Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'teaching', 'Sense and Sensibilia' and 'works'

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20 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 1. Nature of Wisdom
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.
1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 2. Ancient Thought
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
4. Formal Logic / G. Formal Mereology / 1. Mereology
Abelard's mereology involves privileged and natural divisions, and principal parts [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: Abelard's theory of substantial integral wholes is not a pure mereology in the modern sense, since he holds that there are privileged divisions; ..the division of a whole must be into its principal parts. Some wholes have a natural division.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: This is a mereology that cuts nature at the joints, rather than Lewis's 'unrestricted composition', so I find Abelard rather appealing.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / m. One
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.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / a. Problem of vagueness
Austin revealed many meanings for 'vague': rough, ambiguous, general, incomplete... [Austin,JL, by Williamson]
     Full Idea: Austin's account brought out the variety of features covered by 'vague' in different contexts: roughness, ambiguity, imprecision, lack of detail, generality, inaccuracy, incompleteness. Even 'vague' is vague.
     From: report of J.L. Austin (Sense and Sensibilia [1962], p.125-8) by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 3.1
     A reaction: Some of these sound the same. Maybe Austin distinguishes them.
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / b. Nominalism about universals
If 'animal' is wholly present in Socrates and an ass, then 'animal' is rational and irrational [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: Abelard argued that if the universal 'animal' were completely present in both Socrates and an ass, making each wholly an animal, then the same thing, animal, will be simultaneously rational and irrational, with contraries present in the whole thing.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: If we have universals for rationality and irrationality, they can distinguish the two. But we must also say that rationality is not an aspect of animal, which seems to mean that mind isn't either. What is the essence of an animal? Not reason?
Abelard was an irrealist about virtually everything apart from concrete individuals [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: Abelard was an irrealist about universals, but also about propositions, events, times other than the present, natural kinds, relations, wholes, absolute space, hylomorphic composites, and the like. The concrete individual is enough to populate the world.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: If a Nominalist claims that 'only particulars exist', this makes him an extreme nominalist, and remarkably materialistic for his time (though he accepted the soul, as well as God).
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 3. Predicate Nominalism
Only words can be 'predicated of many'; the universality is just in its mode of signifying [Abelard, by Panaccio]
     Full Idea: Abelard concluded that only words can be 'predicated of many'. A universal is nothing but a general linguistic predicate, and its universality depends not on its mode of being, but on its mode of signifying.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter'
     A reaction: Abelard seems to be the originator of what is now called Predicate Nominalism, with Nelson Goodman as his modern representative. If it is just words, is there no fact of two things having the 'same' property?
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 4. De re / De dicto modality
The de dicto-de re modality distinction dates back to Abelard [Abelard, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: The de dicto-de re modality distinction dates back to Abelard.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.7
     A reaction: Most modern philosophers couldn't (apparently) care less where a concept originated, but one of the principles of this database is that such things do matter. I'm not sure why, but if we want the whole picture, we need the historical picture.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 8. Abstractionism Critique
Abelard's problem is the purely singular aspects of things won't account for abstraction [Panaccio on Abelard]
     Full Idea: Abelard's problem is that it is not clear how singular forms could do the job they are supposed to do - to account for abstraction, namely - if they were purely singular aspects.
     From: comment on Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter'
     A reaction: A very nice question! If we say that abstracta are just acquired by ignoring all but that feature in some objects, how do we identify 'that' feature in order to select it? The instances must share something in common to be abstracted.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
Nothing external can truly be predicated of an object [Abelard, by Panaccio]
     Full Idea: Abelard argued from the commonly accepted definition of a universal as 'what can be predicated of man', that no external thing can ever be predicated of anything.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter'
     A reaction: It sounds to me as if Abelard is confusing predicates with properties! Maybe no external can be a property of anything, but I take predicates to just be part of what you can say about anything, and that had better included external facts.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / d. Health
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.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / c. Justice
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.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 4. Mathematical Nature
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
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
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
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
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
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 7. Critique of Kinds
Natural kinds are not special; they are just well-defined resemblance collections [Abelard, by King,P]
     Full Idea: In Abelard's view a natural kind is a well-defined collection of things that have the same features, so that natural kinds have no special status, being no more than discrete integral wholes whose principle of membership is similarity.
     From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
     A reaction: I take a natural kind to be a completely stable and invariant class of things. Presumably this invariance has an underlying explanation, but Abelard seems to take the Humean line that we cannot penetrate beyond the experienced surface.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / a. Immortality
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).