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Index for this page...
All The Following Items Were Posted On June 1, 2009
In the ancient world it was Plato, not Aristotle, who used the word "ideas" to signify intelligivle objects of the understanding. He was corredt in regarding ideas as intelligible objects, but incorrect in asserting that ideas exist in reality in addition to existing for the human mind as objects of conceptual thought. On this point, Aristotle corrected Plato's error by using the word "concept" for the mental content that intends or signifies ideas as intentional objects. It was Aristotle and, after him, Aquinas who explicity distinguised between that which the intellect understands and that by which it achieves such understanding. This distinction between the id quod (that which) and the id quo (that by which) of our intellectual acts prevents us from ever saying that our concepts are that which we are conscious or aware of when we understand ideas. We could not be aware of the concepts in our minds and also at the same time be aware of their intelligble objects. If we were, we could not distinguish between them, which would mean we could not affirm that such objects exist and are shared by other minds. This Aristotelian and Thomistic distinction between the id quod and the id quo of our intellectual acts of understandin has been completely lost in the modern world, beginning with Thomas Hobbes and Descartes, and especially with the nominalism of Bishop Geoge Berkeley, David Hume, and John Locke. The tradition of British empirical psychology and also of German and French psychology, used the word "ideas" for what were not ideas at all. In that modern tradition down to the present day, the word "idea" signifies the sensory content of the human mind -- its sensations, perceptions, memories, and images. All this sensory content was treated as that which we are conscious of when we are engaged in thought. This understanding raised the insoluble problem of how there could possibly be real existences as objects of thought. A vain attempt to solve this problem consisted of regarding the sensory contents in our minds as representations of real existences. If they cannot be so regarded, the next step is complete skepticism. If the sensory contents of our minds, our so-called ideas, could not be regarded as representations of reality, then we could have no contact with a reality that is independent of our minds. Kant, failing to correct Hume's errors, affirmed real existences, things in themselves, but also asserted that they are unknowable by us. From that time on in the modern world, the greatest of all modern philosophical mistakes was generated -- the error of idealism, denying that there is any knowable reality independent of our mind. No ancient or medieval philosopher was an idealist in this sense of the word. Finally, Berkeley and Hume were nominalists. They denied the existence of what they called "abstract ideas." All the common nouns in the vocabulary of everyday speech have general significance, referring to things that are the same in kind. Berkeley and Hume tried to explain how this was possible in the absence of any intellectual content in the human mind -- in the absence of any acts of conceptual thought and of abstract ideas a intelligible objects. In doing so, the nominalists contradicted themselves without being aware of it. Nominalism must be rejected as self-contradictory. (Also see "Nominalism" in the May 2008 From the Mortimer Adler File.) Source: Adler's Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon. Have you a copy of this book in your personal library? If not, consider getting one. Read Max Weismann's review of this book by Clicking Here.
Plato (427-347 B.C.) Ancient Greek philosopher "Plato was born on the seventh of Thargelion, the birthday of Apollo, in the eighty-eighth Olympiad -- May 29, 428/7 BC. This was the best of times to be born, and the worst of times, best because he lived through the last great days of Athenian democracy and reaped the Golden Age's rich harvest in art, architecture, drama, and intellect; worst because he had to endure years of chaos and tragedy from continuous warring between Athens and her neighbors, from an unbelievable reign of terror under vicious oligarchs, and from the ravages of plague and famine. But through it all he sustained his idealism and continued to plan for a career in public life -- until, after the fall of Athens in 404 BC. and the execution of his teacher in 300 B.C., his world came crashing down around his shoulders." (Source: Volume 1 of The Wisdom Seekers: Great Philosophers of the Western World, by James L. Christian. If you want an excellent and comprehensive history of philosophy, the two volumes in this set are among the best available.) Plato speaks . . .
-- Excerpted from The Republic, Book VII, 514a-c Read more about Plato in The Radical Academy. Also see The Philosophy of Plato in the Classic Philosophers section and Books by and about Plato in The Radical Academy Bookstore.
