37 ideas
| 13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom [phronesis] is correctly given the name 'kalon' [beautiful], since it performs the works that we say are beautiful and welcome as such. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 416d) | |
| A reaction: 'Phronesis' in Aristotle is more like prudence, or common sense, rather than wisdom ['sophia']. 'Kalon' also means fine or noble. This translation seems fair enough, though. |
| 13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: Are good people any different from wise ones? No, they aren't. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 398b) | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates's 'intellectualism', his view that being good is entirely a matter of reason and knowledge, and not a matter of habit or emotion. Do we still accept the traditional assumption that wise people are thereby morally good? |
| 3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is nothing to write home about either. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he means a life which is all theory and no practice. Compare Idea 343. |
| 3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: We must assume that something matters - that some things are for better and some things are for worse, for without that our assumed rationality would have nothing on which to get a purchase. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.1) | |
| A reaction: It does seem that rationality wouldn't exist as an activity without some value to motivate it. |
| 13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What would you call someone who knows how to ask and answer questions? Wouldn't you call him a dialectician? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 390c) | |
| A reaction: Asking good questions and giving good answers sound like two very different skills. I presume dialectic is the process of arriving at answers by means of asking the right questions. |
| 13776 | Truths say of what is that it is, falsehoods say of what is that it is not [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those statements that say of the things that are that they are, are true, while those that say of the things that are that they are not, are false. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385b) | |
| A reaction: It was quite a shock to discover this, because the famous Aristotle definition (Idea 586) is always quoted, and no modern writers seem to have any awareness of the Plato remark. Classical scholarship is very poor in analytic philosophy. |
| 13777 | A name is a sort of tool [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A name is a sort of tool. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 388a) | |
| A reaction: Idea 13775 gives a background for this metaphor, from earlier in the text. Wittgenstein has a famous toolkit metaphor for language. The whole of this text, 'Cratylus', is about names. |
| 13790 | A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The name-giver might have made a mistake at the beginning and then forced the other names to be consistent with it. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 436c) | |
| A reaction: Lovely. This is Gareth Evans's 'Madagascar' example. See Idea 9041. |
| 13791 | Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If things cannot be learned except from their names, how can we possibly claim that the name-givers or rule-setters have knowledge before any names had been given for them to know? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 438b) | |
| A reaction: Running through this is a hostility to philosophy of language, so I find it very congenial. We are animals who relate to the world before language takes a grip. We have full-blown knowledge of things, with no intervention of words. |
| 13789 | Anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 435d) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan, but it seems to be blatantly false. The best example is Gareth Evans's of joining in a conversation about a person ('Louis'?), and only gradually tuning in to the person to which the name refers. |
| 2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e) |
| 13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If we undertake to cut something and make the cut in whatever way we choose and with whatever tool we choose, we will not succeed. If we cut according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with the natural tool, we'll succeed and cut correctly. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 387a) | |
| A reaction: I take this passage to be the creed for realists about the physical world - a commitment not merely to the existence of an external world, but to the existence of facts about it, which we may or may not be able to discover. |
| 13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Don't you think that just as each thing has a colour or some of those other qualities we mentioned, it also has a being or essence? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 423e) | |
| A reaction: The Greek here seems to be 'ousia', which I increasingly think should be translated as 'distinct identity', rather than as 'existence' or as 'essence'. Maybe the philosophical term 'haecceity' captures it best. |
| 13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
| 13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is the being or essence of each of the things that are something private to each person, as Protagoras tells us? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385e) | |
| A reaction: This kind of drastic personal relativism about essences doesn't sound very plausible, but the idea that essences are private to each culture, or to each language, must certainly be taken seriously. |
| 13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soc: Suppose we made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you; would there then be two Cratyluses, or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus? Crat: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 432c) | |
| A reaction: Don't think that science fiction examples are a modern development in philosophy. Plato has just invented the Startrek transporter. The two Cratyluses are the two spheres in Max Black's famous example. |
| 3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: You say you cannot imagine that p, and therefore declare that p is impossible. Mightn't that be hubris? | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.3) |
| 3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: In causal theories of knowledge and reference, the causal chain between object and thought must be of the "right" sort - the nature of rightness to be specified later, typically. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §3.3 n14) | |
| A reaction: This is now the standard objection to a purely causal account of reference. Which of the many causal chains causes the meaning? Knowledge of maths is a further problem for it. |
| 13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It isn't even reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things are passing on and none remain. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 440a) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates Plato's horror at Heraclitus scepticism about the stable identity of things. It leads to the essentialism of Aristotle and Leibniz, who fear that there is no knowledge if we can't pin down individual identities. Know processes? |
| 13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who named the soul thought that when the soul is present in the body, it causes it to live and gives it the power to breathe the air and be revitalized [anapsuchon]. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 399d) | |
| A reaction: I quote this to emphasis that Greek psuché is very different from the consciousness which is largely discussed in modern philosophy of mind. I find it helpful to make a real effort to grasp the Greek concept. The feeling of life within you. |
| 3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Control is the ultimate criterion of the self: I am the sum total of the parts I control directly. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: This looks awfully like a flagrant self-contradiction, and I think it is. It seems pretty obvious that there is at least a distinction between the bit or bits that do the controlling, and the bits that get controlled. |
| 3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
| Full Idea: If a brain implant would compel you to perform an action which you in fact freely choose, then you are free, but couldn't have done otherwise. | |
| From: report of Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §6.1) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Can I even conceive of beings whose wills are freer than our own? | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.3) |
| 3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The creature who is not only sensitive to patterns in its environment, but also sensitive to patterns in its own reactions to patterns in its environment, has taken a major step. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §2.2) |
| 3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Foreknowledge is what permits control. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §3.2) |
| 3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Faced with our inability to 'see' where the centre or source of our free actions is,…we exploit the gaps in our self-knowledge by filling it with a mysterious entity, the unmoved mover, the active self. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: I am convinced that there is no such things as free will; its origins are to be found in religion, where it is a necessary feature of a very supreme God. I don't believe for a moment that we need to believe in free will. |
| 7590 | Consequentialism emphasises value rather than obligation in morality [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: According to consequentialism, the fundamental concept of morality is not obligation (deontological ethics) but value (axiological ethics). | |
| From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'consequentialism') | |
| A reaction: These two views could come dramatically apart, in wartime, or in big ecological crises, or in a family breakup, or in religious disputes. Having identified the pair so clearly, why can we not aim for a civilised (virtuous) balance between the two? |
| 13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
| Full Idea: 'Areté' signifies lack of perplexity [euporia, ease of movement], and that the flow of a good soul is unimpeded. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 415d) | |
| A reaction: Some highly dubious etymology going on here, and throughout 'Cratylus', but it gives a nice feeling for the way Socrates and Plato saw virtue. |
| 7589 | Altruism is either emotional (where your interests are mine) or moral (where they are reasons for me) [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Two distinct motives go by the name of altruism: the emotions of liking, love and friendship, making another's interest automatically mine; and the moral motive of respect or considerateness, where another's interests become reasons for me, but not mine. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'altruism') | |
| A reaction: The second one has a strongly Kantian flavour, with its notion of impersonal duty. Virtue theorists will aspire to achieve the first state rather than the second, because good actions are then actively desired, and give pleasure to the doer. |
| 7595 | The idea of a right seems fairly basic; justice may be the disposition to accord rights to people [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The idea of a right seems to be as basic as any other; we might even define justice in terms of it, as the disposition to accord to every person his rights. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'rights') | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to think that a set of fairly pure values (such as equality, kindness, sympathy, respect) must be in place before the idea of a right would occur to anyone. Aristotle has a powerful moral sense, but rights for slaves don't cross his mind. |
| 7588 | Allegiance is fundamental to the conservative view of society [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Conservatives have made the concept of allegiance, conceived as a power, fundamental to their description of the experience of society | |
| From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'allegiance') | |
| A reaction: This provokes the famous slogan of "My country - right or wrong!" However, the issue here is not going to be decided by a consequentialist analysis, but by a view a of human nature. I think I would want to carefully prise allegiance apart from loyalty. |
| 7594 | Democrats are committed to a belief and to its opposite, if the majority prefer the latter [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The paradox of democracy (emphasised by Rousseau) is that I am compelled by my belief in democracy to embrace conflicting - perhaps even contradictory - opinions. If I believe A, and the majority vote for B, I am committed to enacting them both. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'paradox of democracy') | |
| A reaction: The paradox would have to be resolved by qualifying what exactly one is committed to by being a democrat. I would say I am committed to the right of my opponents to enact a policy with which I disagree. |
| 7593 | Liberals focus on universal human freedom, natural rights, and tolerance [Scruton, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism believes (roughly) in the supremacy of the individual, who has freedom and natural rights; it focuses on human, not divine affairs; it claims rights and duties are universal; and it advocates tolerance in religion and morality. | |
| From: report of Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'liberalism') by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: I find it hard to disagree with these principles, but the upshot in practice is often an excessive commitment to freedom and tolerance, because people fail to realise the subtle long-term erosions of society that can result. |
| 7592 | For positivists law is a matter of form, for naturalists it is a matter of content [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For the positivist, law is law by virtue of its form; for the naturalist, by virtue of its content. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'law') | |
| A reaction: Clearly a perverse and 'unnatural' social rule (backed by government and implied force) is a 'law' in some sense of the word. It is hard to see how you could gain social consensus for a law if it didn't appear in some way to be 'natural justice'. |
| 7587 | The issue of abortion seems insoluble, because there is nothing with which to compare it [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The issue of abortion is intractable, partly because of the absence of any other case to which it can be assimilated. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'abortion') | |
| A reaction: This is the legalistic approach to the problem, which always looks for precedents and comparisons. All problems must hav solutions, though (mustn't they?). The problem, though, is not the value of the foetus, but the unique form of 'ownership'. |
| 13779 | The natural offspring of a lion is called a 'lion' (but what about the offspring of a king?) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that it is right to call a lion's offspring a 'lion' and a horse's offspring a 'horse' (I'm talking about natural offspring, not some monster). ...but by the same argument any offspring of a king should be called a 'king'. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 393b) | |
| A reaction: The standard modern difficulty is whether all descendants of dinosaurs are still called 'dinosaur', which they are not. |
| 13783 | Even the gods love play [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Even the gods love play. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 406c) |