46 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 |
| 18274 | Analysis complicates a statement, but only as far as the complexity of its meaning [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Analysis makes the statement more complicated than it was; but it cannot and ought not to make it more complicated than its meaning (Bedeutung) was to begin with. When the statement is as complex as its meaning, then it is completely analysed. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], 46e) | |
| A reaction: But how do you assess how complex the 'Bedeutung' was before you started? |
| 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. |
| 21695 | The set scheme discredited by paradoxes is actually the most natural one [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Each proposed revision of set theory is unnatural, because the natural scheme is the unrestricted one that the antinomies discredit. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.16) | |
| A reaction: You can either takes this free-far-all version of set theory, and gradually restrain it for each specific problem, or start from scratch and build up in safe steps. The latter is (I think) the 'iterated' approach. |
| 21693 | Russell's antinomy challenged the idea that any condition can produce a set [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In the case of Russell's antinomy, the tacit and trusted pattern of reasoning that is found wanting is this: for any condition you can formulate, there is a class whose members are the things meeting the condition. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.11) | |
| A reaction: This is why Russell's Paradox is so important for set theory, which in turn makes it important for the foundations of mathematics. |
| 16908 | We can dispense with self-evidence, if language itself prevents logical mistakes [Jeshion on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The 'self-evidence' of which Russell talks so much can only be dispensed with in logic if language itself prevents any logical mistake. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], 4) by Robin Jeshion - Frege's Notion of Self-Evidence 4 | |
| A reaction: Jeshion presents this as a key idea, turning against Frege, and is the real source of the 'linguistic turn' in philosophy. If self-evidence is abandoned, then language itself is the guide to truth, so study language. I think I prefer Frege. See Quine? |
| 18276 | A statement's logical form derives entirely from its constituents [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The logical form of the statement must already be given in the forms of its constituents. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], 23e) | |
| A reaction: This would evidently require each constituent to have a 'logical form'. It is hard to see what that could beyond its part of speech. Do two common nouns have the same logical form? |
| 6563 | 'And' and 'not' are non-referring terms, which do not represent anything [Wittgenstein, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's 'fundamental idea' is that the 'and' and 'not' which guarantee the truth of "not p and not-p" are meaningful, but do not get their meaning by representing or standing for or referring to some kind of entity; they are non-referring terms. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], §37) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein then defines the terms using truth tables, to show what they do, rather than what they stand for. This seems to me to be a candidate for the single most important idea in the history of the philosophy of logic. |
| 21691 | Antinomies contradict accepted ways of reasoning, and demand revisions [Quine] |
| Full Idea: An 'antinomy' produces a self-contradiction by accepted ways of reasoning. It establishes that some tacit and trusted pattern of reasoning must be made explicit and henceforward be avoided or revised. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.05) | |
| A reaction: Quine treats antinomies as of much greater importance than mere paradoxes. It is often possible to give simple explanations of paradoxes, but antinomies go to the root of our belief system. This was presumably Kant's intended meaning. |
| 21690 | Whenever the pursuer reaches the spot where the pursuer has been, the pursued has moved on [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The Achilles argument is that (if the front runner keeps running) each time the pursuer reaches a spot where the pursuer has been, the pursued has moved a bit beyond. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.03) | |
| A reaction: Quine is always wonderfully lucid, and this is the clearest simple statement of the paradox. |
| 21689 | A barber shaves only those who do not shave themselves. So does he shave himself? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In a certain village there is a barber, who shaves all and only those men in the village who do not shave themselves. So does the barber shave himself? The barber shaves himself if and only if he does not shave himself. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.02) | |
| A reaction: [Russell himself quoted this version of his paradox, from an unnamed source] Quine treats his as trivial because it only concerns barbers, but the full Russell paradox is a major 'antinomy', because it concerns sets. |
| 21694 | Membership conditions which involve membership and non-membership are paradoxical [Quine] |
| Full Idea: With Russell's antinomy, ...each tie the trouble comes of taking a membership condition that itself talks in turn of membership and non-membership. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.13) | |
| A reaction: Hence various stipulations to rule out vicious circles or referring to sets of the 'wrong type' are invoked to cure the problem. The big question is how strong to make the restrictions. |
| 21692 | If we write it as '"this sentence is false" is false', there is no paradox [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If we supplant the sentence 'this sentence is false' with one saying what it refers to, we get '"this sentence is false" is false'. But then the whole outside sentence attributes falsity no longer to itself but to something else, so there is no paradox. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.07) | |
| A reaction: Quine is pointing us towards type theory and meta-languages to solve the problem. We now have the Revenge Liar, and the problem has not been fully settled. |
| 23472 | The sense of propositions relies on the world's basic logical structure [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In order for a proposition to be CAPABLE of making sense, the world must already have the logical structure it has. The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], p.14c) | |
| A reaction: It seems that in Tractatus it is propositions about facts which are true or false, but prior to the facts are substance and the objects, and it is there that we find the logical structure of the world. I see this view as modern stoicism. |
| 14502 | Plato's idea of 'structure' tends to be mathematically expressed [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: 'Structure' tends to be characterized by Plato as something that is mathematically expressed. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects V.3 iv | |
| A reaction: [Koslicki is drawing on Verity Harte here] |
| 17948 | Plato's Forms meant that the sophists only taught the appearance of wisdom and virtue [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato's theory of Forms allowed him to claim that the sophists and other opponents were trapped in the world of appearance. What they therefore taught was only apparent wisdom and virtue. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.118 |
