62 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. |
| 21962 | Metaphysics is the roots of the tree of science [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647]), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 01.2 | |
| A reaction: If Descartes had not believed this he would not have bothered with metaphysics, and philosophy might have been dead by 1650. |
| 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 |
| 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? |
| 3659 | I know the truth that God exists and is the author of truth [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have very clearly deduced the following truths, that there is a God who is the author of all that is in the world, and who is the source of all truth. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.180) |
| 22309 | An idea can only be like another idea [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: An idea can be like nothing but an idea. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §08), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 43 'Mean' | |
| A reaction: I take this to be relevant to the correspondence theory, but also to be one of Berkeley's best observations. We understand ideas, but we can't map them onto the world (because they are not maps!). ...But then how is one idea like another? Hm. |
| 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. |
| 6717 | Abstract ideas are impossible [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: We have, I think, shown the impossibility of Abstract Ideas. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §21) | |
| A reaction: He achieves this by an attack on universals, offering the nominalist view that there are only particulars. There seems to be a middle ground, where universals don't actually exist, but there are settled conventional abstraction, beyond particulars. |
| 18876 | Berkeley does believe in trees, but is confused about what trees are [Berkeley, by Cameron] |
| Full Idea: I think that we should consider Berkeley as believing in trees; we should simply claim that he has false beliefs about what trees are. | |
| From: report of George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710]) by Ross P. Cameron - Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology 'Realism' | |
| A reaction: I can be realist about spots before my eyes, or a ringing in my ears, but be (quite sensibly) unsure about what they are, so Cameron's suggestion sounds plausible. |
| 6715 | Universals do not have single meaning, but attach to many different particulars [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as one precise and definite signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying indifferently a great number of particular ideas. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §18) | |
| A reaction: The term 'red' may be assigned to a range of colours, but we also recognise the precision of 'that red'. For 'electron', or 'three', or 'straight', the particulars are indistinguishable. |
| 6719 | No one will think of abstractions if they only have particular ideas [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: He that knows he has no other than particular ideas, will not puzzle himself in vain to find out and conceive the abstract idea annexed to any name. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §24) | |
| A reaction: A nice point against universals. Maybe gods only think in particulars. One particular on its own could never suggest a universal. How are you going to spot patterns if you don't think in universals? Maths needs patterns. |
| 6714 | Universals do not have any intrinsic properties, but only relations to particulars [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: Universality, so far as I can comprehend it, does not consist in the absolute, positive nature or conception of anything, but in the relation it bears to the particulars signified or represented by it. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §15) | |
| A reaction: I always think it is a basic principle in philosophy that some sort of essence must precede relations (and functions). What is it about universals that enables them to have a relation to particulars? |
| 6729 | Material substance is just general existence which can have properties [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The most accurate philosophers have no other meaning annexed to 'material substance' but the idea of being in general, together with the relative notion of its supporting accidents. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §17) | |
| A reaction: This is part of the attack on Aristotle's concept of 'substance', and is a nice way of dissolving the concept. 'Substance' will never reappear in physics, but modern philosopher have returned to it, as possibly inescapable in metaphysics. |
| 16636 | A die has no distinct subject, but is merely a name for its modes or accidents [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: To me a die seems to be nothing distinct from those things which are termed its modes or accidents. And to say a die is hard, extended and square is not to attribute those qualities to a distinct subject, but only an explication of the word 'die'. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], n 49) | |
| A reaction: This is apparently a reaction to Locke, and a final rejection of the medieval idea of a 'substance'. Unfortunately it leaves Berkeley with a 'bundle' view of objects (a typical empiricist account), which is even worse. |
| 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. |
| 3657 | Understanding, not the senses, gives certainty [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Certainty is not in the sense but in the understanding alone, when it has evident perceptions. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.177) |
| 6722 | Perception is existence for my table, but also possible perception, by me or a spirit [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed - meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §3) | |
| A reaction: Berkeley is always (understandably) labelled as an 'idealist', but this seems to be what we call 'phenomenalism', because it allows possible experiences as well as actual ones. See Ideas 5170 and 6522. |
| 6724 | The only substance is spirit, or that which perceives [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that there is not any other Substance than spirit, or that which perceives. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §7) | |
| A reaction: Weird. To say that this is 'evident' seems to be begging the question. Why should he assume that there is nothing more to reality than his perception of it? He seems strangely unimaginative. |
| 6723 | The 'esse' of objects is 'percipi', and they can only exist in minds [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The absolute existence of unthinking things with no relation to their being perceived is unintelligible to me; their 'esse' is 'percipi', nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §3) | |
