67 ideas
| 18730 | The history of philosophy only matters if the subject is a choice between rival theories [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If philosophy were a matter of choice between rival theories, then it would be sound to teach it historically. But if it is not, then it is a fault to teach it historically, because it is quite unnecessary; we can tackle the subject direct. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V A) | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein was a bit notorious for not knowing the history of the subject terribly well, and this explains why. Presumably our tackling the subject direct will not have the dreadful consequence of producing yet another theory. |
| 18704 | Philosophy tries to be rid of certain intellectual puzzles, irrelevant to daily life [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is the attempt to be rid of a particular kind of puzzlement. This 'philosophical' puzzlement is one of the intellect and not of instinct. Philosophical puzzles are irrelevant to our every-day life. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.1) | |
| A reaction: All enquiry begins with puzzles, and they are cured by explanations, which result in understanding. In that sense he is right. I entirely disagree that the puzzles are irrelevant to daily life. |
| 18710 | Philosophers express puzzlement, but don't clearly state the puzzle [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers as 'Why?' and 'What?' without knowing clearly what their questions are. They are expressing a feeling of mental uneasiness. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.1) | |
| A reaction: He suggests it is childish to express puzzlement, instead of asking for precise information. How odd. All enquiries start with vague puzzlement, which gradually comes into focus, or else is abandoned. |
| 18732 | We don't need a theory of truth, because we use the word perfectly well [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is nonsense to try to find a theory of truth, because we can see that in everyday life we use the word quite clearly and definitely in various different senses. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V B) | |
| A reaction: This was a year before Tarski published his famous theory of truth for formal languages. Prior to that, most philosophers were giving up on truth. Would he say the same about 'gravity' or 'inflation'? |
| 18714 | We already know what we want to know, and analysis gives us no new facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In philosophy we know already all that we want to know; philosophical analysis does not give us any new facts. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B V.1) |
| 18706 | Words of the same kind can be substituted in a proposition without producing nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: 'Blue' and 'brown' are of the same kind, for the substitution of one for the other, though it may falsify the proposition, does not make nonsense of it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4) | |
| A reaction: He chooses an easy example, because they are determinates of the determinable 'coloured'. What if I say 'the sky is blue', and then substitute 'frightening' for 'blue'? |
| 18735 | Talking nonsense is not following the rules [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Talking nonsense is not following the rules. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C X) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't seem to distinguish between syntax and semantics, and makes it sound as if all nonsense is syntactic, which it isn't. |
| 18719 | Grammar says that saying 'sound is red' is not false, but nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If grammar says that you cannot say that a sound is red, it means not that it is false to say so but that it is nonsense - i.e. not a language at all. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B IX.6) | |
| A reaction: I am baffled as to why he thinks 'grammar' is what prohibits such a statement. Surely the world, the nature of sound and colour, is what makes the application of the predicate wrong. Sounds aren't coloured, so they can't be red. False, not nonsense. |
| 18731 | There is no theory of truth, because it isn't a concept [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is wrong to say that there is any one theory of truth, for truth is not a concept. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V B) | |
| A reaction: This makes you wonder how he understood the word 'concept'. In most modern discussions truth seems to be a concept, and in Frege it can be an unsaturated predicate which is satisfied by sentences or thoughts. |
| 18707 | All thought has the logical form of reality [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Thought must have the logical form of reality if it is to be thought at all. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A V.1) | |
| A reaction: This links nicely the idea that true thoughts somehow share the structure of what they refer to, with the idea of logical form in logic. But maybe logical form is a fiction we offer in order to obtain a spurious map of reality. |
| 13010 | In order to select the logic justified by experience, we would need to use a lot of logic [Boghossian on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine ends up with the logic that is maximally justified by experience, ...but a large number of the core principles of logic will have to be used to select the logic that is maximally justified by experience. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954]) by Paul Boghossian - Knowledge of Logic p.233 | |
