197 ideas
23350 | A wise philosophers uses reason to cautiously judge each aspect of living [Epictetus] |
23355 | The task of philosophy is to establish standards, as occurs with weights and measures [Epictetus] |
21394 | Philosophy is knowing each logos, how they fit together, and what follows from them [Epictetus] |
23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
20876 | Philosophy investigates the causes of disagreements, and seeks a standard for settling them [Epictetus] |
11832 | We learn a concept's relations by using it, without reducing it to anything [Wiggins] |
16512 | Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins] |
23344 | Reason itself must be compounded from some of our impressions [Epictetus] |
23343 | Because reason performs all analysis, we should analyse reason - but how? [Epictetus] |
22309 | An idea can only be like another idea [Berkeley] |
11863 | (λx)[Man x] means 'the property x has iff x is a man'. [Wiggins] |
17529 | Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins] |
17530 | The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins] |
18091 | Infinitesimals are ghosts of departed quantities [Berkeley] |
6717 | Abstract ideas are impossible [Berkeley] |
3942 | I do not believe in the existence of anything, if I see no reason to believe it [Berkeley] |
3952 | I know that nothing inconsistent can exist [Berkeley] |
14746 | What exists can't depend on our conceptual scheme, and using all conceptual schemes is too liberal [Sider on Wiggins] |
16523 | Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins] |
16524 | Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins] |
18876 | Berkeley does believe in trees, but is confused about what trees are [Berkeley, by Cameron] |
16526 | Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins] |
12056 | An ancestral relation is either direct or transitively indirect [Wiggins] |
12050 | Substances contain a source of change or principle of activity [Wiggins] |
6715 | Universals do not have single meaning, but attach to many different particulars [Berkeley] |
6719 | No one will think of abstractions if they only have particular ideas [Berkeley] |
6714 | Universals do not have any intrinsic properties, but only relations to particulars [Berkeley] |
16492 | Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins] |
16493 | Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins] |
11900 | We can accept criteria of distinctness and persistence, without making the counterfactual claims [Mackie,P on Wiggins] |
11870 | Activity individuates natural things, functions do artefacts, and intentions do artworks [Wiggins] |
16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
11866 | The idea of 'thisness' is better expressed with designation/predication and particular/universal [Wiggins] |
13128 | 'Ultimate sortals' cannot explain ontological categories [Westerhoff on Wiggins] |
16495 | The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins] |
16501 | In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins] |
16506 | Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins] |
12055 | Sortal predications are answers to the question 'what is x?' [Wiggins] |
12059 | A river may change constantly, but not in respect of being a river [Wiggins] |
12052 | We never single out just 'this', but always 'this something-or-other' [Wiggins] |
12063 | Sortal classification becomes science, with cross reference clarifying individuals [Wiggins] |
12051 | If the kinds are divided realistically, they fall into substances [Wiggins] |
12053 | 'Human being' is a better answer to 'what is it?' than 'poet', as the latter comes in degrees [Wiggins] |
12054 | Secondary substances correctly divide primary substances by activity-principles and relations [Wiggins] |
11896 | A sortal essence is a thing's principle of individuation [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
15835 | Wiggins's sortal essentialism rests on a thing's principle of individuation [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
11841 | The evening star is the same planet but not the same star as the morning star, since it is not a star [Wiggins] |
10679 | 'Sortalism' says parts only compose a whole if it falls under a sort or kind [Wiggins, by Hossack] |
14363 | Identity a=b is only possible with some concept to give persistence and existence conditions [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
14364 | A thing is necessarily its highest sortal kind, which entails an essential constitution [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
11851 | Many predicates are purely generic, or pure determiners, rather than sortals [Wiggins] |
11865 | The possibility of a property needs an essential sortal concept to conceive it [Wiggins] |
6729 | Material substance is just general existence which can have properties [Berkeley] |
3959 | There is no other substance, in a strict sense, than spirit [Berkeley] |
12047 | We refer to persisting substances, in perception and in thought, and they aid understanding [Wiggins] |
16636 | A die has no distinct subject, but is merely a name for its modes or accidents [Berkeley] |
14744 | Objects can only coincide if they are of different kinds; trees can't coincide with other trees [Wiggins, by Sider] |
11852 | Is the Pope's crown one crown, if it is made of many crowns? [Wiggins] |
11875 | Boundaries are not crucial to mountains, so they are determinate without a determinate extent [Wiggins] |
12057 | Matter underlies things, composes things, and brings them to be [Wiggins] |
14749 | Identity is an atemporal relation, but composition is relative to times [Wiggins, by Sider] |
