Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Pyrrhonian Arguments (frags)' and 'Concepts of supervenience'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / a. Nature of supervenience
3536 Supervenient properties must have matching base properties [Kim]
     Full Idea: Each supervenient property necessarily has a coextensive property in the base family.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Concepts of supervenience [1984], §5)
     A reaction: This is presumably the minimum requirement for a situation of supervenience. How do you decide which property is the 'base' property? Do we just mean that the base causes the other, but not vice versa?
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / h. Against ethics
6040 There is no universal goal to human life [Aenesidemus, by Photius]
     Full Idea: Aenesidemus does not allow either happiness or pleasure or prudence or any other goal held by anyone on the basis of philosophical doctrine as the goal of life; rather, he says that there just is no such thing as a goal which is recognised by all people.
     From: report of Aenesidemus (Pyrrhonian Arguments (frags) [c.60 BCE], Bk 8) by 'Photius Bibliotheca' - Aenesidimus (frags) 170b
     A reaction: This is probably the dominant modern (post-Darwinian, existentialist) view. Personally I am sympathetic to the Aristotelian view that (to some extent) appropriate goals for life can be inferred from a fairly stable human nature.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
13304 Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius]
     Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.
     From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078
     A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
20820 Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus]
     Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness.
     From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42
     A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them.