A reaction: This conclusion arises from extensive psychological research. 'My grandma smoked, and she lived to be 97' - adults do this too. Wittgenstein says assuming other minds because of your own is induction from one example!
Children make errors in induction by focusing too much on categories [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Because of their narrow focus, children's sensitivity to categories as the basis of induction is a reasoning bias that, though useful much of the time, results in systematic errors.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role')
     A reaction: This is the bad sense of 'essentialism' which worries its opponents. Presumably, though, my favoured scientific essentialism will be 'scientific', and avoid this problem. The relation between categories and induction needs to be clear.
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / b. Raven paradox
Read 'all ravens are black' as about ravens, not as about an implication [Belnap]
     Full Idea: 'All ravens are black' might profitably be read as saying not that being a raven 'implies' being black, but rather something more like 'Consider the ravens: each one is black'.
     From: Nuel D. Belnap (Conditional Assertion and Restricted Quantification [1970], p.7), quoted by Stephen Yablo - Aboutness 04.5
     A reaction: Belnap is more interested in the logic than in the paradox of confirmation, since he evidently thinks that universal generalisations should not be read as implications. I like Belnap's suggestion.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / a. Explanation
People tend to be satisfied with shallow explanations [Gelman]
     Full Idea: People tend to be satisfied with rather shallow explanations.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Is essentialism')
     A reaction: She cites some psychological research to support this. Pretty obvious really. I take the so-called 'scientific method' to be nothing more than ceasing to be satisfied with such shallowness.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / b. Aims of explanation
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]
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / g. Controlling emotions
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.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology
Folk essentialism rests on belief in natural kinds, in hidden properties, and on words indicating structures [Gelman]
     Full Idea: The three components of essentialism as a folk belief are the idea that certain categories are natural kinds, the idea that some unobservable property causes the way things are, and the idea that words reflect real structures.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims')
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / a. Concepts as representations
Labels may indicate categories which embody an essence [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Labels may signal categories that are believed to embody an essence.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 02 'Privileged')
     A reaction: This is quoted by her, as a summary of a substantial body of research which she endorses. I cite it because it pinpoints my own view. I take 'labels' to be basic to minds, as organisers of thought, and this ties essences to labels. Satisfying picture.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / a. Conceptual structure
Causal properties are seen as more central to category concepts [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Properties that enter into causally meaningful links are better remembered and are treated as more central to the category than properties that are not causally meaningful.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation2')
     A reaction: This is a summary of considerable psychological research. This account not only sounds plausible, but would fit better withy why we form concepts and categories in the first place. We are trying to relate to the causations of nature.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / d. Concepts as prototypes
Categories are characterized by distance from a prototype [Gelman]
     Full Idea: On prototype views, categories are characterized by distance from a prototype.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation')
     A reaction: Gelman observes that this view makes no reference to any causal features of things. This cuts them off from using underlying essences in the process of categorisation and concept-formation. How do you spot a prototype, with no category?
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / f. Theory theory of concepts
Theory-based concepts use rich models to show which similarities really matter [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Theory-based approaches to categories are a response to the limitations of mere similarities holding the category together, and require knowledge-rich explanatory models to say which features are more central to a concept.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation1')
     A reaction: I see a promising account in linking theory theory to essentialism. For a physical object (or even for a process) infer a structure, and then identify what is most important in that structure. That gives you your stable, agreed concept.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / c. Concepts without language
Prelinguistic infants acquire and use many categories [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Language does not appear to be necessary for forming categories, since prelinguistic infants acquire many categories, and even use categories to form inferences about unknown properties.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Intro')
     A reaction: She cites lots of research in support of this claim. The idea may come as a surprise to some people, but not to me. I take it that categorisation is what a brain is for, including animal brains.
19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
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.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / c. Ethical intuitionism
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).
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
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
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / b. Types of good
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.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / f. Good as pleasure
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?
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / d. Routes to happiness
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.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 1. Virtue Theory / a. Nature of virtue
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.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 4. Boredom
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
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 3. Knowing Kinds
One sample of gold is enough, but one tree doesn't give the height of trees [Gelman]
     Full Idea: We can confidently determine the chemical composition of gold from just a single sample, but we cannot determine the height of trees from just a single tree.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role')
     A reaction: The tricky word here is 'confidently'. If you meet one Latvian who is nice, do you assume they are all nice? At what point do you decide gold etc. really are natural kinds, where one sample tells all? Evolution of species...
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 5. Reference to Natural Kinds
Nouns seem to invoke stable kinds more than predicates do [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Children judged personal characteristics as more stable when they were referred to by a noun ('She is a carrot eater') than by a verbal predicate ('She eats carrots whenever she can')
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Naming')
     A reaction: This fits with my feeling that 'labels' are the basis of how the mind works. The noun invokes a genuine category of thing, where a predicate attaches to some preselected category ('she'). Gelman says names encourage inductions.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / a. Scientific essentialism
Essentialism encourages us to think about the world scientifically [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Essentialism encourages a 'scientific' mindset in thinking about the natural world, a belief that intensive study of a natural domain will yield ever more underlying properties.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Intro')
     A reaction: Maybe scientists must be committed to essences, the way mathematicians must be committed to numbers? This idea spendidly opposes the doubts expressed by Popper.
Essentialism doesn't mean we know the essences [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Essentialism does not entail that people know what the essence is.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 09 'Theory')
     A reaction: This is a fundamental and (I would say) fairly obvious point, but it needs to be made to the more passionate opponents of essentialism.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / d. Knowing essences
Essentialism starts from richly structured categories, leading to a search for underlying properties [Gelman]
     Full Idea: If my speculations are correct, then essentialism starts out strictly as a belief that many categories are richly structured kinds, then additionally becomes a search for underlying inherent properties.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 10 'Figuring')
     A reaction: This is her summary of extensive essentialist research among children. She favours the priority of kinds and categories. We actually change taxonomies on the basis of revisions in our accounts of essence. Science negotiates.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / e. Anti scientific essentialism
A major objection to real essences is the essentialising of social categories like race, caste and occupation [Gelman]
     Full Idea: One major argument against the view that essences are real is the rampant essentializing of categories that are socially constructed (such as race, caste and occupation).
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Is essentialism')
     A reaction: You can't argue with that. It raises the question of whether the approach of scientific essentialism has any value in the social, rather than physical, sciences. We jokingly essentialise groups of people such as referees or Oxonians.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / a. Beginning of time
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