34 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 |
| 14620 | Theories in logic are sentences closed under consequence, but in truth discussions theories have axioms [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is customary in logic to take a theory to be a set of sentences closed under logical consequence, whereas it is common in discussions of theories of truth to take a theory to be an axiomatized theory. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010], n8) |
| 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. |
| 15435 | If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Any theorist of universals as immanent had better hold a sparse theory; it is preposterous on its face that a thing has as many nonspatiotemporal parts as there are different predicates that it falls under, or different classes that it belongs to. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: I am firmly committed to sparse universal, and view the idea that properties are just predicates as the sort of nonsense that results from approaching philosophy too linguistically. |
| 15451 | I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It is possible, I take it, that there might be simple natural properties different from any that instantiated within our world. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Uninstantiated') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Fine for Lewis, of course, for whom possibilities seem (to me) to be just logical possibilities. Even a scientific essentialist, though, must allow that different stuff might exist, which might have different intrinsic properties. |
| 15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are supposed to be particularized properties: nonspatiotemporal parts of their instances which cannot occur repeatedly, but can be exact duplicates. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Russell's objection is that 'duplication' appears to be a non-trope universal. The account seems wrong for very close resemblance, which is accepted by everyone as being the same (e.g. in colour, for football shirts). |
| 15436 | Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the main job of a theory of universals is to give an account of resemblance. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: This invites the quick reply, popular with some nominalists, of taking resemblance as primitive, and hence beyond explanation. |
| 15438 | We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To class nominalism we can add a primitive distinction between natural and unnatural classes. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: Lewis explores this elsewhere, but this looks like a very complex concept to play the role of a 'primitive'. Human conventions seem to be parts of nature. |
| 15448 | The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The 'magical' conception of structural universals says 'simple' must be distinguished from 'atomic'. A structural universal is never simple; it involves other, simpler, universals, but it is mereologically atomic. The other universals are not its parts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The magical') | |
| A reaction: Hence the 'magic' is for it to be an indissoluble unity, while acknowledging that it has parts. Personally I don't see much problem with this view, since universals already perform the magical feat of being 'instantiated', whatever that means. |
| 15449 | If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What is it about the universal carbon that gets it involved in necessary connections with methane? Why not rubidium instead? The universal 'carbon' has nothing more in common with the universal methane than the universal rubidium has! | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The magical') | |
| A reaction: This is his objection to the 'magical' unity of structural universals. The point is that if methane is an atomic unity, as claimed, it can't have anything 'in common' with its components. |
| 15439 | The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: On the 'pictorial' conception, a structural universal is isomorphic to its instances. ...It is an individual, a mereological composite, not a set. ...It is composed of simpler universals which are literally parts of it. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why Lewis labels this the 'pictorial' view. His other two views of structural universals are 'linguistic' and 'magical'. The linguistic is obviously wrong, and the magical doesn't sound promising. Must I vote for pictorial? |
| 15441 | The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What is wrong with the pictorial conception is that if the structural universal 'methane' is to be an isomorph of the molecules that are its instances, it must have the universal 'hydrogen' as a part not just once, but four times over. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: The point is that if hydrogen is a universal it must be unique, so there can't be four of them. To me this smacks of the hopeless mess theologians get into, because of bad premisses. Drop universals, and avoid this kind of stuff. |
| 15445 | Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The stuctural universal 'isobutane' consists of the universal carbon four times over, hydrogen ten times over, and the universal 'bonded' thirteen times over - just like the universal 'butane'. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: The point is that isobutane and butane have the same components in different structures. At least this is Lewis facing up to the problem of the 'flatness' of mereological wholes. |
| 15434 | Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is a necessary connection between the instantiating of a structural universal by the whole and the instantiating of other universals by its parts. We can call the relation 'involvement', a nondescript word. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'What are') | |
| A reaction: In the case of a shape, I suppose the composing 'universals' [dunno what they are] will all be essential to the shape - that is, part of the very nature of the thing, loss of which would destroy the identity. |