| A reaction: In order to grasp some core principles of logic, you will probably need a certain amount of experience. I take logic to be an abstracted feature of reality (unless it is extended by pure fictions). Some basic logic may be hard wired in us. |
| 18724 | In logic nothing is hidden [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In logic nothing is hidden. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XII.3) | |
| A reaction: If so, then the essence of logic must be there for all to see. The rules of natural deduction are a good shot at showing this. |
| 9002 | Elementary logic requires truth-functions, quantifiers (and variables), identity, and also sets of variables [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Elementary logic, as commonly systematized nowadays, comprises truth-function theory (involving 'or', 'and', 'not' etc.), quantifiers (and their variables), and identity theory ('='). In addition, set theory requires classes among values of variables. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II) | |
| A reaction: Quine is famous for trying to squeeze properties out of the picture, which would then block higher-order logics (which quantify over properties). Quine's list gives a nice programme for a student of the philosophy of logic to understand. |
| 13681 | Logical consequence is marked by being preserved under all nonlogical substitutions [Quine, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Quine's view of logical consequence is that it is when there is no way of uniformly substituting nonlogical expressions in the premises and consequences so that the premises all remain true but the consequence now becomes false. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], p.103) by Theodore Sider - Logic for Philosophy 1.5 | |
| A reaction: One might just say that the consequence holds if you insert consistent variables for the nonlogical terms, which looks like Aristotle's view of the matter. |
| 18709 | Laws of logic are like laws of chess - if you change them, it's just a different game [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I might as well question the laws of logic as the laws of chess. If I change the rules it is a different game and there is an end of it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A XI.3) | |
| A reaction: No, that isn't the end of it, because there are meta-criteria for preferring one game to another. Why don't we just give up classical logic? It would be such fun to have a wild wacky logic. We can start with 'tonk'. |
| 18736 | Contradiction is between two rules, not between rule and reality [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Contradiction is between one rule and another, not between rule and reality. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C XIII) | |
| A reaction: If I say 'he is sitting' and 'he is standing', it seems to be reality which produces the contradiction. What 'rule' could possibly do it? The rule which says sitting and standing are incompatible? But what makes that so? |
| 13829 | If logical truths essentially depend on logical constants, we had better define the latter [Hacking on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine said a logical truth is a truth in which only logical constants occur essentially, ...but then a fruitful definition of 'logical constant' is called for. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §02 |
| 18723 | We may correctly use 'not' without making the rule explicit [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Correct use does not imply the ability to make the rules explicit. Understanding 'not' is like understanding a move in chess. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XII.1) |
| 18718 | Saying 'and' has meaning is just saying it works in a sentence [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: When we say that the word 'and' has meaning what we mean is that it works in a sentence and is not just a flourish. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VIII.2) |
| 18727 | A person's name doesn't mean their body; bodies don't sit down, and their existence can be denied [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of the words 'Professor Moore' is not a certain human body, because we do not say that the meaning sits on the sofa, and the words occur in the proposition 'Professor Moore does not exist'. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B Easter) | |
| A reaction: Brilliant. Love it. Kripke ending up denying the existence of 'meanings'. |
| 9003 | Set theory was struggling with higher infinities, when new paradoxes made it baffling [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Unlike elementary logic, the truths of set theory are not obvious. Set theory was straining at the leash of intuition ever since Cantor discovered higher infinites; and with the added impetus of the paradoxes of set theory the leash snapped. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II) | |
| A reaction: This problem seems to have forced Quine into platonism about sets, because he felt they were essential for mathematics and science, but couldn't be constructed with precision. So they must be real, but we don't quite understand them. |
| 18738 | We don't get 'nearer' to something by adding decimals to 1.1412... (root-2) [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: We say we get nearer to root-2 by adding further figures after the decimal point: 1.1412.... This suggests there is something we can get nearer to, but the analogy is a false one. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], Notes) |
| 18708 | Infinity is not a number, so doesn't say how many; it is the property of a law [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: 'Infinite' is not an answer to the question 'How many?', since the infinite is not a number. ...Infinity is the property of a law, not of an extension. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A VII.2) |