11844 | If I destroy an item, I do not destroy each part of it [Wiggins] |
11861 | We can forget about individual or particularized essences [Wiggins] |
16509 | Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins] |
11871 | Essences are not explanations, but individuations [Wiggins] |
11879 | Essentialism is best represented as a predicate-modifier: □(a exists → a is F) [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
16514 | Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins] |
16510 | Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins] |
11835 | The nominal essence is the idea behind a name used for sorting [Wiggins] |
16503 | 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins] |
11876 | It is easier to go from horses to horse-stages than from horse-stages to horses [Wiggins] |
16499 | A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins] |
16515 | A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins] |
16517 | Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins] |
11858 | The question is not what gets the title 'Theseus' Ship', but what is identical with the original [Wiggins] |
11843 | Identity over a time and at a time aren't different concepts [Wiggins] |
11864 | Hesperus=Hesperus, and Phosphorus=Hesperus, so necessarily Phosphorus=Hesperus [Wiggins] |
16502 | Identity is primitive [Wiggins] |
16498 | Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins] |
16497 | Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins] |
11831 | The formal properties of identity are reflexivity and Leibniz's Law [Wiggins] |
14362 | Relative Identity is incompatible with the Indiscernibility of Identicals [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
11838 | Relativity of Identity makes identity entirely depend on a category [Wiggins] |
11847 | To identify two items, we must have a common sort for them [Wiggins] |
16521 | A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins] |
16505 | By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins] |
11839 | Do both 'same f as' and '=' support Leibniz's Law? [Wiggins] |
11845 | Substitutivity, and hence most reasoning, needs Leibniz's Law [Wiggins] |
16494 | We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins] |
3946 | A thing is shown to be impossible if a contradiction is demonstrated within its definition [Berkeley] |
16522 | It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins] |
11869 | Possible worlds rest on the objects about which we have suppositions [Wiggins] |
11850 | Not every story corresponds to a possible world [Wiggins] |
23359 | We can't believe apparent falsehoods, or deny apparent truths [Epictetus] |
3958 | Since our ideas vary when the real things are said to be unchanged, they cannot be true copies [Berkeley] |
3943 | If existence is perceived directly, by which sense; if indirectly, how is it inferred from direct perception? [Berkeley] |
3931 | Sensible objects are just sets of sensible qualities [Berkeley] |
6722 | Perception is existence for my table, but also possible perception, by me or a spirit [Berkeley] |
5192 | Berkeley did not deny material things; he merely said they must be defined through sensations [Berkeley, by Ayer] |
5174 | Berkeley needed a phenomenalist account of the self, as well as of material things [Ayer on Berkeley] |
6723 | The 'esse' of objects is 'percipi', and they can only exist in minds [Berkeley] |
6732 | When I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but in another mind [Berkeley] |
1103 | 'To be is to be perceived' is a simple confusion of experience with its objects [Russell on Berkeley] |
6403 | For Berkelely, reality is ideas and a community of minds, including God's [Berkeley, by Grayling] |
3936 | Time is measured by the succession of ideas in our minds [Berkeley] |
3930 | There is no such thing as 'material substance' [Berkeley] |
3939 | I conceive a tree in my mind, but I cannot prove that its existence can be conceived outside a mind [Berkeley] |
3945 | There is nothing in nature which needs the concept of matter to explain it [Berkeley] |
3947 | Perceptions are ideas, and ideas exist in the mind, so objects only exist in the mind [Berkeley] |
6724 | The only substance is spirit, or that which perceives [Berkeley] |
23356 | Self-evidence is most obvious when people who deny a proposition still have to use it [Epictetus] |
3933 | Primary qualities (such as shape, solidity, mass) are held to really exist, unlike secondary qualities [Berkeley] |
6726 | No one can, by abstraction, conceive extension and motion of bodies without sensible qualities [Berkeley] |
6728 | Motion is in the mind, since swifter ideas produce an appearance of slower motion [Berkeley] |
6727 | Figure and extension seem just as dependent on the observer as heat and cold [Berkeley] |
3934 | A mite would see its own foot as large, though we would see it as tiny [Berkeley] |
3935 | The apparent size of an object varies with its distance away, so that can't be a property of the object [Berkeley] |
3937 | 'Solidity' is either not a sensible quality at all, or it is clearly relative to our senses [Berkeley] |
3940 | Distance is not directly perceived by sight [Berkeley] |
6495 | Berkeley's idealism resulted from fear of scepticism in representative realism [Robinson,H on Berkeley] |
3957 | Immediate objects of perception, which some treat as appearances, I treat as the real things themselves [Berkeley] |
6720 | Knowledge is of ideas from senses, or ideas of the mind, or operations on sensations [Berkeley] |
3953 | Real things and imaginary or dreamed things differ because the latter are much fainter [Berkeley] |
