5 ideas
3102 | Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee] |
Full Idea: As a child it was incomprehensible to me that I did not experience going to sleep, and never remembered it. When my sister said 'Nobody remembers that', I just thought 'How does she know?' | |
From: Bryan Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher [1997], Ch.I) | |
A reaction: This is actually evidence for something - that we do not have some sort of personal identity which is separate from consciousness, so that "I am conscious" would literally mean that an item has a property, which it can lose. |
12156 | Aesthetics has risen and fallen with Romanticism [Scruton] |
Full Idea: The rise and fall (as we presently perceive them) of aesthetics have been contemporaneous with the rise and fall of Romanticism. | |
From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.3) | |
A reaction: Maybe it started a little before Romanticism, as part of the Englightenment aim of being rational about everything, and maybe it survives Romanticism because we want to be scientific about everything. |
12158 | Aesthetic experience informs the world with the values of the observer [Scruton] |
Full Idea: It is possible to conclude that aesthetic experience has a peculiar practical significance: it represents the world as informed by the values of the observer. | |
From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.13) | |
A reaction: An excellent remark. If you look at, or listen to, anything, you can make a conscious effort to drain away your personal values (objectivity; science?), or you can consciously flood them with values. But moral and aesthetic vision must differ... |
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. |