| A reaction: "Esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived) is the well-known slogan associated with Berkeley. I cannot see how Berkeley can assert that the separate existence of things is impossible. He is the classic confuser of epistemology and ontology. |
| 6732 | When I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but in another mind [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: When I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in another mind. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §90) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as ridiculous. What kind of theory says that a table goes out of existence when someone forgets to look at it for a moment, but is then recreated in identical form? Epistemology is not ontology. |
| 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. |
| 6726 | No one can, by abstraction, conceive extension and motion of bodies without sensible qualities [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: I desire any one to reflect and try whether he can, by any abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body without any sensible qualities. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §10) | |
| A reaction: The rather geometrical view of objects found in Descartes and Russell is an attempt to do this. I don't think the fact that we can't really achieve it matters much. We divide primary from secondary qualities in our understanding, not in experience. |
| 6728 | Motion is in the mind, since swifter ideas produce an appearance of slower motion [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: Is it not reasonable to say that motion is not without the mind, since if the succession of ideas in the mind become swifter the motion, it is acknowledged, shall appear slower without any alteration in any external object. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §14) | |
| A reaction: An intriguing argument, based on what is now the principle of slow-motion photography. Fast minds slow down movement, like great tennis players. By what right does Berkeley say that the external subject is unaltered? |
| 6727 | Figure and extension seem just as dependent on the observer as heat and cold [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: If heat and cold are only affections of the mind (since the same body seems cold to one hand and warm to the other), why may we not argue that figure and extension also appear different to the same eye at different stations? | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §14) | |
| A reaction: If the assessment of the qualities of an object is entirely a matter of our experiences of it, there is no denying Berkeley on this. However, judgement goes beyond experience, into speculations, inferences, and explanations. |
| 6495 | Berkeley's idealism resulted from fear of scepticism in representative realism [Robinson,H on Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: It was fear of scepticism based upon representative realism that motivated Berkeley's idealism. | |
| From: comment on George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710]) by Howard Robinson - Perception II.1 | |
| A reaction: Personally I side with Russell, who accepts representative realism, and also accepts that some degree of scepticism is unavoidable, but without getting excited about it. The key to everything is to be a 'fallibilist' about knowledge. |
| 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. |
| 6720 | Knowledge is of ideas from senses, or ideas of the mind, or operations on sensations [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The objects of knowledge are either ideas imprinted on the senses, or passions and operations of the mind, or ideas (formed by memory and imagination) compounding, dividing or barely representing the original perceptions. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of Hume's 'associations' (Idea 2189). There is not much room here for synthetic a priori knowledge, as the a priori part seems to merely know the mind. Most of Russell's epistemology is contained in the last part of the sentence. |
| 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. |
| 23636 | Berkeley's idealism gives no grounds for believing in other minds [Reid on Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: I can find no principle in Berkeley's system, which affords me even probable ground to conclude that there are other intelligent beings, like myself. | |
| From: comment on George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710]) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses 10 | |
| A reaction: I agree, which means that Berkeley's position seems to entail solipsism, unless God is the Cartesian deus ex machina who rescues him from this wall of ignorance. |
| 6736 | I know other minds by ideas which are referred by me to other agents, as their effects [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The knowledge I have of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas; but depending on the intervention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §145) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as gross intellectual dishonesty, since the argument Berkeley uses to assert other minds could equally be used to assert the existence of tables ('by me referred to agents distinct from myself, as effects'). Be a solipsist or a realist. |
| 6713 | If animals have ideas, and are not machines, they must have some reason [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: If the brutes have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot deny them to have some reason. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §11) | |
| A reaction: It seems possible to imagine a low level of mind, where a few ideas (or concepts) float around, but hardly anything worth the name of reason. However, a Darwinian view suggests that concepts must bestow an advantage, so the two go together. |
| 6491 | Berkeley replaced intentionality with an anti-abstractionist imagist theory of thought [Berkeley, by Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: By Berkeley - with his anti-abstractionism and imagist theory of thought - the classical sense-datum conception was firmly established, and intentionality had disappeared as an intrinsic property, not only of perceptual states, but of all mental contents. | |
| From: report of George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710]) by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.6 | |
| A reaction: Intentionality was originally a medieval concept, and was revived by Brentano in the late nineteenth century. Nowadays intentionality is taken for granted, but I still suspect that we could drop it, and talk of nothing but brain states caused by reality. |
| 6711 | The mind creates abstract ideas by considering qualities separated from their objects [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: We are told that the mind being able to consider each quality of things singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §7) | |
