21 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 |
| 8210 | Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions behind them [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time determine what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making itself into history by this motivated repression. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.5) | |
| A reaction: All of this type of philosophy is motivated by what I think of as (I'm afraid!) a rather adolescent belief that we are all being 'repressed', and that somehow, if we think hard enough, we can all become 'free', and then everything will be fine. |
| 8211 | The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The movement of 'différance', as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture etc. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.7) | |
| A reaction: 'Différance' is a word coined by Derrida, and his most famous concept. At first glance, the concept of a thing which is the source of all differentiation sounds like a fiction. |
| 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. |
| 7440 | Secondary qualities are microscopic primary qualities of physical things [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: I argue for the direct identification of the secondary qualities with microscopic primary qualities of physical things. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xxii) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit like the eliminativism which Armstrong rejects. This seems in danger of mixing questions about the nature of mental events with questions about the nature of externally perceived objects. |
| 7437 | Consciousness and experience of qualities are not the same [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness and experience of qualities are often run together - a serious mistake, I think. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xvii) | |
| A reaction: A difficult claim to evaluate. Can we experience redness without being conscious of it? Could there be consciousness (e.g. of concepts) which didn't involve any qualities? I suspect that qualities are more basic than intentionality or consciousness. |
| 7434 | Behaviourism is false, but mind is definable as the cause of behaviour [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Behaviourism is false, but one is not far from the truth if one defines the mind as the cause of behaviour. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xvi) | |
| A reaction: As Putnam says, if you cut all the efferent (outgoing) nerves, you would have a mind with no behaviour at all. I would say my mind is full of stuff that never affects my behaviour. However, influencing behaviour is certainly the main function of a mind. |
| 7436 | The manifestations of a disposition need never actually exist [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: The manifestations of a disposition have the particularly mysterious property (metaphysically speaking) that they need not exist - which makes them rather like intentional objects. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xvii) | |
| A reaction: His example is a brittle glass which never shatters. This problem seems to require the mention of conditional and counterfactual statements in the description of the actual world, which rather increases the workload for philosophers. |
| 7429 | Causal Functionalism says mental states are apt for producing behaviour [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: I speak of my view as the Causal version of functionalism, which asserts that mental states are states apt for the production of certain ranges of behaviour and, in some cases, apt for being produced by certain ranges of stimuli. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xiv) | |
| A reaction: This effectively makes a mental state a place in a flowdiagram (and hence the mind is software). It says nothing about what qualities the mental states have which make them apt for this role. Full explanations need more than the function. |
| 7438 | A causal theory of mentality would be improved by a teleological element [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: I now think, following Lycan, that my Causal theory of mentality would be strengthened (perhaps eliminating some potential counter-examples) by the addition of a teleological element. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xviii) | |
| A reaction: For Lycan, see Idea 6533. Armstrong has begun to realise that merely specifying the causal role of a mental state is too thin as an explanation. Teleology widens the notion of function. I also want to know about the properties that make it possible. |
| 7431 | The identity of mental states with physical properties is contingent, because the laws of nature are contingent [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Granted the contingency of the laws of nature, the identification of dispositions with their categorical bases can be contingent only. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xvi) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am not willing to grant the contingency of the laws of nature, but I suppose Armstrong is right about identity if he is right about laws. Presumably an identity could happen to be invariant across possible worlds, without being necessary. |
| 7432 | One mental role might be filled by a variety of physical types [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: If the mental is just that which plays a causal role then there is the possibility, which may even be an empirical possibility, that the causal role of tokens of the same mental type should be filled by tokens of significantly different physical types. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' [1992], p.xiv) | |
| A reaction: This allows for multiple realisability in a physicalist framework. Fear has the same role in all animals, but may be realised in physically different ways. I go further, and say that two mental states could differ, while playing the same role. |
| 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). |