23 ideas
5896 | Speak the truth, for this alone deifies man [Pythagoras, by Porphyry] |
Full Idea: Pythagoras advised above all things to speak the truth, for this alone deifies man. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Porphyry - Life of Pythagoras §41 | |
A reaction: Idea 4421 (of Nietzsche) stands in contrast to this. I am not quite sure why speaking the truth has such a high value. I am inclined to a minimalist view, which is just that philosophy is an attempt to speak the truth, as fishermen try to catch fish. |
3051 | Pythagoras discovered the numerical relation of sounds on a string [Pythagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Pythagoras discovered the numerical relation of sounds on a string. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 08.1.11 |
21489 | Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin] |
Full Idea: In Peirce's system, a super-ordinate discipline provides general laws or principles for subordinate disciplines, which in turn provide concrete examples of those general laws. | |
From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 1 'System' | |
A reaction: Does he really mean that subordinate disciplines have no principles or laws? That can't be right. |
19095 | Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak] |
Full Idea: In Peirce's naturalist view of truth, it is a catch-all for the particular local aims of enquiry - empirical adequacy, predictive power, coherence, simplicity, elegance, explanatory power, a reliable guide to action, fruitfulness, great understanding. | |
From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 1 | |
A reaction: The aims I cited in my thesis on explanation. One given, for me, is that truth is an ideal, which may or may not be attainable, to varying degrees. It is just what thinking aims at. I suspect, though, that these listed items have one thing in common. |
19097 | Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak] |
Full Idea: Peirce was not in the slightest bit tempted by the thought that a belief is true if it is useful. | |
From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 | |
A reaction: All students of the pragmatic theory of truth should start with this idea, because it rejects the caricature view of pragmatic truth, a view which is easily rebutted. James seems to have been guilty of this sin. |
21494 | If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce] |
Full Idea: Two related worries about Peirce's account of truth are (from Royce) what are we to make of truth if enquiry never reaches an end, and (from Russell) what are we to make of truth if enquiry ends prematurely? | |
From: comment on Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'issues' | |
A reaction: The defence of Peirce must be that the theory is not holistic - referring to the whole Truth about absolutely everything. The discovery of the periodic table seems to me to support Peirce. In many areas basic enquiry has reached an end. |
21493 | Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP5.567), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'separation' | |
A reaction: [Dated 1902] Maybe we should identify a huge branch of human learning as Hyptheticals. Professor of Hypotheticals at Cambridge University. The trouble is it would have to include computer games. So why does maths matter more than games? |
19102 | Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak] |
Full Idea: Peirce takes bivalence not to be a law of logic, but a regulative assumption of enquiry. | |
From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 n10 | |
A reaction: I like this. For most enquiries it's either true or not true, it's either there or it's not there. When you aren't faced with these simple dichotomies (in history, or quantum mechanics) you can relax, and allow truth value gaps etc. |
7485 | For Pythagoreans 'one' is not a number, but the foundation of numbers [Pythagoras, by Watson] |
Full Idea: For Pythagoreans, one, 1, is not a true number but the 'essence' of number, out of which the number system emerges. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE], Ch.8) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.8 | |
A reaction: I think this is right! Counting and numbers only arise once the concept of individuality and identity have arisen. Counting to one is no more than observing the law of identity. 'Two' is the big adventure. |
10352 | The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.16 | |
A reaction: If this is anti-realism, then I don't like it. If it is realist, then it is probably a bit on the optimistic side (if you think about cultures that are into witchcraft and voodoo). |
13498 | Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD] |
Full Idea: It was Peirce and Schröder in the nineteenth century who began a systematic taxonomy of relations. | |
From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], 4) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4 |
21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
Full Idea: The realism about possibilities, generalities, tendencies and habits that we find in Peirce's later maxim is something that the logical positivists would have been uncomfortable with. | |
From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 2 'Concl' | |
A reaction: Atkin examines the various later statements of the earlier maxim, given here in Idea 21490. Ryle and Quine express the empiricist and logical positivist approach to dispositions. |
16376 | The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The possible is necessarily general ..It is only actuality, the force of existence, which bursts the fluidity of the general and produces a discrete unit. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 13.1 | |
A reaction: [Papers 4 1967:147] This was quoted by Prior, and is often cited. Recanati is interested in the notion of a singular thought being tied to actuality, by generating a mental file. |
19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4 | |
A reaction: [I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from] |
20643 | Consilience is a common groundwork of explanation [Whewell] |
Full Idea: Consilience is the jumping together of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation. | |
From: William Whewell (The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences [1840]), quoted by Peter Watson - Convergence Intro 'United' | |
A reaction: Apparently this is the first use of the word, which was popularised by E.O. Wilson in recent times. If, as I do, you dream of a final theory, in philosophy as well as in science, then you have to be a fan of consilience. |
3053 | Pythagoras taught that virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God [Pythagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Pythagoras taught that virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 08.1.19 | |
A reaction: I like the link with health, because I consider that a bridge over the supposed fact-value gap. Very Pythagorean to think that virtue is harmony. Plato liked that thought. |
5244 | For Pythagoreans, justice is simply treating all people the same [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Some even think that what is just is simple reciprocity, as the Pythagoreans maintained, because they defined justice simply as having done to one what one has done to another. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE], 28) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1132b22 | |
A reaction: One wonders what Pythagoreans made of slavery. Aristotle argues that officials, for example, have superior rights. The Pythagorean idea makes fairness the central aspect of justice, and that must at least be partly right. |
375 | When musical harmony and rhythm were discovered, similar features were seen in bodily movement [Pythagoras, by Plato] |
Full Idea: When our predecessors discovered musical scales, they also discovered similar features in bodily movement, which should also be measured numerically, and called 'tempos' and 'measures'. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Plato - Philebus 17d |
638 | Pythagoreans define timeliness, justice and marriage in terms of numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: The Pythagoreans offered definitions of a limited range of things on the basis of numbers; examples are timeliness, justice and marriage. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b |
553 | Pythagoreans think mathematical principles are the principles of all of nature [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: The Pythagoreans thought that the principles of mathematical entities were the principles of all entities. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 985b |
554 | Pythagoreans say things imitate numbers, but Plato says things participate in numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Pythagoreans said that entities existed by imitation of the numbers, whereas Plato said that it was by participation. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 987b |
644 | For Pythagoreans the entire universe is made of numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: For Pythagoreans the entire universe is constructed of numbers. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1080b |
7467 | The modern idea of an immortal soul was largely created by Pythagoras [Pythagoras, by Watson] |
Full Idea: The modern concept of the immortal soul is a Greek idea, which owes much to Pythagoras. | |
From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.5 | |
A reaction: You can see why it caught on - it is a very appealing idea. Watson connects the 'modern' view with the ideas of heaven and hell. Obviously the idea of an afterlife goes a long way back (judging from the contents of ancient graves). |