Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Manuscript remains' and 'Mind and World'

expand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


25 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
Philosophers can't be religious, and don't need to be; philosophy is perilous but free [Schopenhauer]
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 3. Pure Reason
The logical space of reasons is a natural phenomenon, and it is the realm of freedom [McDowell]
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 2. Geometry
No perceptible object is truly straight or curved [Protagoras]
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 2. Phenomenalism
Everything that exists consists in being perceived [Protagoras]
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation
Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological [McDowell, by Burge]
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 5. Interpretation
There is no pure Given, but it is cultured, rather than entirely relative [McDowell, by Macbeth]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
Sense impressions already have conceptual content [McDowell]
13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 1. Scepticism
Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything [Protagoras, by Diog. Laertius]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism
Man is the measure of all things - of things that are, and of things that are not [Protagoras]
There is no more purely metaphysical doctrine than Protagorean relativism [Benardete,JA on Protagoras]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 3. Subjectivism
If my hot wind is your cold wind, then wind is neither hot nor cold, and so not as cold as itself [Benardete,JA on Protagoras]
You can only state the problem of the relative warmth of an object by agreeing on the underlying object [Benardete,JA on Protagoras]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 6. Relativism Critique
God is "the measure of all things", more than any man [Plato on Protagoras]
Protagoras absurdly thought that the knowing or perceiving man is 'the measure of all things' [Aristotle on Protagoras]
Relativists think if you poke your eye and see double, there must be two things [Aristotle on Protagoras]
19. Language / F. Communication / 4. Private Language
Forming concepts by abstraction from the Given is private definition, which the Private Lang. Arg. attacks [McDowell]
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
As the subject of willing I am wretched, but absorption in knowledge is bliss [Schopenhauer]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / b. Rational ethics
To deduce morality from reason is blasphemy, because it is holy, and far above reason [Schopenhauer]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD]
23. Ethics / B. Contract Ethics / 1. Contractarianism
For Protagoras the only bad behaviour is that which interferes with social harmony [Protagoras, by Roochnik]
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / d. Teaching virtue
Protagoras contradicts himself by saying virtue is teachable, but then that it is not knowledge [Plato on Protagoras]
25. Social Practice / D. Justice / 3. Punishment / b. Retribution for crime
Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos]
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / a. Aims of education
Successful education must go deep into the soul [Protagoras]
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
He spent public money on education, as it benefits the individual and the state [Protagoras, by Diodorus of Sicily]
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
He said he didn't know whether there are gods - but this is the same as atheism [Diogenes of Oen. on Protagoras]