Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
Saturday, May 23rd, 2026
In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes presents a theory of love fitting a comic poet. Ignoring the details included to explain/excuse homosexuality, the story is roughly that humans were originally spherical beings with no distinction of sexes, then the gods divided us, forming a male and a female out of each divided ...
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Saturday, April 11th, 2026
We do not have Aristotle’s work on Comedy promised to us in the Poetics, but we might be able to get a rough idea of what he would have said from clues in his surviving writings and commentaries from later ancient authors.
The principal evidence directly from Aristotle is the passage ...
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Thursday, March 19th, 2026
Plato’s allegory in Republic 514a-517a can be summarised as follows
Location
Outside the Cave
Inside the Cave
Light
Sun
Fire
Reveals
Real things
Shadows and Images of things
Models of real things
Shadows of models of things
Symbolizes
The Good
The Sun
Reveals
Forms
Real things as instances of the Forms
Real things as perceptible particulars
Perceptions of perceptible things
Population
Free men
Escapees
Revolutionaries
Prisoners
Cognitions
Philosophy
Hypothetical thinking
Expert opinion
Common opinion
Status
Knowledge (επιστημη)
Opinion (δοξα)
Realm
Intelligibilia
Sensibilia (The Visible World)
FM ...
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Sunday, March 15th, 2026
Reading Nikhil Mahant, Why alien languages could be far stranger than we imagine I was pleased to note that he canvassed the possibility of communication systems that were, as he says, non-linear – but by which he really meant not language-like in the way that language is defined for philosophical ...
Posted in Language, Philosophy, Space | No Comments »
Sunday, March 1st, 2026
The dispute over the criteria used for the categorization of celestial bodies as planets reveals either a confusion concerning the reason for a definition, or an unhappy compromise between independent reasons. The criteria adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) are that the body
is in orbit around the Sun,
has sufficient mass ...
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Saturday, February 28th, 2026
Plato’s simile in Republic 508-9 can be summarised as follows:
The Form of the Good
The Sun
Intelligible world
Visible world
Source of Truth or Reality(508e)
Yields (508e)
1. Truth or reality to intelligibilia
2. Power of knowing to mind
Thus (508e)
1. Not knowing but cause of knowing
2. Known by the knowing it causes
Source of light (508a)
Yields
1. Visibility ...
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Saturday, February 28th, 2026
Plato’s analogy in Republic 509d-511e can be summarised as follows.
Line segments
A
B
C
D
Realm
Intelligible (νοητος) (509d)
Visible (ορατος) (509d)
Objects
Forms (511c) – considered in their relationship to the Good.
The First Principle of things. (511a, b)
The unassumed.
Forms – NOT considered in their relationship to the Good
Assumptions, mathematical postulates. (510c-511b)
Living beings, plants, artificial things. (510a, e)
Models, drawings ...
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Saturday, February 7th, 2026
Western philosophers – or philosophers working in the Western tradition – whatever their interest in Chinese systems of thought may be, do not draw upon them for insights, or adopt any of their ideas and concepts to augment the standard repertoire. In particular, where Chinese Philosophy is taught, it is ...
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Sunday, January 2nd, 2022
Feng’s own philosophical positions were presented in a series of works beginning with the Xin Lixue (The New Study of Principles) which proposed a reform of the Lixue branch of Neoconfucianism associated with the names of the Song dynasty scholars Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi. (It is for that reason also called the Cheng-Zhu School.) His ...
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Tuesday, November 9th, 2021
The fourth effort
A: All truths are relative
B: Do you mean that all statements of fact are true for some and false for others?
A: Yes, that’s what I mean.
B: So a statement like ‘There is a hippopotamus in this room’ is true for some false for others?
A: ...
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