65 ideas
| 15447 | We shouldn't always follow where the argument leads! [Lewis on Plato] |
| Full Idea: There comes a time not to go on following where the argument leads! | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 667b) by David Lewis - Against Structural Universals 'Variant' | |
| A reaction: Lewis is a fine one to talk, since he follows argument that take him past innumerable incredulous stares of onlookers. |
| 16943 | Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine] |
| Full Idea: I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat. …There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is generalisation. Science holds the upper hand, because it settles the subject-matter to be generalised. |
| 243 | It is foolish to quarrel with the mind's own reasoning processes [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When the soul quarrels with knowledge or opinion or reason, its natural ruling principles, you have there what I call 'folly'. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 689b) |
| 241 | We ought to follow where the argument leads us [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We ought to follow where the argument leads us. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 667a) |
| 21264 | Mortals are incapable of being fully rational [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We mustn't assume that mortal eyes will ever be able to look upon reason and get to know it adequately. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 897d) | |
| A reaction: This is in the context of the rational control of the whole Cosmos. I presume Plato would be flabbergasted by the findings of recent physics and cosmology. Did Kant believe that he was being completely rational about ethics? |
| 251 | Truth has the supreme value, for both gods and men [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Truth heads the list of all things good, for gods and men alike. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 730c) |
| 16949 | Klein summarised geometry as grouped together by transformations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Felix Klein's so-called 'Erlangerprogramm' in geometry involved characterizing the various branches of geometry by what transformations were irrelevant to each. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.137) |
| 16939 | Mass terms just concern spread, but other terms involve both spread and individuation [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Yellow' and 'water' are mass terms, concerned only with spread; 'apple' and 'square' are terms of divided reference, concerned with both spread and individuation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.124) | |
| A reaction: Would you like some apple? Pass me that water. It is helpful to see that it is a requirement of 'individuation' that is missing from terms for stuff. |
| 16948 | Once we know the mechanism of a disposition, we can eliminate 'similarity' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Once we can legitimize a disposition term by defining the relevant similarity standard, we are apt to know the mechanism of the disposition, and so by-pass the similarity. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.135) | |
| A reaction: I love mechanisms, but can we characterise mechanisms without mentioning powers and dispositions? Quine's dream is to eliminate 'similarity'. |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Intuitively, what qualifies a thing as soluble though it never gets into water is that it is of the same kind as the things that actually did or will dissolve; it is similar to them. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.130) | |
| A reaction: If you can judge that the similar things 'will' dissolve, you can cut to the chase and judge that this thing will dissolve. |
| 21259 | To grasp a thing we need its name, its definition, and what it really is [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There are three elements in any given thing: the first is what the object actually is, the second is the definition of this, and the third is the name. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895d) | |
| A reaction: I take the importance of this to be its distinction between what it is, and the definition of what it is. Aristotle maintains this distinction, but some modern Aristotelians seem to get the confused. Plato worried a lot more about names than we do. |
| 16944 | Science is common sense, with a sophisticated method [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Sciences differ from common sense only in the degree of methodological sophistication. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.129) | |
| A reaction: Science is normal thinking about the world, but it is teamwork, with the bar set very high. |
| 16940 | Induction is just more of the same: animal expectations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction is essentially only more of the same: animal expectation or habit formation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: My working definition of induction is 'learning from experience', but that doesn't disagree with Quine. Lipton has a richer account of different types of induction. Quine's point is that it rests on resemblance. |
| 16941 | Induction relies on similar effects following from each cause [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction expresses our hopes that similar causes will have similar effects. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: Some top philosophers are also top teachers, and Quine was one of them, in his writings. He boils it down for the layman. Once again, he is pointing to the fundamental role of the similarity relation. |
| 16933 | Grue is a puzzle because the notions of similarity and kind are dubious in science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: What makes Goodman's example a puzzle is the dubious scientific standing of a general notion of similarity, or of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Illuminating. It might be best expressed as revealing a problem with sortal terms, as employed by Geach, or by Wiggins. Grue is a bit silly, but sortals are subject to convention and culture. 'Natural' properties seem needed. |
| 21260 | Soul is what is defined by 'self-generating motion' [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The entity which we call 'soul' is precisely that which is defined by the expression 'self-generating motion'. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896a) | |
