9 ideas
| 6007 | If you know your father, but don't recognise your father veiled, you know and don't know the same person [Eubulides, by Dancy,R] |
| Full Idea: The 'undetected' or 'veiled' paradox of Eubulides says: if you know your father, and don't know the veiled person before you, but that person is your father, you both know and don't know the same person. | |
| From: report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School | |
| A reaction: Essentially an uninteresting equivocation on two senses of "know", but this paradox comes into its own when we try to give an account of how linguistic reference works. Frege's distinction of sense and reference tried to sort it out (Idea 4976). |
| 6006 | If you say truly that you are lying, you are lying [Eubulides, by Dancy,R] |
| Full Idea: The liar paradox of Eubulides says 'if you state that you are lying, and state the truth, then you are lying'. | |
| From: report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School | |
| A reaction: (also Cic. Acad. 2.95) Don't say it, then. These kind of paradoxes of self-reference eventually lead to Russell's 'barber' paradox and his Theory of Types. |
| 6008 | Removing one grain doesn't destroy a heap, so a heap can't be destroyed [Eubulides, by Dancy,R] |
| Full Idea: The 'sorites' paradox of Eubulides says: if you take one grain of sand from a heap (soros), what is left is still a heap; so no matter how many grains of sand you take one by one, the result is always a heap. | |
| From: report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School | |
| A reaction: (also Cic. Acad. 2.49) This is a very nice paradox, which goes to the heart of our bewilderment when we try to fully understand reality. It homes in on problems of identity, as best exemplified in the Ship of Theseus (Ideas 1212 + 1213). |
| 7492 | Early societies are based on community, and modern societies on association [Tönnies, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: Pre-modern societies are based on community (Gemeinschaft), whereas modern societies are based on association (Gesellschaft). | |
| From: report of Ferdinand Tönnies (Community and Association [1887]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.32 | |
| A reaction: A very interesting distinction. The modern term implies contracts, and it strikes me as an extremely accurate description of modern liberal democracies. There is very little sense of community, but a strong sense of innumerable contracts that bind us. |
| 21275 | Unlike a stone, the parts of a watch are obviously assembled in order to show the time [Paley] |
| Full Idea: When we come to inspect a watch we perceive (what we could not discover in a stone) that its several parts are put together for a purpose, to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day. | |
| From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch 1) | |
| A reaction: Microscopic examination of the stone would have surprised Paley. Should we infer a geometer because the sun is spherical? Crytals look designed, but are explained by deeper chemistry. |
| 21276 | From the obvious purpose and structure of a watch we must infer that it was designed [Paley] |
| Full Idea: The inference is inevitable that the watch had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who designed its use. | |
| From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch 1) | |
| A reaction: It rather begs the question to refer to an ordered structure as a 'design'. Why do we think it is absurd to think the the 'purpose' of the sun is to benefit mankind? Suppose we found a freakish natural sundial in the woods. |
| 21277 | Even an imperfect machine can exhibit obvious design [Paley] |
| Full Idea: It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to show with what design it was made. | |
| From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch 1) | |
| A reaction: This encounters Hume's point that you will then have to infer that the designer contains similar imperfections. If you look at plagues, famines and mothers dying in childbirth (see Mill), you might wish the designer had never started. |
| 21278 | All the signs of design found in a watch are also found in nature [Paley] |
| Full Idea: Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature. | |
| From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This is far from obvious. It was crucial to the watch analogy that we immediately see its one self-evident purpose. No one looks at nature and says 'Aha, I know what this is all for'. |
| 21357 | No organ shows purpose more obviously than the eyelid [Paley] |
| Full Idea: The eyelid defends the eye; it wipes it; it closes it in sleep. Are there, in any work of art whatever, purposes more evident than those which this organ fulfils? | |
| From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], p.24), quoted by Armand Marie LeRoi - The Lagoon: how Aristotle invented science 031 | |
| A reaction: Nice to have another example, in addition to the watch. He is not wholly wrong, because it is impossible to give an evolutionary account of the development of the eyelid without referring to some sort of teleological aspect. The eyelid has a function. |