58 ideas
| 224 | When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e) |
| 232 | Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Opposites are as unlike as possible. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159a) |
| 8937 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic. | |
| From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Pref 71 | |
| A reaction: It is a long way from the analytic tradition of philosophy to be singling out a classic text for its 'artistic' achievement. Eventually we may even look back on, say, Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity' and see it in that light. |
| 18486 | We might define truth as arising from the truth-maker relation [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: We might define truth using the truth-maker relation, albeit in a roundabout way, according to the pattern of saying 'S is true' is equivalent to 'there is something which makes S true'. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: [MacBride gives it more algebraically, but I prefer English!] You would need to explain 'truth-making' without reference to truth. Horwich objects, reasonably, that ordinary people grasp 'truth' much more clearly than 'truth-making'. Bad idea, I think. |
| 18484 | Phenomenalists, behaviourists and presentists can't supply credible truth-makers [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: For Martin the fatal error of phenomenalists was their inability to supply credible truth-makers for truths about unobserved objects; the same error afflicted Ryle's behaviourism, ...and Prior's Presentism (for past-tensed and future-tensed truths). | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the original motivation for the modern rise of the truthmaker idea. Personally I find 'Napoleon won at Austerlitz' is a perfectly good past-tensed truthmaker which is compatible with presentism. Truth-making is an excellent challenge. |
| 18466 | If truthmaking is classical entailment, then anything whatsoever makes a necessary truth [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: If a truthmaker entails its truth, this threatens to over-generate truth-makers for necessary truths - at least if the entailment is classical. It's a feature of this notion that anything whatsoever entails a given necessary truth. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a good reason to think that the truth-making relation does not consist of logical entailment. |
| 18481 | Maximalism follows Russell, and optimalism (no negative or universal truthmakers) follows Wittgenstein [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: If maximalism is intellectual heir to Russell's logical atomism, then 'optimalism' (the denial that universal and negative statements need truth-makers) is heir to Wittgenstein's version, where only atomic propositions represent states of affairs. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein's idea is that you can use the logical connectives to construct all the other universal and negative facts. 'Optimalism' restricts truthmaking to atomic statements. |
| 18473 | 'Maximalism' says every truth has an actual truthmaker [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The principle of 'maximalism' is that for every truth, then there must be something in the world that makes it true. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: That seems to mean that no truths can be uttered about anything which is not in the world. If I say 'pigs might have flown', that isn't about the modal profile of actual pigs, it is about what might have resulted from that profile. |
| 18483 | The main idea of truth-making is that what a proposition is about is what matters [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: According the Lewis, the kernel of truth in truth-making is the idea that propositions have a subject matter. They are about things, so whether they are true or false depends on how those things stand. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: [Lewis 'Things Qua Truth-makers' 2003] That sounds like the first step in the story, rather than the 'kernel' of the truth-making approach. |
| 18479 | There are different types of truthmakers for different types of negative truth [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: We recognise that what makes it true that there is no oil in this engine is different from what makes it true that there are no dodos left. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a local particular negation up against a universal negation. I'm not sure there is a big difference between 'my dodo's gone missing' (like my oil), and 'all the dodos have gone permanently missing'. |
| 18477 | There aren't enough positive states out there to support all the negative truths [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: It's not obvious that there are enough positive states out there to underwrite all the negative truths. Even though it may be true that this liquid is odourless this needn't be because there's something further about it that excludes its being odourless. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
| A reaction: What is the ontological status of all these hypothetical truths? What is the truthmaker for 'a trillion trillion negative truths exist'? What is the status of 'this is not not-red'? |
| 18482 | Optimalists say that negative and universal are true 'by default' from the positive truths [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Optimalists say that negative truths are 'true by default' (having the opposite truth value of p), and universal truths are too. Universal truths are equivalent to negative existential truths, which are true by default. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: The background idea is Wittgenstein's, that if p is false, then not-p is true by default, without anyone having to assert the negation. This strikes me as a very promising approach to truthmaking. See Simons 2008. |
