41 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? |
| 4643 | The Principle of Sufficient Reason does not presuppose that all explanations will be causal explanations [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: The Principle of Sufficient Reason does not presuppose that all explanations will be causal explanations. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §3.28) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a reasonable note of caution, but doesn't carry much weight unless some type of non-causal reason can be envisaged. God's free will? Our free will? The laws of causation? |
| 4633 | You cannot rationally deny the principle of non-contradiction, because all reasoning requires it [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who denies the principle of non-contradiction simultaneously affirms it; it cannot be rationally criticised, because it is presupposed by all rationality. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.12) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche certainly wasn't afraid to ask why we should reject something because it is a contradiction. The 'logic of personal advantage' might allow logical contradictions. |
| 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. |
| 4635 | Dialectic aims at unified truth, unlike analysis, which divides into parts [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic can be said to aim at wholeness or unity, while 'analytic' thinking divides that with which it deals into parts. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §2.03) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept this division (linked here to Hegel). I am a fan of analysis, as practised by Aristotle, but it is like dismantling an engine to identify and clean the parts, before reassembling it more efficiently. |
| 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. |
| 4632 | 'Natural' systems of deduction are based on normal rational practice, rather than on axioms [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: A 'natural' system of deduction does not posit any axioms, but looks instead for its formulae to the practices of ordinary rationality. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.09) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is some middle ground, where we attempt to infer the axioms of normal practice, and then build a strict system on them. We must be allowed to criticise 'normal' rationality, I hope. |
| 4631 | In ideal circumstances, an axiom should be such that no rational agent could possibly object to its use [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: In ideal circumstances, an axiom should be such that no rational agent could possibly object to its use. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.09) | |
| A reaction: Yes, but the trouble is that all our notions of 'rational' (giving reasons, being consistent) break down when we look at unsupported axioms. In what sense is something rational if it is self-evident? |
| 4638 | The principle of bivalence distorts reality, as when claiming that a person is or is not 'thin' [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Forcing everything into the straightjacket of bivalence seriously distorts the world. The problem is most acute in the case of vague concepts, such as thinness. It is not straightforwardly true or false that a person is thin. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §3.03) | |
| A reaction: Can't argue with that. Can we divide all our concepts into either bivalent or vague? Presumably both propositions and concepts could be bivalent. |
| 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. |
| 4640 | If identity is based on 'true of X' instead of 'property of X' we get the Masked Man fallacy ('I know X but not Y') [Baggini /Fosl, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The Masked Man fallacy is when Leibniz's Law is taken as 'X and Y are identical if what is true of X is true of Y' (rather than being about properties). Then 'I know X' but 'I don't know Y' (e.g. my friend wearing a mask) would make X and Y non-identical. | |
| From: report of J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §3.17) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: As the book goes on to explain, Descartes is guilty of this when arguing that I necessarily know my mind but not my body, so they are different. Seems to me that Kripke falls into the same trap. |
| 4647 | 'I have the same car as you' is fine; 'I have the same fiancée as you' is not so good [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: If you found that I had the same car as you, I don't suppose you would care, but if you found I had the same fiancée as you, you might not be so happy. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §4.17) | |
| A reaction: A very nice illustration of the ambiguity of "same", and hence of identity. 'I had the same thought as you'. 'I have the same DNA as you'. |
| 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. |
| 4639 | Leibniz's Law is about the properties of objects; the Identity of Indiscernibles is about perception of objects [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law ('if identical, must have same properties') defines identity according to the properties possessed by the object itself, but the Identity of Indiscernibles defines identity in terms of how things are conceived or grasped by the mind. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §3.16) | |
| A reaction: This is the heart of the problem of identity. We realists must fight for Leibniz's Law, and escort the Identity of Indiscernibles to the door. |
| 4646 | Is 'events have causes' analytic a priori, synthetic a posteriori, or synthetic a priori? [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Of the proposition that "all experienced events have causes", Descartes says this is analytic a priori, Hume says it is synthetic a posteriori, and Kant says it is synthetic a priori. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §4.01) | |
| A reaction: I am not sympathetic to Hume on this (though most people think he is right). I prefer the Kantian view, but he makes a very large claim. Something has to be intuitive. |
| 4645 | 'A priori' does not concern how you learn a proposition, but how you show whether it is true or false [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: What makes something a priori is not the means by which it came to be known, but the means by which it can be shown to be true or false. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §4.01) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. Kripke in particular has labelled the notion as an epistemological one, but that does imply a method of acquiring it. Clearly I can learn an a priori truth by reading it the newspaper. |
| 4582 | Basic beliefs are self-evident, or sensual, or intuitive, or revealed, or guaranteed [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Sentence are held to be basic because they are self-evident or 'cataleptic' (Stoics), or rooted in sense data (positivists), or grasped by intuition (Platonists), or revealed by God, or grasped by faculties certified by God (Descartes). | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.01) | |
| A reaction: These are a bit blurred. Isn't intuition self-evident? Isn't divine guarantee a type of revelation? How about reason, experience or authority? |
| 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? |
| 4644 | A proposition such as 'some swans are purple' cannot be falsified, only verified [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: The problem with falsification is that it fails to work with logically particular claims such as 'some swans are purple'. Examining a million swans and finding no purple ones does not falsify the claim, as there might still be a purple swan out there. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §3.29) | |
| A reaction: Isn't it beautiful how unease about a theory (Popper's) slowly crystallises into an incredibly simple and devastating point? Maybe 'some swans are purple' isn't science unless there is a good reason to propose it? |
| 4584 | The problem of induction is how to justify our belief in the uniformity of nature [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: At its simplest, the problem of induction can be boiled down to the problem of justifying our belief in the uniformity of nature. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.03) | |
| A reaction: An easy solution to the problem of induction: we treat the uniformity of nature as axiomatic, and then induction is all reasoning which is based on that axiom. The axiom is a working hypothesis, which may begin to appear false. Anomalies are hard. |
| 4583 | How can an argument be good induction, but poor deduction? [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: The problem of induction is the problem of how an argument can be good reasoning as induction but poor reasoning as deduction. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.03) | |
| A reaction: Nicely put, and a good defence of Hume against the charge that he has just muddled induction and deduction. All reasoning, we insist, should be consistent, or it isn't reasoning. |
| 4634 | Abduction aims at simplicity, testability, coherence and comprehensiveness [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: There are some 'principles of selection' in abduction: 1) prefer simple explanations, 2) prefer coherent explanations (consistent with what is already held true), 3) prefer theories that make testable predictions, and 4) be comprehensive in scope. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §2.01) | |
| A reaction: Note that these are desirable, but not necessary (pace Ockham and Ayer). I cannot think of anything to add to the list, so I will adopt it. Abduction is the key to rationality. |
| 4637 | To see if an explanation is the best, it is necessary to investigate the alternative explanations [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: The only way to be sure we have the best explanation is to investigate the alternatives and see if they are any better. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §3.01) | |
| A reaction: Unavoidable! Since I love 'best explanation', I now seem to be committed to investigation every mad theory that comes up, just in case it is better. I hope I am allowed to reject after a very quick sniff. |
| 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. |
| 3488 | Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle] |
| Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V | |
| A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can. |
| 5689 | Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it. |
| 23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'. |
| 4629 | Consistency is the cornerstone of rationality [Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Consistency is the cornerstone of rationality. | |
| From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §1.06) | |
| A reaction: This is right, and is a cornerstone of Kant's approach to ethics. Rational beings must follow principles - in order to be consistent in their behaviour. 'Consistent' now requires a definition…. |
| 22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II | |
| A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process. |
| 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. |
| 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) |