| 21382 | Things get smaller without end [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Of the small there is no smallest, but always a smaller. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B03), quoted by Gregory Vlastos - The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras II | |
| A reaction: Anaxagoras seems to be speaking of the physical world (and probably writing prior to the emergence of atomism, which could have been a rebellion against he current idea). |
| 9004 | If set theory is not actually a branch of logic, then Frege's derivation of arithmetic would not be from logic [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We might say that set theory is not really logic, but a branch of mathematics. This would deprive 'includes' of the status of a logical word. Frege's derivation of arithmetic would then cease to count as a derivation from logic: for he used set theory. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II) | |
| A reaction: Quine has been making the point that higher infinities and the paradoxes undermine the status of set theory as logic, but he decides to continue thinking of set theory as logic. Critics of logicism frequently ask whether the reduction is to logic. |
| 481 | Nothing is created or destroyed; there is only mixing and separation [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: No thing comes into being or passes away, but it is mixed together or separated from existing things. Thus it would be correct if coming into being was called 'mixing', and passing away 'separation-off''. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B17), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 163.20 |
| 21822 | Anaxagoras's concept of supreme Mind has a simple First and a multiple One [Anaxagoras, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras, in his assertion of a Mind pure and unmixed, affirms a simplex First and a sundered One, though writing long ago he failed in precision. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.09 | |
| A reaction: The crunch question is whether the supreme One or Mind is part of Being, or is above and beyond Being. Plotinus claims that Anaxagoras was on his side (with Plato, against Parmenides). |
| 17995 | Basic is the potentially perceptible, then comes the contrary qualities, and finally the 'elements' [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: We must recognise three 'originative sources': first that which is potentially perceptible body, secondly the contrarities (e.g hot and cold), and thirdly Fire, Water, and the like. Only thirdly, however, for these bodies change into one another. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]), quoted by Aristotle - The History of Animals 529a34 | |
| A reaction: The 'potentially perceptible' seems to be matter. The surprise here is that the contraries are more basic than the elements, rather than being properties of them. Reality is modes of matter, it seems. |
| 18737 | There are no positive or negative facts; these are just the forms of propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: There are no positive or negative facts. 'Positive' and 'negative' refer to the form of propositions, and not to the facts which verify or falsify them. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C XIII) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think if we are going to allow the world to be full of 'facts', then there are negative, conjunctive, disjunctive and hypothetical facts. |
| 18715 | Using 'green' is a commitment to future usage of 'green' [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If I say this is green, I must say that other things are green too. I am committed to a future usage. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VI.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to suggest that the eternal verity of a universal concept is just a convention of stability in a language. |
| 9006 | Commitment to universals is as arbitrary or pragmatic as the adoption of a new system of bookkeeping [Quine] |
| Full Idea: One's hypothesis as to there being universals is at bottom just as arbitrary or pragmatic a matter as one's adoption of a new brand of set theory or even a new system of bookkeeping. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], x) | |
| A reaction: This spells out clearly the strongly pragmatist vein in Quine's thinking. |
| 9001 | Frege moved Kant's question about a priori synthetic to 'how is logical certainty possible?' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: When Kant's arithmetical examples of a priori synthetic judgements were sweepingly disqualified by Frege's reduction of arithmetic to logic, attention moved to the less tendentious and logically prior question 'How is logical certainty possible?' | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], I) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary of the story so far, from someone who should know. This still leaves the question open of whether any synthetic truths can be derived from the logical certainties which are available. |
| 18726 | For each necessity in the world there is an arbitrary rule of language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: To a necessity in the world there corresponds an arbitrary rule in language. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XIV.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be hardcore logical positivism, making all necessities arbitrary. Compare Quine on the number of planets. |
| 18712 | Understanding is translation, into action or into other symbols [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Understanding is really translation, whether into other symbols or into action. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.5) | |