| 18485 | Even idealists could accept truthmakers, as mind-dependent [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Even an idealist could accept that there are truth-makers whilst thinking of them as mind-dependent entities. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: This undercuts anyone (me, perhaps?) who was hoping to prop up their robust realism with an angry demand to be shown the truthmakers. |
| 18474 | Does 'this sentence has no truth-maker' have a truth-maker? Reductio suggests it can't have [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: If the sentence 'This sentence has no truth-maker' has a truth-maker, then it must be true. But then what it says must be the case, so it has no truth-maker. Hence by reductio the sentence has no truth-maker. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.1) | |
| A reaction: [Argument proposed by Peter Milne 2005] Rodriguez-Pereyra replies that the sentence is meaningless, so that it can't possibly be true. The Liar sentence is also said to be meaningless. The argument opposes Maximalism. |
| 18490 | Maybe 'makes true' is not an active verb, but just a formal connective like 'because'? [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the truth-maker panegyrists have misconstrued the logical form of 'makes true'. They have taken it to be a verb like 'x hits y', when really it is akin to the connective '→' or 'because'. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Melia 2005] This isn't any sort of refutation of truth-making, but an offer of how to think of the phenomenon if you reject the big principle. I like truth-making, but resist the 'makes' that brings unthought propositions into existence. |
| 18493 | Truthmaker talk of 'something' making sentences true, which presupposes objectual quantification [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: When supporters of truth-making talk of 'something' which makes a sentence true, they make the assumption that it is an objectual quantifier in name position. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: We might say, more concisely, that they are 'reifying' the something. This makes it sound as if Armstrong and Bigelow have made a mistake, but that are simply asserting that this particular quantification is indeed objectual. |
| 18489 | Connectives link sentences without linking their meanings [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The 'connectives' are expressions that link sentences but without expressing a relation that holds between the states of affairs, facts or tropes that these sentences denote. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: MacBride notes that these contrast with ordinary verbs, which do express meaningful relations. |
| 18476 | 'A is F' may not be positive ('is dead'), and 'A is not-F' may not be negative ('is not blind') [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Statements of the form 'a is F' aren't invariably positive ('a is dead'), and nor are statements of the form 'a isn't F' ('a isn't blind') always negative. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the negation may be implicit in the predicate. There are many ways to affirm or deny something, other than by use of the standard syntax. |
| 13986 | Plato found antinomies in ideas, Kant in space and time, and Bradley in relations [Plato, by Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Plato (in 'Parmenides') shows that the theory that 'Eide' are substances, and Kant that space and time are substances, and Bradley that relations are substances, all lead to aninomies. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Gilbert Ryle - Are there propositions? 'Objections' |
| 14150 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made [Russell on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made. | |
| From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §337 |
| 8923 | Numbers are identified by their main properties and relations, involving the successor function [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The mathematically significant properties and relations of natural numbers arise from the successor function that orders them; the natural numbers are identified simply as the objects that answer to this basic function. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §1) | |
| A reaction: So Julius Caesar would be a number if he was the successor of Pompey the Great? I would have thought that counting should be mentioned - cardinality as well as ordinality. Presumably Peano's Axioms are being referred to. |
| 8926 | For mathematical objects to be positions, positions themselves must exist first [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The identification of mathematical objects with positions in structures rests upon the prior credibility of the thesis that positions are objects in their own right. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds devastating, but something has to get the whole thing off the ground. This is why Resnik's word 'patterns' is so appealing. Patterns stare you in the face, and they don't change if all the objects making it up are replaced by others. |
| 16150 | One is, so numbers exist, so endless numbers exist, and each one must partake of being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If one is, there must also necessarily be number - Necessarily - But if there is number, there would be many, and an unlimited multitude of beings. ..So if all partakes of being, each part of number would also partake of it. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 144a) | |
| A reaction: This seems to commit to numbers having being, then to too many numbers, and hence to too much being - but without backing down and wondering whether numbers had being after all. Aristotle disagreed. |
| 229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d) |
| 21821 | Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
| A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God. |
