Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs' and 'fragments/reports'

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


3 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
Language arranges sensory experience to form a world-order [Whorf]
     Full Idea: Language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world-order.
     From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs [1936], p.55)
     A reaction: This is only true to a limited degree. See Davidson's 'On the very idea of a conceptual scheme'. All humans share a world-order, to some extent.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 6. Animal Rights
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?