56 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 |
| 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. |
| 6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Eventually set theory will have to be either naturalised or rejected, if a thoroughgoing physicalism is to be maintained. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I regard Platonism as a form of naturalism (though a rather bold and dramatic one). The central issue seems to be the ability of the human main/brain to form 'abstract' notions about the physical world in which it lives. |
| 6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Institutional types are irreducible, though I assume that institutional tokens are reducible in the sense of strict identity, all the way down to the subatomic level. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems a promising distinction, as the boundaries of 'institutions' disappear when you begin to reduce them to lower levels (cf. Idea 4601), and yet plenty of institutions are self-evidently no more than physics. Plants are invisible as physics. |
| 6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: If types cannot be reduced to more physical levels, this is not an embarrassment, as long as our institutional categories, our physiological categories, and our physical categories are just alternative groupings of the same tokens. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a self-evident truth about a car engine, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply equally to a brain. Lycan's identification of the type as the thing which cannot be reduced seems a promising explanation of much confusion among philosophers. |
| 6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: One space-time slice may be occupied by a collection of molecules, a metal strip, a key, an allower of entry to hotel rooms, a facilitator of adultery, and a destroyer souls. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Desdemona's handkerchief is a nice example. This sort of remark seems to be felt by some philosophers to be heartless wickedness, and yet it so screamingly self-evident that it is impossible to deny. |
| 6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.0) | |
| A reaction: A passing remark in a discussion of functionalism about the mind, but I find it appealing. Causation is basic to materialistic metaphysics, and it creates networks of regular causes. It leaves open the essentialist question of WHY it has that role. |
| 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] |
| 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? |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Personally I favour direct realism regarding secondary qualities, and identify greenness with some complex microphysical property exemplified by green physical objects. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: He cites D.M.Armstrong (1981) as his source. Personally I find this a bewildering proposal. Does he think there is greenness in grass AS WELL AS the emission of that wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation? Is greenness zooming through the air? |
| 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] |
| 6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Intentionality comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree. A footprint is 'about' a foot, in the sense of containing concentrated information about it. Can we, though, envisage a higher degree than human thought? Is there a maximum degree? Everything is 'about' everything, in some respect. |
| 6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The teleological view begins to explain intentionality, and in particular allows brain states and events to have false intentional content; causal and nomological theories of intentionality tend to falter on this last task. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly if you say thought is 'caused' by the world, false thought become puzzling. I'm not sure I understand the rest of this, but it is an intriguing remark about a significant issue… |
| 6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal experience of pain has components - it is a complex, consisting (perhaps) of urges, desires, impulses, and beliefs, probably occurring at quite different levels of institutional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true, and offers the reductionist a strategy for making inroads into the supposed irreducable and fundamental nature of qualia. What's it like to be a complex hierarchically structured multi-functional organism? |
| 6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: It is just arbitrary to choose a level of nature a priori as the locus of qualia, even though we can agree that high levels (such as behaviourism) and low-levels (such as the subatomic) can be ruled out as totally improbable. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Very good. People scream 'qualia!' whenever the behaviour level or the atomic level are proposed as the locations of the mind, but the suggestion that they are complex, and are spread across many functional levels in the middle sounds good. |
| 6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: By interacting causally, Cartesian dualism seems to violate the conservation laws of physics (concerning matter and energy). This seems testable, and afferent and efferent pathways disappearing into thin air would suggest energy is not conserved. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It would seem to be no problem as long as outputs were identical in energy to inputs. If the experiment could actually be done, the result might astonish us. |
| 6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Evolution has proceeded in all other known species by increasingly complex configurations of molecules and organs, which support primitive psychologies; our human psychologies are more advanced, but undeniably continuous with lower animals. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find the evolution objection to dualism highly persuasive. I don't see how anyone can take evolution seriously and be a dualist. If there is a dramatic ontological break at some point, a plausible reason would be needed for that. |
| 6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Old joke: two Behaviourists meet in the street, and the first says,"You're fine; how am I?" | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], n1.6) | |
| A reaction: This invites the response that introspection is uniquely authoritative about 'how we are', but this has been challenged quite a lot recently, which pushes us to consider whether these stupid behaviourists might actually have a good point. |
| 6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Analytical functionalists', who hold that meanings of mental terms are determined by the causal roles associated with them by 'folk psychology', deny themselves appeals to lower levels of functional organisation. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably folk psychology can fit into the kind of empirical methodology favoured by behaviourists, whereas 'lower levels' are going to become rather speculative and unscientific. |
| 6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The functionalist must find a level of characterisation of mental states that is not so abstract or behaviouristic as to rule out the possibility of inverted spectrum etc., nor so specific and structural as to fall into chauvinism. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: If too specific then animals and aliens won't be able to implement the necessary functions; if the theory becomes very behaviouristic, then it loses interest in the possibility of an inverted spectrum. He is certainly right to hunt for a middle ground. |
| 6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Even the software/hardware distinction as it is literally applied within computer science is philosophically unclear. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is true, and very important for functionalist theories of the mind. Even very volatile software is realised in 'hard' physics, and rewritable discs etc blur the distinction between 'programmable' and 'hardwired'. |
| 6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am taking mental types to form a small subclass of teleological types occurring for the most part at a high level of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to say that he understand teleology in evolutionary terms. There is always a gap between how you characterise or individuate something, and what it actually is. To say spanners are 'a small subclass of tools' is not enough. |
| 6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Highly teleological characterisations, unlike naïve and explicated mental characterisations, have the virtue of shading off fairly smoothly into (more) brutely physical ones. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Thus the purpose of a car engine, and a spark plug, and the spark, and the temperature, and the vibration of molecules show a fading away of the overt purpose, disappearing into the pointless activity of electrons and quantum levels. |
| 6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Neuron' may be understood as a physiological term or a functional term, so even the Identity Theorist is a Functionalist - one who locates mental entities at a very low level of abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a striking observation, and somewhat inclines me to switch from identity theory to functionalism. If you ask what is the correct level of abstraction, Lycan's teleological-homuncular version refers you to all the levels. |
| 6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am explicating the mental in a reductive way, by reducing mental characterizations to homuncular institutional ones, which are teleological characterizations at various levels of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the germ of a very good physicalist account of the mind. More is needed than a mere assertion about what the mind reduces to at the very lowest level; this offers a decent account of the descending stages of reduction. |
| 6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Teleological functionalism helps us to understand the nature of biological and psychological laws, particularly in the face of Davidsonian scepticism about the latter. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I doubt the existence of psycho-physical laws, but only because of the vast complexity. They would be like the laws of weather. 'Psycho-physical' laws seem to presuppose some sort of dualism. |
| 6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Quite possibly a Martian's humanoid behaviour is prompted by his having sensations somewhat unlike ours, despite his superficial behavioural similarities to us. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this firmly refutes the multiple realisability objection to type-type physicalism. Mental events are individuated by their phenomenal features (known only to the user), and by their causal role (publicly available). These are separate. |
| 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. |
| 18552 | Forget about beauty; just concentrate on the virtues of delicacy and discernment admired in critics [Hume, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Hume suggest we get away from the fruitless discussion of beauty, and simply concentrate on the qualities we admire, and ought to admire, in a critic - qualities such as delicacy and discernment. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: We might wonder how you can admire 'discernment' without some view of the thing being discern, which is in danger of being beauty. How do you judge delicacy and discernment without judging the objects of the critic's taste? Mere authority? |
| 6608 | Strong sense, delicate sentiment, practice, comparisons, and lack of prejudice, are all needed for good taste [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to the valuable character of having 'taste'. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely with this, but then I am a very politically incorrect elitist when it comes to taste. It just seems screamingly obvious that professional wine-tasters have a better appreciation of wine than me, and so on for the rest of the arts. |
| 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 |
| 6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who says that key concepts, such as those concerning the mind, should come 'in degrees' wins my instant support. A whole car engine requires a very teleological explanation, the spark in the sparkplug far less so. |
| 6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: An object is specifically physical if it figures in explanations and descriptions of features of ordinary non-living matter, as in current physics; it is more generally physical if it is simply located in space-time. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: This gives a useful distinction when trying to formulate a 'physicalist' account of the mind, where type-type physicalism says only the 'postulates of physics' can be used, whereas 'naturalism' about the mind uses the more general concept. |
| 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 |