| 18480 | Maybe it only exists if it is a truthmaker (rather than the value of a variable)? [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: 'To be is to be a truth-maker' has been proposed as a replacement the standard conception of ontological commitment, that to be is to be the value of a variable. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Ross Cameron 2008] Unconvincing. What does it mean to say that some remote unexperienced bit of the universe 'makes truths'? How many truths? Where do these truths reside when they aren't doing anything useful? |
| 18471 | Different types of 'grounding' seem to have no more than a family resemblance relation [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The concept of 'grounding' appears to cry out for treatment as a family resemblance concept, a concept whose instances have no more in common than different games do. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: I like the word 'determinations', though MacBride's point my also apply to that. I take causation to be one species of determination, and truth-making to be another. They form a real family, with no adoptees. |
| 18472 | Which has priority - 'grounding' or 'truth-making'? [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers define 'grounding' in terms of 'truth-making', rather than the other way around. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: [Cameron exemplifies the first, and Schaffer the second] I would have thought that grounding was in the world, but truth-making required the introduction of propositions about the world by minds, so grounding is prior. Schaffer is right. |
| 18475 | Russell allows some complex facts, but Wittgenstein only allows atomic facts [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The logical atomism of Russell admitted some logically complex facts but not others - in contrast to Wittgenstein's version which admitted only atomic facts. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.3) | |
| A reaction: For truthmakers, it looks as if the Wittgenstein version might do a better job (e.g. with negative truths). I quite like the Russell approach, where complex facts underwrite the logical connectives. Disjunctive, negative, conjunctive, hypothetical facts. |
| 221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c) |
| 223 | If you deny that each thing always stays the same, you destroy the possibility of discussion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If a person denies that the idea of each thing is always the same, he will utterly destroy the power of carrying on discussion. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135c) |
| 227 | You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name [Plato] |
| Full Idea: You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 147d) |
| 211 | If admirable things have Forms, maybe everything else does as well [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is troubling that if admirable things have abstract ideas, then perhaps everything else must have ideas as well. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
| 219 | If absolute ideas existed in us, they would cease to be absolute [Plato] |
| Full Idea: None of the absolute ideas exists in us, because then it would no longer be absolute. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133c) |
| 16151 | Plato moves from Forms to a theory of genera and principles in his later work [Plato, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that Plato in the later dialogues, beginning with the second half of 'Parmenides', wants to substitute a theory of genera and theory of principles that constitute these genera for the earlier theory of forms. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
| A reaction: My theory is that the later Plato came under the influence of the brilliant young Aristotle, and this idea is a symptom of it. The theory of 'principles' sounds like hylomorphism to me. |
| 228 | Greatness and smallness must exist, to be opposed to one another, and come into being in things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: These two ideas, greatness and smallness, exist, do they not? For if they did not exist, they could not be opposites of one another, and could not come into being in things. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 149e) |
| 210 | It would be absurd to think there were abstract Forms for vile things like hair, mud and dirt [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Are there abstract ideas for such things as hair, mud and dirt, which are particularly vile and worthless? That would be quite absurd. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
| 220 | The concept of a master includes the concept of a slave [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Mastership in the abstract is mastership of slavery in the abstract. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133e) |
| 212 | The whole idea of each Form must be found in each thing which participates in it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The whole idea of each form (of beauty, justice etc) must be found in each thing which participates in it. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131a) |
| 216 | If things are made alike by participating in something, that thing will be the absolute idea [Plato] |
| Full Idea: That by participation in which like things are made like, will be the absolute idea, will it not? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132e) |
| 215 | If things partake of ideas, this implies either that everything thinks, or that everything actually is thought [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If all things partake of ideas, must either everything be made of thoughts and everything thinks, or everything is thought, and so can't think? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132c) |
| 213 | Each idea is in all its participants at once, just as daytime is a unity but in many separate places at once [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Just as day is in many places at once, but not separated from itself, so each idea might be in all its participants at once. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131b) |
| 218 | Participation is not by means of similarity, so we are looking for some other method of participation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Participation is not by means of likeness, so we must seek some other method of participation. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
