7517
|
I could take a healthy infant and train it up to be any type of specialist I choose [Watson,JB]
|
|
Full Idea:
Give me a dozen healthy infants, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, artist, beggar, thief - regardless of his ancestry.
|
|
From:
J.B. Watson (Behaviorism [1924], Ch.2), quoted by Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate
|
|
A reaction:
This was a famous pronouncement rejecting the concept of human nature as in any way fixed - a total assertion of nurture over nature. Modern research seems to be suggesting that Watson is (alas?) wrong.
|
5845
|
Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon]
|
|
Full Idea:
Niceratus said that his father, because he was concerned to make him a good man, made him learn the whole works of Homer, and he could still repeat by heart the entire 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'.
|
|
From:
Xenophon (Symposium [c.391 BCE], 3.5)
|
|
A reaction:
This clearly shows the status which Homer had in the teaching of morality in the time of Socrates, and it is precisely this acceptance of authority which he was challenging, in his attempts to analyse the true basis of virtue
|
15251
|
The attribution of necessity to causation is either primitive animism, or confusion with logical necessity [Ayer]
|
|
Full Idea:
How are we to explain the word 'must' [about causation]? The answer is, I think, that it is either a relic of animism, or else reveals an inclination to treat causal connexion as if it were a form of logical necessity.
|
|
From:
A.J. Ayer (The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge [1940], IV.18)
|
|
A reaction:
The animism proposal just about makes sense (as a primitive feature of minds), but why would anyone, if they had the time and understanding, dream of treating a regular connection as a 'logical' necessity?
|