| 15437 | We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We can't dispense with structural universals if we cannot be sure that there are any simples which can be involved in them. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: Lewis cites this as Armstrong's strongest reason for accepting structural universals (and he takes their requirement for an account of laws of nature as the weakest). I can't comprehend a world that lacks underlying simplicity. |
| 15446 | Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Not just any operation that makes new things from old is a form of composition! There is no sense in which my parents are part of me, and no sense in which two numbers are parts of their greatest common factor. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: One of those rare moments when David Lewis seems to have approached a really sensible metaphysics. Further on he rejects all forms of composition apart from mereology. |
| 15440 | A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A whole is an extra item in our ontology only in the minimal sense that it is not identical to any of its proper parts; but it is not distinct from them either, so when we believe in the parts it is no extra burden to believe in the whole. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: A little confusing, to be 'not identical' and yet 'not different'. As Lewis says elsewhere, the whole is one, and the parts are not. A crux. Essentialism implies a sort of holism, that parts with a structure constitute a new thing. |
| 15444 | Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Different things can be made of the same parts at different times, as when the tinkertoy house is taken apart and put back together as a tinkertoy car. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: More important than it looks! This is Lewis's evasion of the question of the structure of the parts. Times will individuate different structures, but if I take type-identical parts and make a house and a car simultaneously, are they type-identical? |
| 14530 | The role of semantic necessity in semantics is like metaphysical necessity in metaphysics [Fine,K, by Hale/Hoffmann,A] |
| Full Idea: Fine's paper argues that the notion of semantic necessity has a role to play in understanding the nature and content of semantics comparable to the role of metaphysical necessity in metaphysics. | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010]) by Bob Hale/ Aviv Hoffmann - Introduction to 'Modality' 2 |
| 15450 | Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We could say that abstraction is just mereological subtraction of universals. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Uninstantiated') | |
| A reaction: This only works, of course, for the theories that complex universals have simpler universals as 'parts'. This is just a passing surmise. I take it that abstraction only works for a thing whose unity survives the abstraction. |
| 15443 | Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: When mathematicians abstract one thing from others, they take an equivalence class. ....But it is only superficially a one; underneath, a class are still many. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: This is Frege's approach to abstraction, and it is helpful to have it spelled out that this is a mathematical technique, even when applied by Frege to obtaining 'direction' from classes of parallels. Too much philosophy borrows inappropriate techniques. |
| 14618 | Semantics is either an assignment of semantic values, or a theory of truth [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: On one view, a semantics for a given language is taken to be an assignment of semantic values to its expressions; according to the other, a semantics is taken to be a theory of truth for that language. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The first is Frege, the second Tarski via Davidson, says Fine. Fine argues against these as the correct alternatives, and says the distinction prevents us understanding what is really going on. He votes for semantics as giving 'semantic requirements'. |
| 14621 | Semantics is a body of semantic requirements, not semantic truths or assigned values [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Semantics should be conceived as a body of semantic requirements or facts - and not as a body of semantic truths, or as an assignment of semantic values. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010], 5) | |
| A reaction: The 'truths' view is Tarski, and the 'values' view is Frege. You'll have to read the Fine paper to grasp his subtle claim. |
| 14622 | Referential semantics (unlike Fregeanism) allows objects themselves in to semantic requirements [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: What distinguishes the referential position in semantics from Fregeanism is that it makes use of de re semantic facts, in which it is required of an object itself that it enter into certain semantic requirements. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010], 5) | |
| A reaction: I have a repugnance to any sort of semantics that involves the objects themselves, even when dealing with proper names. If I talk of 'Napoleon', no small Frenchman is to be found anywhere in my sentences. |
| 14619 | The Quinean doubt: are semantics and facts separate, and do analytic sentences have no factual part? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The source of the Quinean scepticism about analytic and synthetic is, first, scepticism over whether we can factor truth into a semantic and a factual component, and (second) if we can, is the factual component ever null? | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: You certainly can't grasp 'bachelors are unmarried men' if you haven't grasped the full Woosterian truth about men and marriage. But I could interdefine four meaningless words, so that you could employ them in analytic sentences. |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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). |