| 3039 | When Diogenes said he could only see objects but not their forms, Plato said it was because he had eyes but no intellect [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When Diogenes told Plato he saw tables and cups, but not 'tableness' and 'cupness', Plato replied that this was because Diogenes had eyes but no intellect. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.2.6 |
| 20906 | Platonists argue for the indivisible triangle-in-itself [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Platonists, on the basis of purely logical arguments, posit the existence of an indivisible 'triangle in itself'. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 316a15 | |
| A reaction: A helpful confirmation that geometrical figures really are among the Forms (bearing in mind that numbers are not, because they contain one another). What shape is the Form of the triangle? |
| 556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there is the same Form for the Forms and for their participants, then they must have something in common. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 563 | If gods are like men, they are just eternal men; similarly, Forms must differ from particulars [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: We say there is the form of man, horse and health, but nothing else, making the same mistake as those who say that there are gods but that they are in the form of men. They just posit eternal men, and here we are not positing forms but eternal sensibles. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 997b |
| 557 | A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 565 | The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Forms could not be changeless if they were in changing things. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 998a |
| 9607 | The greatest discovery in human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects [Brown,JR on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The greatest discovery in the history of human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch. 2 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 2860! Given the diametrically opposed views, it is clearly likely that Plato's central view is the most important idea in the history of human thought, even if it is wrong. |
| 13263 | We can grasp whole things in science, because they have a mathematics and a teleology [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Due to the mathematical nature of structure and the teleological cause underlying the creation of Platonic wholes, these wholes are intelligible, and are in fact the proper objects of science. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: I like this idea, because it pays attention to the connection between how we conceive objects to be, and how we are able to think about objects. Only examining these two together enables us to grasp metaphysics. |
| 13261 | Plato sees an object's structure as expressible in mathematics [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The 'structure' of an object tends to be characterised by Plato as something that is mathematically expressible. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be pure Pythagoreanism (see Idea 644). Plato is pursuing Pythagoras's research programme, of trying to find mathematics buried in every aspect of reality. |
| 13265 | Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the source of unity in a complex object [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the project of how to account, in completely general terms, for the source of unity within a mereologically complex object. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.5 | |
| A reaction: Plato seems to have simply asserted that some sort of harmony held things together. Aristotles puts the forms [eidos] within objects, rather than external, so he has to give a fuller account of what is going on in an object. He never managed it! |
| 593 | Plato's holds that there are three substances: Forms, mathematical entities, and perceptible bodies [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato's doctrine was that the Forms and mathematicals are two substances and that the third substance is that of perceptible bodies. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1028b |
| 13260 | Plato says wholes are either containers, or they're atomic, or they don't exist [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato considers a 'container' model for wholes (which are disjoint from their parts) [Parm 144e3-], and a 'nihilist' model, in which only wholes are mereological atoms, and a 'bare pluralities' view, in which wholes are not really one at all. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
| A reaction: [She cites Verity Harte for this analysis of Plato] The fourth, and best, seems to be that wholes are parts which fall under some unifying force or structure or principle. |
| 11237 | Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato argues that only universals have essence. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 11238 | Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle have a shared general conception of essence: the essence of a thing is what that thing is simply in virtue of itself and in virtue of being the very thing it is. It answers the question 'What is this very thing?' | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 23500 | My main problem is the order of the world, and whether it is knowable a priori [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The great problem around which everything turns that I write is: is there an order in the world a priori, and if so what does it consist in? | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], 15.06.01) | |
| A reaction: Morris identifies this as a 'Kantian question'. I trace it back to stoicism. This question has never bothered me. It just seems weird to think that you can infer reality from the examination of your own thinking. Perhaps I should take it more seriously? |
| 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] |
| 22323 | The philosophical I is the metaphysical subject, the limit - not a part of the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body, or the human soul of wh9ch psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit - not a part of the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], 1916. 2 Sep), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 58 Intro | |
| A reaction: This is to treat the self as a phenomenon of thought, rather than of a human being. So if a machine could think, would it hence necessarily have a metaphysical self? |
| 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. |
| 23481 | Propositions assemble a world experimentally, like the model of a road accident [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In the proposition a world is as it were put together experimentally. (As when in the law court in Paris a motor-car accident is represented by means of dolls, etc). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], 14.09.29) | |
| A reaction: [see Tractatus 4.031] This is the first appearance of LW's picture (or model) theory of meaning. It may well be the best theory of meaning anyone has come up with, since meaning being out in the world strikes me as absurd. |
| 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 |
| 4678 | Absolute prohibitions are the essence of ethics, and suicide is the most obvious example [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If suicide is allowed, then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed, then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], end), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13 | |
| A reaction: This reveals the religious streak in Wittgenstein. I am reluctant to judge suicide, but this seems wrong. Should a 'jumper' worry if they land on someone else and kill them? Of course they should. |
| 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 |