41 ideas
| 19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
| A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 6675 | The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 423 (277)) | |
| A reaction: This romantic remark has passed into folklore. I am essentially against it, but the role of intuition and instinct are undeniable in both reasoning and ethics. I don't feel inclined, though, to let my heart overrule my reason concerning what exists. |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
| 4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
| 11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 22011 | The first principles of truth are not rational, but are known by the heart [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through that latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 110 p.58), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04 n4 | |
| A reaction: This resembles the rationalist defence of fundamental a priori principles, needed as a foundation for knowledge. But the a priori insights are not a feature of the 'natural light' of reason, and are presumably inexplicable (of the 'heart'). |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
| 3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
| 12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
| 4988 | Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true. | |
| From: comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9 | |
| A reaction: If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory. |
| 4987 | Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced [Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: Eliminative materialism says our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena is a radically false theory, so defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced (rather than reduced). | |
| From: Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see what you could replace the idea of a 'belief' with in ordinary conversation. We may reduce beliefs to neuronal phenomena, but we can't drop the vocabulary of the macro-phenomena. The physics of weather doesn't eliminate 'storms'. |
| 23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
| 11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
| 6681 | We only want to know things so that we can talk about them [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 77 (152)) | |
| A reaction: This may be right, but I wouldn't underestimate it as a worthy end (though Pascal, as usual, calls it 'vanity'). Good talk might even be the highest human good (how many people like, more than anything, chatting in pubs?), and good talk is knowledgeable. |
| 6676 | Painting makes us admire things of which we do not admire the originals [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 40 (134)) | |
| A reaction: A lesser sort of painting simply depicts things we admire, such as a nice stretch of landscape. For Pascal it is vanity, but it could be defended as the highest achievement of art, if the purpose of artists is to make us see beauty where we had missed it. |
| 6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
| 6680 | It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river; true on this side of the Pyrenees, false on the other. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 60 (294)) | |
| A reaction: Pascal gives nice concise summaries of our intuitions. Legal justice may be all we can actually get, but everyone knows that what happens to someone could be 'fair' on one side of a river, and very 'unfair' on the other. |
| 6677 | Imagination creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the supreme good [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: Imagination decides everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the world's supreme good. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 44 (82)) | |
| A reaction: Compare Fogelin's remark in Idea 6555. I see Pascal's point, but these ideals are also responses to facts about the world, such as human potential and human desire and successful natural functions. |
| 6678 | We live for the past or future, and so are never happy in the present [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: Our thoughts are wholly concerned with the past or the future, never with the present, which is never our end; thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 47 (172)) | |
| A reaction: A very nice expression of the importance of 'living for the moment' as a route to happiness. Personally I am occasionally startled by the thought 'Good heavens, I seem to be happy!', but it usually passes quickly. How do you plan for the present? |
| 20732 | If man considers himself as lost and imprisoned in the universe, he will be terrified [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: Let man consider what he is in comparison with what exists; let him regard himself as lost, and from this little dungeon the universe, let him learn to take the earth and himself at their proper value. Anyone considering this will be terrified at himself. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], p.199), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction Pref 'What? | |
| A reaction: [p.199 of Penguin edn] Cited by Aho as a forerunner of existentialism. Montaigne probably influenced Pascal. Interesting that this is to be a self-inflicted existential crisis (for some purpose, probably Christian). |
| 6682 | Majority opinion is visible and authoritative, although not very clever [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: Majority opinion is the best way because it can be seen, and is strong enough to command obedience, but it is the opinion of those who are least clever. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 85 (878)) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the classic dilemma faced by highly educated people over democracy. Plato preferred the clever, Aristotle agreed with Pascal, and with me. Politics must make the best of it, not pursue some ideal. Education is the one feeble hope. |
| 6679 | It is not good to be too free [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: It is not good to be too free. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 57 (379)) | |
| A reaction: All Americans, please take note. I agree with this, because I agree with Aristotle that man is essentially a social animal (Idea 5133), and living in a community is a matter of compromise. Extreme libertarianism contradicts our natures, and causes misery. |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 7455 | Pascal knows you can't force belief, but you can make it much more probable [Pascal, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Pascal knows that one cannot decide to believe in God, but he thinks one can act so that one will very probably come to believe in God, by following a life of 'holy water and sacraments'. | |
| From: report of Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: This meets the most obvious and simple objection to Pascal's idea, and Pascal may well be right. I'm not sure I could resist belief after ten years in a monastery. |
| 7457 | Pascal is right, but relies on the unsupported claim of a half as the chance of God's existence [Hacking on Pascal] |
| Full Idea: Pascal's argument is valid, but it is presented with a monstrous premise of equal chance. We have no good reason for picking a half as the chance of God's existence. | |
| From: comment on Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: That strikes me as the last word on this rather bizarre argument. |
| 7456 | The libertine would lose a life of enjoyable sin if he chose the cloisters [Hacking on Pascal] |
| Full Idea: The libertine is giving up something if he chooses to adopt a pious form of life. He likes sin. If God is not, the worldly life is preferable to the cloistered one. | |
| From: comment on Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: This is a very good objection to Pascal, who seems to think you really have nothing at all to lose. I certainly don't intend to become a monk, because the chances of success seem incredibly remote from where I am sitting. |
| 6684 | If you win the wager on God's existence you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: How will you wager if a coin is spun on 'Either God is or he is not'? ...If you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) | |
| A reaction: 'Sooner safe than sorry' is a principle best used with caution. Do you really 'lose nothing' by believing a falsehood for the whole of your life? What God would reward belief on such a principles as this? |
| 22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
| A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |