3 ideas
| 22352 | Out of more than a hundred planets, Earth is the only one with the idea of free will [Vonnegut] |
| Full Idea: I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will'. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will. | |
| From: Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five [1969], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Spoken by the ambassador from the planet Tralfamadore. Possibly the greatest put down of a philosophical idea since Diogenes responded to Plato's definition of a man. I think free will is a non-idea. It is non-sensical, and doesn't exist. |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
| From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
| A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |
| 13605 | Gravity isn't a force, because it produces effects without diminishing [Mayer] |
| Full Idea: If gravity be called a force, a cause is supposed which produces effects without itself diminishing, and incorrect conceptions of the causal connexions of things are thereby fostered. | |
| From: J.R. Mayer (Remarks on the forces of inorganic Nature [1842], p.199), quoted by Brian Ellis - Scientific Essentialism 8.03 | |
| A reaction: This seems like a brilliant prelude to the proposal that gravity is actually the 'curvature' of space (whatever that is!). |