| A reaction: The second part of this sounds like pure pragmatism. To do is to understand? I doubt it. Do animals understand anything? |
| 9005 | Examination of convention in the a priori begins to blur the distinction with empirical knowledge [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In trying to make sense of the role of convention in a priori knowledge, the very distinction between a priori and empirical begins to waver and dissolve. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], VI) | |
| A reaction: This is the next stage in the argument after Wittgenstein presents the apriori as nothing more than what arises from truth tables. The rationalists react by taking us back to the original 'natural light of reason' view. Then we go round again... |
| 20802 | Snow is not white, and doesn't even appear white, because it is made of black water [Anaxagoras, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras not only denied that snow was white, but because he knew that the water from which it was composed was black, even denied that it appeared white to himself. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica II.100 | |
| A reaction: Not ridiculous. Can you deny that red and yellow balls look orange from a distance? A failure of discrimination on your part. It sounds okay to say 'what I am really perceiving is red and yellow'. [see 'Anaxagoras' poem by D.H.Lawrence!] |
| 18280 | We live in sense-data, but talk about physical objects [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The world we live in is the world of sense-data, but the world we talk about is the world of physical objects. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], p.82), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 13 'Verif' | |
| A reaction: I really like that one. Even animals, I surmise, think of objects quite differently from the way they immediately experience them. |
| 18729 | Part of what we mean by stating the facts is the way we tend to experience them [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: There is no need of a theory to reconcile what we know about sense data and what we believe about physical objects, because part of what we mean by saying that a penny is round is that we see it as elliptical in such and such conditions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C III) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting and cunning move to bridge the gap between our representations and reallity. We may surmise how a thing really is, but then be surprised by the sense-data we get from it. |
| 13257 | The senses are too feeble to determine the truth [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Owing to the feebleness of the sense, we are not able to determine the truth. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B21), quoted by Patricia Curd - Anaxagoras 5.1 | |
| A reaction: Anaxagoras offers a corresponding elevation of the power of mind (Idea 13256), so I now realise that he is, along with Pythagoras and Parmenides, one of the fathers of rationalism in philosophy. They probably overrate reason. |
| 18734 | If you remember wrongly, then there must be some other criterion than your remembering [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If you remember wrongly, then there must be some other criterion than your remembering. If you admit another test, then your memory itself is not the test. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C VII) | |
| A reaction: If I fear that I am remembering some private solitary event wrongly, there is no other criterion to turn to, so I'm stuck. Sometimes dubious memories are all we have. |
| 22761 | We reveal unreliability in the senses when we cannot discriminate a slow change of colour [Anaxagoras, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Our lack of sureness in the senses is shown if we take two colours, back and white, and pour one into the other drop by drop, we are unable to distinguish the gradual alterations although they subsist as actual facts. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Logicians (two books) I.090 | |
| A reaction: [Sextus calls Anaxagoras 'the greatest of the physicists'] I'm not sure what this proves. People with bad eyesight can distinguish very little, but that doesn't prove scepticism. And there are things too small for anyone to see. |
| 18721 | Explanation and understanding are the same [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: For us explanation and understanding are the same, understanding being the correlate of explanation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XI.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that they are 'the same', but they are almost interdependent ideas. Strevens has a nice paper on this. |
| 18720 | Explanation gives understanding by revealing the full multiplicity of the thing [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: An explanation gives understanding, ...but it cannot teach you understanding, it cannot create understanding. It makes further distinctions i.e. it increases multiplicity. When multiplicity is complete, then there is no further misunderstanding. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B X.3) | |
| A reaction: The thought seems to resemble Aristotle's idea of definition as gradual division of the subject. To understand is the dismantle the parts and lay them out before us. Wittgenstein was very interested in explanation at this time. |
| 18716 | A machine strikes us as being a rule of movement [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: We are accustomed to look on a machine as the expression of a rule of movement. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VII.2) | |
