16 ideas
| 5893 | A wise man has integrity, firmness of will, nobility, consistency, sobriety, patience [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The wise man does nothing of which he can repent, nothing against his will, does everything nobly, consistently, soberly, rightly, not looking forward to anything as bound to come, is not astonished at any novel occurrence, abides by his own decisions. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], V.xxviii) | |
| A reaction: Notice that the wise man never exhibits weakness of will (an Aristotelian virtue), and is consistent (as Kant proposed), and is patient (as the Stoics proposed). But Cicero doesn't think he should busy himself maximising happiness. |
| 5891 | Philosophy is the collection of rational arguments [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy consists in the collection of rational arguments. [Philosophia ex rationum collatione constet] | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], IV.xxxviii.84) | |
| A reaction: A nice epigraph for this database. Philosophy is, I trust, a little more than that, because you don't just hide them away in a drawer. But if you arrange them nicely in a museum (a website, for example), not a lot more can be done. |
| 19044 | Saying truths fit experience adds nothing to truth; nothing makes sentences true [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The notion of fitting the totality of experience ...adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. ....Nothing, ...no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.11), quoted by Willard Quine - On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma p.39 | |
| A reaction: If you don't have a concept of what normally makes a sentence true, I don't see how you go about distinguishing what is true from what is false. You can't just examine the sentence to see if it has the 'primitive' property of truth. Holism is involved.... |
| 6400 | Without the dualism of scheme and content, not much is left of empiricism [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The third dogma of empiricism is the dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, which cannot be made intelligible and defensible. If we give it up, it is not clear that any distinctive empiricism remains. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.189) | |
| A reaction: The first two dogmas were 'analyticity' and 'reductionism', as identified by Quine in 1953. Presumably Hume's Principles of Association (Idea 2189) would be an example of a scheme. A key issue is whether there is any 'pure' content. |
| 6398 | Different points of view make sense, but they must be plotted on a common background [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.184) | |
| A reaction: This seems right to me. I am very struck by the close similarities between people from wildly differing cultural backgrounds, as seen, for example, at the Olympic Games. |
| 5879 | The soul is the heart, or blood in the heart, or part of the brain, of something living in heart or brain, or breath [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Some think the soul is the heart; Empedocles holds that the soul is blood in the heart; others said one part of the brain claimed the primacy of soul; others say the heart or brain are habitations of the soul; while others identify soul and breath. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.ix.17-19) | |
| A reaction: A nice survey of views. Note that many of them identify the psuché/anima with physical parts of the body; only the fourth option seems to be dualist. This is despite the contemptuous response to Democritus' atomist theory of soul. |
| 5884 | How can one mind perceive so many dissimilar sensations? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Why is it that, using the same mind, we have perception of things so utterly unlike as colour, taste, heat, smell and sound? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xx.47) | |
| A reaction: This leaves us with the 'binding problem', of how the dissimilar sensations are pulled together into one field of experience. It is a nice simple objection, though, to anyone who simplistically claims that the mind is self-evidently unified. |
| 5887 | The soul has a single nature, so it cannot be divided, and hence it cannot perish [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: In souls there is no mingling of ingredients, nothing of two-fold nature, so it is impossible for the soul to be divided; impossible, therefore, for it to perish either; for perishing is like the separation of parts which were maintained in union. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xxix.71) | |
| A reaction: Cicero knows he is pushing his luck in asserting that perishing is a sort of division. Why can't something be there one moment and gone the next? He appears to be in close agreement with Descartes about being a 'thinking thing'. |
| 5886 | Like the eye, the soul has no power to see itself, but sees other things [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The soul has not the power of itself to see itself, but, like the eye, the soul, though it does not see itself, yet discerns other things. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xxvii) | |
| A reaction: The soul is a complex item which contributes many layers of interpretation to what it sees, so there is scope for parts of the soul seeing other parts. Somewhere in the middle Cicero seems to be right - there is an elusive something we can't get at. |
| 5885 | Souls contain no properties of elements, and elements contain no properties of souls [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: No beginnings of souls can be found on earth; there is no combination in souls that could be born from earth, nothing that partakes of moist or airy or fiery; for in those elements there is nothing to possess the power of memory, thought, or reflection. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xxvi.66) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but I think magnetism is an instructive analogy, which has weird properties which we never perceive in elements (though it is there, buried deep - suggesting panpsychism). Cicero would be disconcerted to find that fire isn't an element. |
| 6399 | Criteria of translation give us the identity of conceptual schemes [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Studying the criteria of translation is a way of focusing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.184) | |
| A reaction: This is why it was an inspired idea of Quine's to make translation a central topic in philosophy. We must be cautious, though, about saying that the language is the conceptual scheme, as that leaves animals with no scheme at all. |
| 5890 | We should not share the distress of others, but simply try to relieve it [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: We ought not to share distresses ourselves for the sake of others, but we ought to relieve others of their distress if we can. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], IV.xxvi.56) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a sensible and balanced attitude. Some people, particularly in a Christian culture, urge that feeling strong and painful compassion for others is an intrinsic good, but the commonsense view is that that just increases human suffering. |
| 5894 | All men except philosophers fear poverty [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: All men are afraid of poverty, but not a single philosopher is so. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], V.xxxi.88) | |
| A reaction: Not a thought which is encountered very often in modern philosophy journals. If a person is to be 'philosophical' in the way they live, calm endurance of the vicissitudes and hardships of life has to be a key prerequisite. |
| 5895 | If one despises illiterate mechanics individually, they are not worth more collectively [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Can anything be more foolish than to suppose that those, whom individually one despises as illiterate mechanics, are worth anything collectively? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], V.xxxvi.104) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle disagrees (Idea 2823). In 1906 a huge number of people guessed the weight of a cow at a fair, and the average was within one pound of the truth. In our world the healthy workings of the group are warped by the mass media. |
| 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. |