| 214 | If absolute greatness and great things are seen as the same, another thing appears which makes them seem great [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If you regard the absolute great and the many great things in the same way, will not another appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132a) |
| 217 | Nothing can be like an absolute idea, because a third idea intervenes to make them alike (leading to a regress) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible for anything to be like an absolute idea, because a third idea will appear to make them alike, and if that is like anything, it will lead to another idea, and so on. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
| 15851 | Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The part would not be the part of many things or all, but of some one character ['ideas'] and of some one thing, which we call a 'whole', since it has come to be one complete [perfected] thing composed [created] of all. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157d) | |
| A reaction: A serious shot by Plato at what identity is. Harte quotes it (125) and shows that 'character' is Gk 'idea', and 'composed' will translate as 'created'. 'Form' links this Platonic passage to Aristotle's hylomorphism. |
| 15846 | In Parmenides, if composition is identity, a whole is nothing more than its parts [Plato, by Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: At the heart of the 'Parmenides' puzzles about composition is the thesis that composition is identity. Considered thus, a whole adds nothing to an ontology that already includes its parts | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 2.5 | |
| A reaction: There has to be more to a unified identity that mere proximity of the parts. When do parts come together, and when do they actually 'compose' something? |
| 15849 | Plato says only a one has parts, and a many does not [Plato, by Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: In 'Parmenides' it is argued that a part cannot be part of a many, but must be part of something one. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 3.2 | |
| A reaction: This looks like the right way to go with the term 'part'. We presuppose a unity before we even talk of its parts, so we can't get into contradictions and paradoxes about their relationships. |
| 15850 | Anything which has parts must be one thing, and parts are of a one, not of a many [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The whole of which the parts are parts must be one thing composed of many; for each of the parts must be part, not of a many, but of a whole. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
| A reaction: This is a key move of metaphysics, and we should hang on to it. The other way madness lies. |
| 13259 | It seems that the One must be composed of parts, which contradicts its being one [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The One must be composed of parts, both being a whole and having parts. So on both grounds the One would thus be many and not one. But it must be not many, but one. So if the One will be one, it will neither be a whole, nor have parts. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137c09), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the starting point for Plato's metaphysical discussion of objects. It seems to begin a line of thought which is completed by Aristotle, surmising that only an essential structure can bestow identity on a bunch of parts. |
| 15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically. |
| 18478 | Wittgenstein's plan to show there is only logical necessity failed, because of colours [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: It is almost universally acknowledged that Wittgenstein's plan to show all necessity is logical necessity ended in failure - indeed foundered upon the very problem of explaining colour incompatibilities. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether you can 'show' that colour incompatibility is some sort of necessity, though intuitively it seems so. I'm thinking that 'necessity' is a unitary concept, with a wide variety of sources generating it. |
| 222 | Only a great person can understand the essence of things, and an even greater person can teach it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Only a man of very great natural gifts will be able to understand that everything has a class and absolute essence, and an even more wonderful man can teach this. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135a) |
| 225 | The unlimited has no shape and is endless [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The unlimited partakes neither of the round nor of the straight, because it has no ends nor edges. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137e) |
| 231 | Everything partakes of the One in some way [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The others are not altogether deprived of the one, for they partake of it in some way. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 233. |
| 2062 | The only movement possible for the One is in space or in alteration [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the One moves it either moves spatially or it is altered, since these are the only motions. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 138b) |
| 233 | Some things do not partake of the One [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The others cannot partake of the one in any way; they can neither partake of it nor of the whole. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159d) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 231 |
| 234 | We couldn't discuss the non-existence of the One without knowledge of it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There must be knowledge of the one, or else not even the meaning of the words 'if the one does not exist' would be known. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 160d) |