| A reaction: What a beautiful definition of a machine! I like this because it connects the two halves of my view of the 'essence' of a thing, as derived from Aristotle, as both a causal mechanism and an underlying principle. Cf Turing machines. |
| 18713 | If an explanation is good, the symbol is used properly in the future [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The criterion of an explanation is whether the symbol explained is used properly in the future. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B II.4) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a pragmatic criterion for the best explanation. It presumably rests on his doctrine that meaning is use, so good explanation is understanding meanings. |
| 13256 | Nous is unlimited, self-ruling and pure; it is the finest thing, with great discernment and strength [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Nous is unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with no thing, but is alone itself by itself. ...For it is the finest of all things and the purest, and indeed it maintains all discernment about everything and has the greatest strength. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B12), quoted by Patricia Curd - Anaxagoras 3.3 | |
| A reaction: Anaxagoras seems to have been a pioneer in elevating the status of the mind, which is a prop to the rationalist view, and encourages dualism. More naturalistic accounts are, in my view, much healthier. |
| 13784 | Mind is self-ruling, pure, ordering and ubiquitous [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras says that mind is self-ruling, mixes with nothing else, orders the things that are, and travels through everything. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plato - Cratylus 413c | |
| A reaction: This elevation of the mind in the natural scheme of things by Anaxagoras looks increasingly significant in western culture to me. Without this line of thought, Descartes and Kant are inconceivable. |
| 5118 | Anaxagoras says mind remains pure, and so is not affected by what it changes [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras says that intellect (which is a cause of change) is not affected by or mixed in with anything else; for this is the only way in which it can cause change, while being itself changeless, and control things without mixing with them. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 256b24 | |
| A reaction: I suggest that this is the germ of the original concept of freewill - of the mind as somehow outside the causal processes of the world, so that it can initiate change without itself being affected by other causes. Aristotle says he's right; I disagree. |
| 18717 | Thought is an activity which we perform by the expression of it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Thought is an activity which we perform by the expression of it, and lasts as long as the expression. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VIII) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an outmoded view of thought, which modern cognitive science has undermined, by showing how little of our thinking is actually conscious. |
| 18725 | A proposition draws a line around the facts which agree with it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A proposition gives reality a degree of freedom; it draws a line round the facts which agree with it, and distinguishes them from those which do not. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XIII.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the idea of meaning as the range of truth conditions. Propositions as sets of possible worlds extends this into possible facts which agree with the proposition. Most facts neither agree nor disagree with some proposition. |
| 18728 | The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification (and two propositions cannot have the same verification). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C I) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that if two sentences have the same mode of verification, then they must be expressing the same proposition? I guess so. |
| 18705 | Words function only in propositions, like levers in a machine [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Words function only in propositions, like the levers in a machine. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Consider the word 'tree'. Did you manage to do it? Was it just a noise? |
| 18711 | A proposition is any expression which can be significantly negated [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Any affirmation can be negated: if it has sense to say p it also has sense to say ¬p. ...A proposition therefore is any expression which can be significantly negated. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'therefore'. I'm thinking you would have to already grasp the proposition in order to apply his negation test. |
| 18231 | Anaxagoras said a person would choose to be born to contemplate the ordered heavens [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: When Anaxagoras was asked what it was for which a person would choose to be born rather than not, he said it would be to apprehend the heavens and the order in the whole universe. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], 1216), quoted by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 8 'Finality' | |
| A reaction: [Anaxagoras, quoted by Aristotle, quoted by Korsgaard, quoted by me, and then quoted by you, perhaps] |
| 631 | For Anaxagoras the Good Mind has no opposite, and causes all movement, for a higher reason [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras says the good is a principle as the source of movement, in the form of Mind. However it does it for the sake of something else, which is a further factor. And he allows no opposite to the good Mind. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1075b |