FOR THE RECORD Here's a question that has plagued philosophers, artists, and scientists alike for centuries: How was consciousness born? One composer and a neuroscientist took a stab at answering the age-old question at a performance of a new musical work, "Self Comes to Mind," on Sunday, May 3, 2009, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The story tells of "the evolution of mind from brain," Adolphe told The Scientist in an interview the week before the performance. "It goes from the idea of a brain in a creature that doesn't know, to consciousness and the anxiety and dilemmas of consciousness." Each section of the music is preceded by a recording of Damasio reading a passage that describes a stage in the evolution of consciousness and the discovery of self-awareness. Source: The Scientist OpenCourseWare: College Education, Without the Student Loans From the frigid region of the Arctic Circle to the battlefields of Iraq, a free, virtual classroom is taking hold. Spurred by advances in technology and people's hunger to get an extra edge in a down economy, universities and colleges are posting course materials-including syllabi, class notes, and lectures-online for anyone to access. This movement, known as OpenCourseWare, allows self learners to save money on tuition, gives alumni a link to their alma mater, and enables prospective students to peek into university classrooms. Already more than 200 colleges and universities offer courses ranging from art history to economics for free on demand. The classes can be watched on YouTube or downloaded to iPods. And the consortium continues to grow. Source: Christian Science Monitor Four hundred years ago, astronomy embraced all that was visible. For Galileo, looking through his primitive telescope, the vistas included jewel-like stars, mountains on the moon, moons orbiting Jupiter and the glow of comet tails. Today astronomy is often about what cannot be seen. Astronomers have known for decades that stars and galaxies are mere baubles floating on a vast sea of dark matter. More recently, astronomy's roster of Darth Vaders has expanded to include an even more mysterious force: dark energy, an entity that drives the universe to accelerate its expansion just when gravity's tug ought to be slowing it down. On the brighter side, astronomers are beginning to learn more about the complicated processes that formed stars and galaxies, giving the universe its light. The Planck mission will test the idea that the Big Bang was accompanied by a brief burst of rapid expansion called inflation, which is thought to have created the seeds of matter from which stars and galaxies arose. Source: Science News Arts Appear to Play Role in Brain Development For years, school systems across the nation dropped the arts to concentrate on getting struggling students to pass tests in reading and math. Yet now, a growing body of brain research suggests that teaching the arts may be good for students across all disciplines. Scientists are now looking at, for instance, whether students at an arts high school who study music or drawing have brains that allow them to focus more intensely or do better in the classroom. ...Brain research in the past several years is just beginning to uncover some startling ideas about how students learn. First came the proof, some years ago, that our brains do not lose brain cells as we get older, but are always capable of growing. Now neuroscientists are investigating how training students in the arts may change the structure of their brains and the way they think. Source: Baltimore Sun Brain Scans Can Identify the Most Sociable People Scientists at Cambridge University have used medical scanners to pinpoint brain features that identify someone as being a likeable "people person" or a wallflower. The scans revealed that people who most value the company of others have, on average, more dense grey matter in two areas of the brain known as the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum. These brain regions are involved in what scientists call "reward circuits" for some of our most basic pleasures, such as sweet food and sex. Source: The Guardian (UK) Feet Offer Clues About Tiny Hominid The extinct hominids commonly known as hobbits may have been small of body and brain, but their feet were exceptionally long, and they were flat. Scientists, completing the first detailed analysis of the hominid's foot bones, say the findings bolster their controversial interpretation that these individuals belonged to a primitive population distinct from modern humans that lived as recently as 17,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. The new anatomical evidence, being reported Thursday in the journal Nature, is unlikely to solve the mystery of just where the species--formally designated Homo floresiensis--fits in human evolution. That fact even the researchers acknowledge, and some of their critics still contend that the skull and bones are nothing more than remains of modern pygmy humans deformed by genetic or pathological disorders. Source: The New York Times C. P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' Fifty Years Later On May 7 1959, the celebrated novelist C. P. Snow mounted the podium in the Senate House in Cambridge to deliver that year's Rede Lecture. The title was "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution," and his theme the dangerously wide gap that had opened up between scientists and "literary intellectuals." He spoke of scientists who could scarcely struggle through a novel by Dickens, but more importantly of humanities professors who were ignorant of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, who sneered at science as an inferior branch of learning that no really cultured person needed to trouble with. ... Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry. Source: The Telegraph (UK) Psychiatrists Rewriting the Mental Health Bible Is the compulsion to hoard things a mental disorder? How about the practice of eating excessively at night? And what of Internet addiction: Should it be diagnosed and treated? As the clock ticks toward the release of the most influential of mental health textbooks, psychiatrists are asking themselves thousands of complex and sometimes controversial questions. The answers will determine how Americans' mental health is assessed, diagnosed and treated. Over the next 18 months, psychiatrists will hammer out a draft of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Assn.'s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, more commonly called DSM-V. Nowhere have the discussions been more heated, the ramifications most vividly foretold, than at the organization's annual meeting. Source: Los Angeles Times Decoding Antiquity: Eight Scripts that Still Can't Be Read Writing is one of the greatest inventions in human history. Perhaps the greatest, since it made history possible. Without writing, there could be no accumulation of knowledge, no historical record, no science - and of course no books, newspapers or internet. The first true writing we know of is Sumerian cuneiform ... which was used more than 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards writing appeared in Egypt, and much later in Europe, China and Central America. Civilisations have invented hundreds of different writing systems. Some, such as the one you are reading now, have remained in use, but most have fallen into disuse. These dead scripts tantalise us. We can see that they are writing, but what do they say? That is the great challenge of decipherment: to reach deep into the past and hear the voices of the dead. Source: New Scientist
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT A Little Wisdom: Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's looking. A Little Advice: "Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!" -- Friedrich Nietzsche. A Little Quip: Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. A Little Proverb: If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool. A Little Question: I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges? A Little Reflection: If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. A Little One-Liner: Never chase after a man or a train - another one will always come along. A Little Admission: "Between two evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before." -- Mae West. A Little Observation: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand. A Little Warning: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." -- Edward Abbey. A Little Quote: "Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought -- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things." -- Woody Allen. A Little Legal Shmegal: Get the facts first -- you can distort them later! A Little Bumper Sticker: Born Free. . . . .Taxed to Death.
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Idea:
This is such an important word in the philosophical
vocabulary that I have to repeat here some of the
things in the entry on Cognition.
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