Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'A Rsum of Metaphysics' and 'Comments on a Certain Broadsheet'

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8 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities
What experience could prove 'If a=c and b=c then a=b'? [Descartes]
     Full Idea: Please tell me what the corporeal motion is that is capable of forming some common notion to the effect that 'things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other'.
     From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.366)
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / c. Nativist concepts
The mind's innate ideas are part of its capacity for thought [Descartes]
     Full Idea: I have never written or taken the view that the mind requires innate ideas which are something distinct from its own faculty of thinking.
     From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)
Qualia must be innate, because physical motions do not contain them [Descartes]
     Full Idea: The ideas of pains, colours, sounds etc. must be all the more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions.
     From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)
     A reaction: Simple and brilliant! We know perfectly well that there is no redness zooming through the air from a tomato (or the air would be pink!). Redness occurs when the light arrives, so we add the redness, so it is innate.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 3. Pleasure / a. Nature of pleasure
Intelligent pleasure is the perception of beauty, order and perfection [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: An intelligent being's pleasure is simply the perception of beauty, order and perfection.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §18)
     A reaction: Leibniz seems to have inherited this from the Greeks, especially Pythagoras and Plato. Buried in Leibniz's remark I see the Christian fear of physical pleasure. He should have got out more. Must an intelligent being always be intelligent?
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
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.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
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.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections
Perfection is simply quantity of reality [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Perfection is simply quantity of reality.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §11)
     A reaction: An interesting claim, but totally beyond my personal comprehension. I presume he inherited 'quantity of reality' from Plato, e.g. as you move up the Line from shadows to Forms you increase the degree of reality. I see 'real' as all-or-nothing.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 3. Problem of Evil / b. Human Evil
Evil serves a greater good, and pain is necessary for higher pleasure [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Evils themselves serve a greater good, and the fact that pains are found in minds is necessary if they are to reach greater pleasures.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §23)
     A reaction: How much pain is needed to qualify for the 'greater pleasures'? Some people receive an awful lot. I am not sure exactly how an evil can 'serve' a greater good. Is he recommending evil?