| 22727 | Mind creates the world from a mixture of pure substances [Anaxagoras, by ] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras assumed that Mind, which is God, is the efficient principle, and the multi-mixture of homoeomeries is the material principle. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by - I.6 | |
| A reaction: The choice of homoeomeries as basic is a good one. They are much better candidates than materials which are made of parts of a quite different kind, where the parts are a better candidate than the whole. |
| 550 | Anaxagoras said that the number of principles was infinite [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras said that the number of principles was infinite. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 984a |
| 21383 | The ultimate constituents of reality are the homoeomeries [Anaxagoras, by Vlastos] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras contrasts with other thinkers in the formula that his 'elements' were not the air of Anaximenes or the fire of Heraclitus or the roots of Empedocles or the atoms of Leucippus, but the infinite variety of homoiomereia. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras III | |
| A reaction: Not sure about the 'roots' of Empedocles. Anaxagoras is particularly thinking of the basic stuffs that make up the body, such as hair, bone and blood. It is plausible to reduce everything to stuffs that seem to have no further structure. |
| 13208 | Anaxagoreans regard the homoeomeries as elements, which compose earth, air, fire and water [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The followers of Anaxagoras regard the 'homoeomeries' as 'simple' and elements, whilst they affirm that Earth, Fire, Water and Air are composite; for each of these is (according to them) a 'common seminary' of all the homoeomeries. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314a28 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 13207. Aristotle is amused that the followers of Empedocles and of Anaxagoras have precisely opposite views on this subject. |
| 367 | Anaxagoras says mind produces order and causes everything [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras asserted that it is mind that produces order and is the cause of everything. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plato - Phaedo 097d |
| 18733 | Laws of nature are an aspect of the phenomena, and are just our mode of description [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature are not outside phenomena. They are part of language and of our way of describing things; you cannot discuss them apart from their physical manifestation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V C) | |
| A reaction: I suppose this amounts to a Humean regularity theory - that the descriptions pick out patterns in the manifestations. I like the initial claim that they are not external to phenomena. |
| 21381 | Germs contain microscopic organs, which become visible as they grow [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: In the germ there are hair, nails, arteries, sinews, bones, which are not manifest because of the smallness of their parts, but become distinct little by little as they grow. For how could hair come from not-hair, or flesh from non-flesh. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B10), quoted by Gregory Vlastos - The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras I | |
| A reaction: Compare Aristotle's apparent view that the physical world has no microscopic structure, and Democritus's view that hair can come from not-hair by the organisation of atoms. Is this the first suggestion that we need to know what is microscopic? |
| 22726 | When things were unified, Mind set them in order [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: All things were together, and Mind came and set them in order. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the source for the passionate belief of Plato in the importance of order. Existence seems like chaos, with order residing beneath it, but we can wonder whether if we go even deeper it is chaos again. |
| 2629 | Anaxagoras was the first to say that the universe is directed by an intelligence [Anaxagoras, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras, pupil of Anaximenes, was the first to maintain that the form and motion of the universe was determined and directed by the power and purpose of an infinite intelligence. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.26 |
| 480 | Past, present and future, and the movements of the heavens, were arranged by Mind [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Whatever was then in existence which is not now, and all things that now exist, and whatever shall exist - all were arranged by Mind, as also the revolution followed now by the stars, the sun and the moon. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B12), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 164.24 |
| 5956 | Anaxagoras was charged with impiety for calling the sun a lump of stone [Anaxagoras, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras was charged with impiety because he called the sun a lump of stone. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plutarch - 14: Superstition §9 | |
| A reaction: The point is that he was supposed to say that the sun is a god. |
| 7488 | Anaxagoras was the first recorded atheist [Anaxagoras, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras was the first recorded atheist. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.25 | |
| A reaction: He was a very lively character, right in the middle of the Athenian golden age. |