6 ideas
| 4760 | Belief aims at knowledge (rather than truth), and mere believing is a kind of botched knowing [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Knowing is the best kind of believing. Mere believing is a kind of botched knowing. In short, belief aims at knowledge (not just truth). | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge and its Limits [2000], §1.5) | |
| A reaction: The difference between aiming at truth and aiming at knowledge has to be in the justificiation, so beliefs aim to be justified. Believers always aim at truth, but they can be strikingly relaxed about justification. |
| 19512 | Don't analyse knowledge; use knowledge to analyse other concepts in epistemology [Williamson, by DeRose] |
| Full Idea: Williamson says that instead of being viewed as a concept to be analysed, knowledge should be seen as something useful in the analysis of all sorts of other concepts to epistemology - and to philosophy of mind as well. | |
| From: report of Timothy Williamson (Knowledge and its Limits [2000]) by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.8 | |
| A reaction: I just don't believe this, because knowledge is obviously a complex state of mind, which invites breaking it down into ingredients. How could knowledge possibly be prior to truth? |
| 6003 | Galen showed by experiment that the brain controls the body [Galen, by Hankinson] |
| Full Idea: Galen established by experiments in neural anatomy that the brain really is, contra the Stoics and Aristotelians, the body's control centre. | |
| From: report of Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170]) by R.J. Hankinson - Galen (damaged) | |
| A reaction: And about time too. This is one of the most significant events in the development of human understanding. No one has been able to go back to the old view, even Descartes, no matter how much they may long to do so. |
| 6030 | Each part of the soul has its virtue - pleasure for appetite, success for competition, and rectitude for reason [Galen] |
| Full Idea: We have by nature these three appropriate relationships, corresponding to each form of the soul's parts - to pleasure because of the appetitive part, to success because of the competitive part, and to rectitude because of the rational part. | |
| From: Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170], 5.5.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice combination of Plato's tripartite theory of soul (in 'Republic') and Aristotle's derivation of virtues from functions. Presumably, though, reason should master the other two, and there is nothing in Galen's idea to explain this. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |