5 ideas
| 6294 | In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God [John] |
| Full Idea: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. | |
| From: St John (04: Gospel of St John [c.95], 01.01) | |
| A reaction: 'Word' translates the Greek word 'logos', which has come a long way since Heraclitus. The interesting contrast is with the later Platonist view that the essence of God is the Good. So is the source of everything to be found in reason, or in value? |
| 6558 | A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds [Emerson] |
| Full Idea: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. | |
| From: Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance [1841], p.37) | |
| A reaction: A remark to warm the hearts of pragmatists, Wittgensteinians, Nietzscheans and the post-modern mob. But pay careful attention to the word "foolish". Robert Fogelin gives a very balanced view of the matter (e.g. Idea 6557). |
| 8821 | Jesus said he bore witness to the truth. Pilate asked, What is truth? [John] |
| Full Idea: Jesus: I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? | |
| From: St John (04: Gospel of St John [c.95], 18:37-8) | |
| A reaction: There is very little explicit discussion of truth in philosophy before this exchange (apart from Ideas 251 and 586), and there isn't any real debate prior to Russell and the pragmatists. What was Pilate's tone? Did he spit at the end of his question? |
| 2957 | Brain bisection suggests unity of mind isn't all-or-nothing [Nagel, by Lockwood] |
| Full Idea: Nagel argues (because of brain bisection experiments) that we should jettison our commonsense assumption that the unity of consciousness is an all-or-nothing affair. | |
| From: report of Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971]) by Michael Lockwood - Mind, Brain and the Quantum p.84 | |
| A reaction: It seems wrong to call it 'commonsense'. It is an assumption that precedes any judgement, but if you rapidly grasp that your mind is in your brain, it becomes common sense that you can cut lumps out of your mind. |
| 3285 | We may be unable to abandon personal identity, even when split-brains have undermined it [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: As a result of the evidence of split-brains, it is possible that the ordinary, simple idea of a single person will come to seem quaint some day, …but we may be unable to abandon the idea, no matter what we discover. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (Brain Bisection and Unity of Consciousness [1971], p.164) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what grounds you can have for a claim that we can't abandon our current view of selves, even when the new reality will be utterly different. Rather conservative? I would expect future concepts to roughly match future reality. |