| A reaction: A helpful explanation of 'abstract' ideas. Berkeley gives colour and movement as examples. Fodor suggests that abstraction is the key strategy in empiricist epistemology. The difficulty is to decide whether the qualities are natural or conventional. |
| 10581 | I can only combine particulars in imagination; I can't create 'abstract' ideas [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: Whether others can abstract their ideas, they best can tell. For myself, I find I have a faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, only the idea of those particular things I have perceived, and of compounding and dividing them. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], 10) | |
| A reaction: He is admitting mixing experiences, but always particulars, never abstract. His examples are 'man' and 'motion'. Compare Aristotle Idea 9067. Berkeley is, I think, trapped in a false imagistic view of thought. My image of Plato blurs young and old. |
| 6721 | Ideas are perceived by the mind, soul or self [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The thing which knows or perceives ideas is what I call mind, spirit, soul or myself. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §2) | |
| A reaction: The interest here is in making no distinction between 'mind' and 'self', which seems to ally Berkeley with Locke's view of personal identity, as continuity of consciousness. The addition of 'soul' tries to connect Locke to Christian thought. |
| 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. |
| 6716 | Language is presumably for communication, and names stand for ideas [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: It is a received opinion that language has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and that every significant name stands for an idea. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §19) | |
| A reaction: This attitude to language has been widely discredited, partly by the observation that 'idea' is very ambiguous, and partly by the fans of meaning-as-use. Truth conditions seem to be ideas, and so are speaker's intentions. |
| 6718 | I can't really go wrong if I stick to wordless thought [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can easily be mistaken. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §22) | |
| A reaction: I think it was one of the great errors of twentieth century philosophy to say that Berkeley cannot do this, because thought needs language. Personally I think language lags along behind most our thinking, tidying up the mess. I believe in propositions. |
| 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. |
| 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! |
| 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. |
| 6731 | No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: How matter should operate on a spirit, or produce any idea in it, is what no philosopher will pretend to explain; it is therefore evident there can be no use of matter in natural philosophy. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §50) | |
| A reaction: An intriguing argument for idealism, which starts in Cartesian dualism, but then discards the physical world because of the notorious interaction problem. Of course, if he had thought that matter and spirit were one (Spinoza) the problem vanishes. |
| 6730 | We discover natural behaviour by observing settled laws of nature, not necessary connections [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §31) | |
| A reaction: Hume is famous for this idea, but it is found in Hobbes too (Idea 2364), and is the standard empiricist view of causation. The word 'settled' I take to imply that the laws are contingent, because they could become unsettled at any time. |
| 15861 | The laws of nature are mental regularities which we learn by experience [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The set rules or established methods wherein the Mind we depend on excites in us the ideas of sense, are called the 'laws of nature'; and these we learn by experience, which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with certain other ideas. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], 33) | |
| A reaction: He observes that the ideas of sense are more regular than other mental events, and attributes the rules to an Author. He is giving the standard empirical Humean view, with his own quirky idealist slant. |
| 6734 | If properties and qualities arise from an inward essence, we will remain ignorant of nature [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: An inducement to pronouncing ourselves ignorant of the nature of things is the opinion that everything includes within itself the cause of its properties; or that there is in each object an inward essence which is the source whence its qualities flow. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §102) | |
| A reaction: This remains a good objection to essentialism - that while it remains quite a plausible picture of how nature operates, it makes the task of understanding nature hopeless. We can grasp imposed regular laws, but not secret inner essences. |
| 6735 | All motion is relative, so a single body cannot move [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be any motion other than relative; …if there was one only body in being it could not possibly move. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §112) | |
| A reaction: This seems to agree with with Leibniz in denying the Newton-Clarke idea of absolute space. See Idea 2100. Suppose there were two bodies racing towards one another, when one of them suddenly vanished? |
| 6733 | I cannot imagine time apart from the flow of ideas in my mind [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly and is participated in by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §98) | |
| A reaction: 'Embrangled'! A nice statement of the idealist view of time, as entirely mental. I know what he means. However, surely he can manage to imagine a movement which continues when he shuts he eyes? Try blinking during a horse race. |
| 3660 | Atheism arises from empiricism, because God is intangible [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The existence of God has been doubted by some, because they attributed too much to the perceptions of the senses, and God can be neither seen nor touched. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.180) |
| 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). |
| 6737 | Particular evils are really good when linked to the whole system of beings [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: Those particular things which, considered in themselves, appear to be evil, have the nature of good, when considered as linked with the whole system of beings. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §153) | |
| A reaction: This wildly contradicts the rest of Berkeley's philosophy, which is strictly empiricist, and rests wholly on actual experience. What experience does he have of the 'whole system of beings', and its making evil into actual good? |