| A reaction: We may suspect that he defines soul in this way for a particular context, aimed at proving the existence of a First Mover. He must think there is more to soul than the generation of movement. |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The usual general term, whether a common noun or a verb or an adjective, owes its generality to some resemblance among the things referred to. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Quine has a nice analysis of the basic role of similarity in a huge amount of supposedly strict scientific thought. |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'respects' view, our learning of yellow by ostension would have depended on our first having been told or somehow apprised that it was going to be a question of color. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.122) | |
| A reaction: Quine suggests there is just one notion of similarity, and respects can be 'abstracted' afterwards. Even the ontologically ruthless Quine admits psychological abstraction! |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A standard of similarity is in some sense innate. The spacing of qualities (such as red, pink and blue) can be explored and mapped in the laboratory by experiments. They are needed for all learning. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This reasserts Hume's original point in more scientific terms. It is one of the undeniable facts about our perceptions of qualities and properties, no matter how platonist your view of universals may be. |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Things are similar to the extent that they are interchangeable parts of the cosmic machine. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.134) | |
| A reaction: This is a major idea for Quine, because it is a means to gradually eliminate the fuzzy ideas of 'resemblance' or 'similarity' or 'natural kind' from science. I love it! Two tigers are same insofar as they are substitutable. |
| 276 | My individuality is my soul, which carries my body around [Plato] |
| Full Idea: While I am alive I have nothing to thank for my individuality except my soul, whereas my body is just the likeness that I carry around with me. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 959a) |
| 16932 | Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Projectible' predicates are predicates F and G whose shared instances all do count, for whatever reason, towards confirmation of 'All F are G'. ….A projectible predicate is one that is true of all and only the things of a kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.115-6) | |
| A reaction: Both Quine and Goodman are infuriatingly brief about the introduction of this concept. 'Red' is true of all ripe tomatoes, but not 'only' of them. Hardly any predicates are true only of one kind. Is that a scholastic 'proprium'? |
| 249 | People who value beauty above virtue insult the soul by placing the body above it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When a man values beauty above virtue, the disrespect he shows his soul is total and fundamental, because he argues that the body is more to be honoured than the soul. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 727e) |
| 265 | An action is only just if it is performed by someone with a just character and outlook [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The description 'just' is applicable only to the benefit conferred or injury inflicted by someone with a just character and outlook. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 862b) | |
| A reaction: How should we describe the occasional administering of good justice by a generally wicked judge. Greeks focus on character, but moderns focus on actions. |
| 269 | Attempted murder is like real murder, but we should respect the luck which avoided total ruin [Plato] |
| Full Idea: An attempted murder should be treated like a successful one, but with respect shown for the luck which saved him from total ruin. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 877a) | |
| A reaction: The earliest reference to moral luck, I think. 'Repect' sounds vague, but it is asking judges to 'take it into consideration', which is quite practical. Attempted murderers are just as dangerous. |
| 5126 | A carelessly thrown brick is condemned much more if it hits someone [Smith,A, by Harman] |
| Full Idea: Adam Smith wrote about the influence of fortune on moral judgements, giving nice examples. Someone carelessly throws a brick over a wall. His companion may complain even if no harm is done. But if the brick hits someone much greater condemnation ensues. | |
| From: report of Adam Smith (The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759]) by Gilbert Harman - Moral Philosophy meets social psychology 10.7.1.2 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be the earliest observation of the phenomenon of moral luck, though Plato (Idea 269) endorsed the view that the luck of outcome should be taken into account in moral judgements. |
| 240 | It would be strange if the gods rewarded those who experienced the most pleasure in life [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be strange if the gods gave the greatest rewards in heaven to those who led the most pleasant life, rather than the most just. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 662c) | |
| A reaction: All of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato.... See Idea 1454. |
| 264 | The conquest of pleasure is the noblest victory of all [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The conquest of pleasure is the noblest victory of all. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 840c) | |
| A reaction: Plato's puritanical streak. Even Aristotle doesn't agree with this. Self-control does not imply conquest of pleasure. Has a good professional wine taster conquered pleasure? |
| 4332 | Virtue is a concord of reason and emotion, with pleasure and pain trained to correct ends [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Virtue is the general concord of reason and emotion, but there is one key element, which is the correct formation of our feelings of pleasure and pain, which makes us hate what we ought to hate, and love what we ought to love. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 653c) | |
| A reaction: An important truth, taken up by Aristotle. To see another person humiliated gives some people pleasure and other people pain. |
| 248 | A serious desire for moral excellence is very rare indeed [Plato] |
| Full Idea: People who are anxious to attain moral excellence with all possible speed are pretty thin on the ground. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 718e) |
| 253 | Every crime is the result of excessive self-love [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The cause of each and every crime we commit is precisely this excessive love of ourselves. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 731e) |
| 263 | The only worthwhile life is one devoted to physical and moral perfection [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A life devoted to every physical perfection and every moral virtue is the only life worth the name. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 807c) |
| 235 | Virtue is the aim of all laws [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Virtue is the aim of the laws the legislator lays down. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 631a) |
| 277 | The Guardians must aim to discover the common element in the four cardinal virtues [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The guardians of the state should aim to get an exact idea of the common element in all the four virtues. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 965d) |
| 254 | Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 732c) |
| 266 | Injustice is the mastery of the soul by bad feelings, even if they do not lead to harm [Plato] |
| Full Idea: My general description of injustice is this: the mastery of the soul by anger, fear, pleasure, pain, envy and desires, whether they lead to actual damage or not. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 863e) |
| 242 | The best people are produced where there is no excess of wealth or poverty [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The community in which neither wealth nor poverty exists will produce the finest characters. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 679b) |
| 256 | Virtue and great wealth are incompatible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Virtue and great wealth are quite incompatible. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 742e) |
| 245 | Totalitarian states destroy friendships and community spirit [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Excessively authoritarian government destroys all friendship and community of spirit in the state. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 697d) |
| 239 | Education in virtue produces citizens who are active but obedient [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Education in virtue produces a keen desire to become a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled as justice demands. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 643e) |
| 1402 | Friendship is impossible between master and slave, even if they are made equal [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Even if you proclaim that a master and a slave shall have equal status, friendship between them is inherently impossible. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 757a) |
| 262 | Men and women should qualify equally for honours on merit [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Men and women who have shown conspicuous merit should qualify for all honours without distinction of sex. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 802a) |
| 236 | Sound laws achieve the happiness of those who observe them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Sound laws achieve the happiness of those who observe them. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 631b) |
| 259 | Justice is granting the equality which unequals deserve [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Justice consists of granting the 'equality' which unequals deserve to get. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 757d) | |
| A reaction: Beautifully simple, and hard to improve on. It shows the close link between equality and justice, but shows why they are not the same. The main debate about justice concerns the criteria for 'deserving'. |
| 238 | Children's games should channel their pleasures into adult activity [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We should use children's games to channel their pleasures and desires towards activities in which they will have to engage when they are adult. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 643c) |
| 260 | Control of education is the key office of state, and should go to the best citizen [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Minister of Education is by far the most important of all the supreme offices of the state; the best all-round citizen in the state should be appointed. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 765e) |
| 257 | Mathematics has the widest application of any subject on the curriculum [Plato] |
| Full Idea: For domestic and public purposes, and all professional skills, no branch of a child's education has as big a range of applications as mathematics. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 747a) |
| 4331 | Education is channelling a child's feelings into the right course before it understands why [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I call 'education' the initial acquisition of virtue by the child, when the feelings of pleasure and affection, pain and hatred, are channelled in the right courses before he can understand the reason why. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 653b) | |
| A reaction: A precursor of Aristotle's view (Ethics 1104b11). A profound, simple and important insight. |
| 250 | The best way to educate the young is not to rebuke them, but to set a good example [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The best way to educate the younger generation (as well as yourself) is not to rebuke them but patently to practise all your life what you preach to others. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 729c) |
| 275 | Creation is not for you; you exist for the sake of creation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Creation is not for your benefit; you exist for the sake of the universe. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 903c) |
| 7375 | Quine probably regrets natural kinds now being treated as essences [Quine, by Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The concept of natural kinds was reintroduced by Quine, who may now regret the way it has become a stand-in for the dubious but covertly popular concept of essences. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 12.2 n2 | |
| A reaction: He is right that Quine would regret it, and he is right that we can't assume that there are necessary essences just because there seem to be stable natural kinds, but personally I am an essentialist, so I'm not that bothered. |
| 16935 | If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If similarity has no degrees there is no containing of kinds within broader kinds. If colored things are a kind, they are similar, but red things are too narrow for a kind. If red things are a kind, colored things are not similar, and it's too broad. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.118) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I'm on Quine's side with this. We glibly talk of 'kinds', but the criteria for sorting things into kinds seems to be a mess. Quine goes on to offer a better account than the (diadic, yes-no) one rejected here. |
