77 ideas
| 7490 | Because of Darwin, wisdom as a definite attainable state has faded [Watson] |
| 7461 | The three key ideas are the soul, Europe, and the experiment [Watson] |
| 7464 | The big idea: imitation, the soul, experiments, God, heliocentric universe, evolution? [Watson] |
| 8013 | In the Reformation, morality became unconditional but irrational, individually autonomous, and secular [MacIntyre] |
| 8021 | The Levellers and the Diggers mark a turning point in the history of morality [MacIntyre] |
| 8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
| 8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
| 8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
| 8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
| 7465 | Babylonian thinking used analogy, rather than deduction or induction [Watson] |
| 7466 | Mesopotamian numbers applied to specific things, and then became abstract [Watson] |
| 8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
| 10356 | Relativism can be seen as about the rationality of different cultural traditions [MacIntyre, by Kusch] |
| 8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
| 8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
| 8006 | When Aristotle speaks of soul he means something like personality [MacIntyre] |
| 20657 | There are 23 core brain functions, with known circuit, transmitters, genes and behaviour [Watson] |
| 21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
| 20656 | Traditional ideas of the mind were weakened in the 1950s by mind-influencing drugs [Watson] |
| 8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
| 8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
| 8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
| 8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
| 8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
| 8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
| 8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
| 8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
| 20655 | Humans have been hunter-gatherers for 99.5% of their existence [Watson] |
| 8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
| 8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
| 8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
| 8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
| 8002 | Sophists don't distinguish a person outside one social order from someone outside all order [MacIntyre] |
| 8012 | The value/fact logical gulf is misleading, because social facts involve values [MacIntyre] |
| 8005 | 'Happiness' is a bad translation of 'eudaimonia', which includes both behaving and faring well [MacIntyre] |
| 8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
| 7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
| 8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
| 8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
| 8001 | 'Dikaiosune' is justice, but also fairness and personal integrity [MacIntyre] |
| 8023 | My duties depend on my identity, which depends on my social relations [MacIntyre] |
| 8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
| 8022 | I am naturally free if I am not tied to anyone by a contract [MacIntyre] |
| 8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
| 7477 | Modern democracy is actually elective oligarchy [Watson] |
| 22808 | Liberalism is minimal government, or individual rights, or equality [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
| 23080 | Liberals debate how conservative or radical to be, but don't question their basics [MacIntyre] |
| 22803 | Can individualist theories justify an obligation to fight in a war? [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
| 22804 | Autonomy is better achieved within a community [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
| 22806 | Communitarians avoid oppression for the common good, by means of small mediating communities [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
| 22807 | If our values are given to us by society then we have no grounds to criticise them [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
| 8031 | Fans of natural rights or laws can't agree on what the actual rights or laws are [MacIntyre] |
| 7478 | Greek philosophers invented the concept of 'nature' as their special subject [Watson] |
| 20650 | The Uncertainty Principle implies that cause and effect can't be measured [Watson] |
| 20649 | The interference of light through two slits confirmed that it is waves [Watson] |
| 20661 | Electrons rotate in hyrogen atoms 10^13 times per second [Watson] |
| 20647 | Quantum theory explains why nature is made up of units, such as elements [Watson] |
| 20654 | Only four particles are needed for matter: up and down quark, electron, electron-neutrino [Watson] |
| 20651 | The shape of molecules is important, as well as the atoms and their bonds [Watson] |
| 20652 | In 1828 the animal substance urea was manufactured from inorganic ingredients [Watson] |
| 20658 | Information is physical, and living can be seen as replicating and preserving information [Watson] |
| 7462 | DNA mutation suggests humans and chimpanzees diverged 6.6 million years ago [Watson] |
| 8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |
| 7470 | During the rise of civilizations, the main gods changed from female to male [Watson] |
| 7474 | Hinduism has no founder, or prophet, or creed, or ecclesiastical structure [Watson] |
| 7480 | Monotheism was a uniquely Israelite creation within the Middle East [Watson] |
| 7479 | Modern Judaism became stabilised in 200 CE [Watson] |
| 7481 | The Israelites may have asserted the uniqueness of Yahweh to justify land claims [Watson] |
| 7471 | The Gathas (hymns) of Zoroastrianism date from about 1000 BCE [Watson] |
| 7473 | Zoroaster conceived the afterlife, judgement, heaven and hell, and the devil [Watson] |
| 7484 | Jesus never intended to start a new religion [Watson] |
| 7483 | Paul's early writings mention few striking episodes from Jesus' life [Watson] |
| 8008 | The Bible is a story about God in which humans are incidental characters [MacIntyre] |
| 7475 | Confucius revered the spiritual world, but not the supernatural, or a personal god, or the afterlife [Watson] |
| 7476 | Taoism aims at freedom from the world, the body, the mind, and nature [Watson] |
| 7463 | The three basic ingredients of religion are: the soul, seers or priests, and ritual [Watson] |
| 7468 | In ancient Athens the souls of the dead are received by the 'upper air' [Watson] |