15 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| Full Idea: Thales was the first thinker in the west to believe that the arché (the basis of things) was intelligible. | |
| From: comment on Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.138 |
| 5831 | The new view is that "water" is a name, and has no definition [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the modern view is best expressed as saying that "water" has no definition at all, at least in the traditional sense, and is a proper name of a specific substance. | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: This assumes that proper names have no definitions, though I am not clear how we can grasp the name 'Aristotle' without some association of properties (human, for example) to go with it. We need a definition of 'definition'. |
| 10911 | Part-whole is the key relation among truth-makers [Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The most important (ontological) relations holding among truth-makers are the part and whole relations. | |
| From: Mulligan/Simons/Smith (Truth-makers [1984], §6) | |
| A reaction: Hence Peter Simons goes off and writes the best known book on mereology. Looks very promising to me. |
| 10909 | Truth-makers cannot be the designata of the sentences they make true [Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: Truth-makers cannot be the designata of the sentences they make true, because sentences with more than one truth-maker would then be ambiguous, and 'a' and 'a exists' would have the same designatum. | |
| From: Mulligan/Simons/Smith (Truth-makers [1984], §3) |
| 10906 | Moments (objects which cannot exist alone) may serve as truth-makers [Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: A 'moment' is an existentially dependent or non-self-sufficient object, that is, an object which is of such a nature that it cannot exist alone, ....... and we suggest that moments could serve as truth-makers. | |
| From: Mulligan/Simons/Smith (Truth-makers [1984], §2) | |
| A reaction: [These three writers invented the term 'truth-maker'] |
| 10907 | The truth-maker for a sentence may not be unique, or may be a combination, or several separate items [Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: A proposition may have a minimal truth-maker which is not unique, or a sentence may be made true by no single truth-maker but only by several jointly, or again only by several separately. | |
| From: Mulligan/Simons/Smith (Truth-makers [1984], §3) |
| 10912 | Despite negative propositions, truthmakers are not logical complexes, but ordinary experiences [Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: Because of negative propositions, investigators of truth-makers have said that they are special non-objectual entities with a logical complexity, but we think a theory is possible in which the truth relation is tied to ordinary and scientific experience. | |
| From: Mulligan/Simons/Smith (Truth-makers [1984], §6) |
| 10908 | Correspondence has to invoke facts or states of affairs, just to serve as truth-makers [Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence theory of truth invokes a special category of non-objectual entities - facts, states of affairs, or whatever - simply to serve as truth-makers. | |
| From: Mulligan/Simons/Smith (Truth-makers [1984], §3) |
| 5829 | We refer to Thales successfully by name, even if all descriptions of him are false [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: We can refer to Thales by using the name "Thales" even though perhaps the only description we can supply is false of him. | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear what we would be referring to if all of our descriptions (even 'Greek philosopher') were false. If an archaeologist finds just a scrap of stone with a name written on it, that is hardly a sufficient basis for successful reference. |
| 5830 | The traditional theory of names says some of the descriptions must be correct [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: The traditional theory of proper names entails that at least some combination of the things ordinarily believed of Aristotle are necessarily true of him. | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: Searle endorses this traditional theory. Kripke and co. tried to dismiss it, but you can't. If all descriptions of Aristotle turned out to be false (it was actually the name of a Persian statue), our modern references would have been unsuccessful. |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules everything. | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.2.9 |
| 5826 | The intension of "lemon" is the conjunction of properties associated with it [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: The conjunction of properties associated with a term such as "lemon" is often called the intension of the term "lemon". | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §II) | |
| A reaction: The extension of "lemon" is the set of all lemons. At last, a clear explanation of the word 'intension'! The debate becomes clear - over whether the terms of a language are used in reference to ideas of properties (and substances?), or to external items. |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Thales says water is the first principle (which is why he declared the earth is on water); perhaps he concluded this from seeing that all food is moist. | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE], A12) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 983b12 |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Thales seems, from what is recorded of him, to have supposed that the soul is something productive of movement, if he really said that the magnet has soul because it produces movement in iron. | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by Aristotle - De Anima 405a20 |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When asked whether a man who did wrong could escape the notice of the gods, Thales is said to have replied: 'No, not even if he thinks wrong.' | |
| From: report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.Th.9 |