| 16936 | Comparative similarity allows the kind 'colored' to contain the kind 'red' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: With the triadic relation of comparative similarity, kinds can contain one another, as well as overlapping. Red and colored things can both count as kinds. Colored things all resemble one another, even though less than red things do. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.119) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Quine claims that comparative similarity is necessary for kinds - that there be some 'foil' in a similarity - that A is more like C than B is. |
| 16937 | You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If kinds are based on similarity, this has the Imperfect Community problem. Red round, red wooden and round wooden things all resemble one another somehow. There may be nothing outside the set resembling them, so it meets the definition of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.120) | |
| A reaction: [ref. to Goodman 'Structure' 2nd 163- , which attacks Carnap on this] This suggests an invocation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance, which won't be much help for natural kinds. |
| 16942 | It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why there have been regularities is an obscure question, for it is hard to see what would count as an answer. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard pessimism of the 20th century Humeans, but it strikes me as comparable to the pessimism about science found in Locke and Hume. Regularities are explained all the time by scientists, though the lowest level may be hopeless. |
| 273 | Movement is transmitted through everything, and it must have started with self-generated motion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Motion is transmitted to innumerable things, and this must spring from some initial principle, which must be the change effected by self-generated motion. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895a) |
| 8004 | In 'The Laws', to obey the law is to be obey god [Plato, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The divine is important in 'The Laws' because it is identified with law; to be obedient before the law is to be obedient before god. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: Christian conservativism in a nutshell. Plato is rejecting his view in Euthyphro that piety (etc.) must precede the will of the gods. The obvious problem is bad laws, made by corrupt rulers. |
| 21261 | Self-moving soul has to be the oldest thing there is [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soul, being the source of motion, is the most ancient thing there is. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896b) | |
| A reaction: Plato seems to assume that the First Mover must still exist, which doesn't follow from anything in the argument. The First Pusher could be dead before the last domino falls. Why can't activity be the default state of everything? |
| 21258 | The only possible beginning for the endless motions of reality is something self-generated [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When the motion in reality is transmitted to thousands of things one after another, the entire sequence of their movements must surely spring from some initial principle, which can hardly be anything except the change effected by self-generated motion. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895a) | |
| A reaction: This gives a domino picture of reality, with all of reality responding inertly to a first kick. Much better is to see self-generated motion in the active qualities of all matter, as seen in the sea of virtual subatomic particles at the smallest level. |
| 21257 | Self-generating motion is clearly superior to all other kinds of motion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We can't resist the conclusion that the motion which can generate itself is infinitely superior, and all the others are inferior to it. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 894d) | |
| A reaction: Who said you can't get values from facts! Not that the argument depends on superiority. There could be an inferior First Mover, as a bus driver is subservient to the passengers, or (my favourite) a head teacher is inferior to the pupils. |
| 274 | Soul must be the cause of all the opposites, such as good and evil or beauty and ugliness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soul must be cause of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, justice and injustice, and all the opposites. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896d) |
| 21263 | If all the motions of nature reflect calculations of reason, then the best kind of soul must direct it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the movement of the heavens and all that is in them reflects the motion and revolution and calculation of reason ...then clearly we have to admit that it is the best kind of soul that cares for the entire universe and directs it along the best path. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 897c) | |
| A reaction: Most of this passage reflects the cosmological argument - that without some initiating source natural events could not occur - but this slides into the design argument. So who designed mud (which is too inferior to have a Form)? |
| 278 | If astronomical movements are seen as necessary instead of by divine will, this leads to atheism [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If a man studying astronomy sees events apparently happening by necessity rather than being directed by the intention of a benevolent will, he will turn into an atheist. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 967a) |
| 21265 | The heavens must be full of gods, controlling nature either externally or from within [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A soul or souls have been shown to be cause of all the phenomena, and whether it is by their living presence in matter that they direct all the heavens, or by some other means, we insist that these souls are gods. So 'everything is full of gods'. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 899b) | |
| A reaction: This seems to have little to do with the pagan gods on Olympus. It is also notably not monotheistic. It is somewhere between animism and panpsychism. Does he think the rivers and woods contain gods? Probably not. Just the orderly heavens. |
| 21262 | There must be at least two souls controlling the cosmos, one doing good, the other the opposite [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There must be more than one soul (not fewer than two) controlling movement and the heavens: that which does good, and that which has the opposite capacity. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896e) | |
| A reaction: [Wording compressed - as often with the dialogues] This idea of controlling opposites is found in Empedocles. Presumably this good soul defers to the Form of the Good, as implied by the Euthyphro Question. |