29 ideas
| 16123 | Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The rule is that when one perceives first the community between the members of a group of many things, one should not desist until one sees in it all those differences that are located in classes. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285b) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to recommend the opposite as well - see community even when there appears to be nothing but differences. I take this to be analysis, just as much as modern linguistic approaches are. Analyse the world, not language. |
| 1848 | We are coerced into assent to a truth by reason's violence [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: We are coerced into assent to a truth by reason's violence. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.10) |
| 1858 | The mind is compelled by necessary truths, but not by contingent truths [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Mind is compelled by necessary truths that can't be regarded as false, but not by contingent ones that might be false. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 12) |
| 16125 | To reveal a nature, divide down, and strip away what it has in common with other things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Let's take the kind posited and cut it in two, .then follow the righthand part of what we've cut, and hold onto things that the sophist is associated with until we strip away everything he has in common with other things, then display his peculiar nature. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 264e) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be close to Aristotle's account of definition, when he is trying to get at what-it-is-to-be some thing. But if you strip away everything the definiendum has in common with other things, will anything remain? |
| 16124 | No one wants to define 'weaving' just for the sake of weaving [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I don't suppose that anyone with any sense would want to hunt down the definition of 'weaving' for the sake of weaving itself. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285d) | |
| A reaction: The point seems to be that the definition brings out the connections between weaving and other activities and objects, thus enlarging our understanding. |
| 1852 | For the mind Good is one truth among many, and Truth is one good among many [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Good itself as taken in by mind is one truth among others, and truth itself as goal of mind's activity is one good among others. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply) |
| 14596 | Call 'nominalism' the denial of numbers, properties, relations and sets [Dorr] |
| Full Idea: Just as there are no numbers or properties, there are no relations (like 'being heavier than' or 'betweenness'), or sets. I will provisionally use 'nominalism' for the conjunction of these four claims. | |
| From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: If you are going to be a nominalist, do it properly! My starting point in metaphysics is strong sympathy with this view. Right now [Tues 22nd Nov 2011, 10:57 am GMT] I think it is correct. |
| 14597 | Natural Class Nominalism says there are primitive classes of things resembling in one respect [Dorr] |
| Full Idea: Natural Class Nominalists take as primitive the notion of a 'natural' class - a class of things that all resemble one another in some one respect and resemble nothing else in that respect. | |
| From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 4) | |
| A reaction: Dorr rejects this view because he doesn't believe in 'classes'. How committed to classes do you have to be before you are permitted to talk about them? All vocabulary (such as 'resemble') seems metaphysically tainted in this area. |
| 14598 | Abstracta imply non-logical brute necessities, so only nominalists can deny such things [Dorr] |
| Full Idea: If there are abstract objects, there are necessary truths about these things that cannot be reduced to truths of logic. So only the nominalist, who denies that there are any such things, can adequately respect the idea that there are no brute necessities. | |
| From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is where two plates of my personal philosophy grind horribly against one another. I love nominalism, and I love natural necessities. They meet like a ring-species in evolution. I'll just call it a 'paradox', and move on (swiftly). |
| 5961 | The soul gets its goodness from god, and its evil from previous existence. [Plato] |
| Full Idea: From its composer the soul possesses all beautiful things, but from its former condition, everything that proves to be harsh and unjust in heaven. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 273b) | |
| A reaction: A neat move to explain the origins of evil (or rather, to shift the problem of evil to a long long way from here). This view presumably traces back to the views of Empedocles on good and evil. Can the soul acquire evil in its current existence? |
| 1860 | Knowledge may be based on senses, but we needn't sense all our knowledge [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: All our knowledge comes through our senses, but that doesn't mean that everything we know is sensed. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 18) |
| 1855 | If we saw something as totally and utterly good, we would be compelled to will it [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Something apprehended to be good and appropriate in any and every circumstance that could be thought of would compel us to will it. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply) |
| 1856 | Nothing can be willed except what is good, but good is very varied, and so choices are unpredictable [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can be willed except good, but many and various things are good, and you can't conclude from this that wills are compelled to choose this or that one. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 05) |
| 1862 | However habituated you are, given time to ponder you can go against a habit [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: However habituated you are, given time to ponder you can go against a habit. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 24) |
| 1849 | Since will is a reasoning power, it can entertain opposites, so it is not compelled to embrace one of them [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Reasoning powers can entertain opposite objects. Now will is a reasoning power, so will can entertain opposites and is not compelled to embrace one of them. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.x2) |
| 1861 | The will is not compelled to move, even if pleasant things are set before it [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: The will is not compelled to move, for it doesn't have to want the pleasant things set before it. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 21) |
| 1853 | Because the will moves by examining alternatives, it doesn't compel itself to will [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Because will moves itself by deliberation - a kind of investigation which doesn't prove some one way correct but examines the alternatives - will doesn't compel itself to will. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply) |
| 1854 | We must admit that when the will is not willing something, the first movement to will must come from outside the will [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: We are forced to admit that, in any will that is not always willing, the very first movement to will must come from outside, stimulating the will to start willing. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply) | |
| A reaction: cf Nietzsche |
| 283 | The question of whether or not to persuade comes before the science of persuasion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The science of whether one must persuade or not must rule over the science capable of persuading. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 304c) | |
| A reaction: Plato probably thinks that reason has to be top of the pyramid, but there is always the Nietzschean/romantic question of why we should place such a value on what is rational. |
| 1847 | The will must aim at happiness, but can choose the means [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: The will is compelled by its ultimate goal (to achieve happiness), but not by the means to achieve it. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.07) |
| 1857 | We don't have to will even perfect good, because we can choose not to think of it [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: The will can avoid actually willing something by avoiding thinking of it, since mental activity is subject to will. In this respect we aren't compelled to will even total happiness, which is the only perfect good. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 07) |
| 1846 | The will can only want what it thinks is good [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Will's object is what is good, and so it cannot will anything but what is good. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.06) |
| 282 | Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The bodiless things, being the most beautiful and the greatest, are only shown with clarity by speech and nothing else. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 286a) | |
| A reaction: Unfortunately this will be true of warped and ugly ideas as well. |
| 1850 | Without free will not only is ethical action meaningless, but also planning, commanding, praising and blaming [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: If we are not free to will in any way, but are compelled, everything that makes up ethics vanishes: pondering action, exhorting, commanding, punishing, praising, condemning. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply) | |
| A reaction: If doesn't require some magical 'free will' to avoid compulsions. All that is needed is freedom to enact your own willing, rather than someone else's. |
| 1851 | Good applies to goals, just as truth applies to ideas in the mind [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Good applies to all goals, just as truth applies to all forms mind takes in. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply) | |
| A reaction: In danger of being tautological, if good is understood as no more than the goal of actions. It seems perfectly possibly to pursue a wicked end, and perhaps feel guilty about it. |
| 281 | The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is by preserving the mean that arts produce everything that is good and beautiful. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 284b) |
| 22559 | Democracy is the worst of good constitutions, but the best of bad constitutions [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato judged that when the constitution is decent, democracy is the worst of them, but when they are bad it is the best. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 302e) by Aristotle - Politics 1289b07 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle denies that a good oligarchy is superior. What of technocracy? The challenge is to set up institutions which ensure the health of the democracy. The big modern problem is populists who lie. |
| 1859 | Even a sufficient cause doesn't compel its effect, because interference could interrupt the process [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Even a sufficient cause doesn't always compel its effect, since it can sometimes be interfered with so that its effect doesn't happen | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 15) |
| 279 | Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is fitting for only the most divine things of all to be always the same and in the same state and in the same respects, and the nature of body is not of this ordering. | |
| From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 269b) |