3938 | Geometry is originally perceived by senses, and so is not purely intellectual [Berkeley] |
3944 | It is possible that we could perceive everything as we do now, but nothing actually existed. [Berkeley] |
3932 | A hot hand and a cold hand will have different experiences in the same tepid water [Berkeley] |
16525 | Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins] |
12064 | The category of substance is more important for epistemology than for ontology [Wiggins] |
12049 | Naming the secondary substance provides a mass of general information [Wiggins] |
11848 | Asking 'what is it?' nicely points us to the persistence of a continuing entity [Wiggins] |
23636 | Berkeley's idealism gives no grounds for believing in other minds [Reid on Berkeley] |
6736 | I know other minds by ideas which are referred by me to other agents, as their effects [Berkeley] |
3948 | Experience tells me that other minds exist independently from my own [Berkeley] |
6713 | If animals have ideas, and are not machines, they must have some reason [Berkeley] |
6491 | Berkeley replaced intentionality with an anti-abstractionist imagist theory of thought [Berkeley, by Robinson,H] |
6711 | The mind creates abstract ideas by considering qualities separated from their objects [Berkeley] |
10581 | I can only combine particulars in imagination; I can't create 'abstract' ideas [Berkeley] |
12065 | Seeing a group of soldiers as an army is irresistible, in ontology and explanation [Wiggins] |
6721 | Ideas are perceived by the mind, soul or self [Berkeley] |
23330 | Freedom is making all things happen by choice, without constraint [Epictetus] |
23342 | Freedom is acting by choice, with no constraint possible [Epictetus] |
23329 | We make progress when we improve and naturalise our choices, asserting their freedom [Epictetus] |
23332 | Zeus gave me a nature which is free (like himself) from all compulsion [Epictetus] |
23331 | Not even Zeus can control what I choose [Epictetus] |
23338 | You can fetter my leg, but not even Zeus can control my power of choice [Epictetus] |
20875 | If we could foresee the future, we should collaborate with disease and death [Epictetus] |
23347 | If I know I am fated to be ill, I should want to be ill [Epictetus] |
3941 | How can that which is unthinking be a cause of thought? [Berkeley] |
5374 | Berkeley probably used 'idea' to mean both the act of apprehension and the thing apprehended [Russell on Berkeley] |
11859 | The mind conceptualizes objects; yet objects impinge upon the mind [Wiggins] |
16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
11836 | We can use 'concept' for the reference, and 'conception' for sense [Wiggins] |
16511 | A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins] |
6716 | Language is presumably for communication, and names stand for ideas [Berkeley] |
6718 | I can't really go wrong if I stick to wordless thought [Berkeley] |
23325 | Epictetus developed a notion of will as the source of our responsibility [Epictetus, by Frede,M] |
20873 | Tragedies are versified sufferings of people impressed by externals [Epictetus] |
23364 | Homer wrote to show that the most blessed men can be ruined by poor judgement [Epictetus] |
3954 | Immorality is not in the action, but in the deviation of the will from moral law [Berkeley] |
23340 | We consist of animal bodies and god-like reason [Epictetus] |
23366 | We see nature's will in the ways all people are the same [Epictetus] |
23358 | Every species produces exceptional beings, and we must just accept their nature [Epictetus] |
23339 | I will die as becomes a person returning what he does not own [Epictetus] |
23345 | Don't be frightened of pain or death; only be frightened of fearing them [Epictetus] |
23357 | Knowledge of what is good leads to love; only the wise, who distinguish good from evil, can love [Epictetus] |
23363 | The evil for everything is what is contrary to its nature [Epictetus] |
23328 | The essences of good and evil are in dispositions to choose [Epictetus] |
23362 | All human ills result from failure to apply preconceptions to particular cases [Epictetus] |
23353 | We have a natural sense of honour [Epictetus] |
23354 | If someone harms themselves in harming me, then I harm myself by returning the harm [Epictetus] |
23324 | In the Discourses choice [prohairesis] defines our character and behaviour [Epictetus, by Frede,M] |
4022 | Epictetus says we should console others for misfortune, but not be moved by pity [Epictetus, by Taylor,C] |
23365 | If someone is weeping, you should sympathise and help, but not share his suffering [Epictetus] |
23361 | Health is only a good when it is used well [Epictetus] |
23346 | A person is as naturally a part of a city as a foot is part of the body [Epictetus] |
23351 | We are citizens of the universe, and principal parts of it [Epictetus] |
23352 | A citizen should only consider what is good for the whole society [Epictetus] |
20874 | A citizen is committed to ignore private advantage, and seek communal good [Epictetus] |
22604 | Punishing a criminal for moral ignorance is the same as punishing someone for being blind [Epictetus] |
23368 | Perhaps we should persuade culprits that their punishment is just? [Epictetus] |
23349 | Asses are born to carry human burdens, not as ends in themselves [Epictetus] |
6731 | No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley] |
11860 | Lawlike propensities are enough to individuate natural kinds [Wiggins] |
6730 | We discover natural behaviour by observing settled laws of nature, not necessary connections [Berkeley] |
15861 | The laws of nature are mental regularities which we learn by experience [Berkeley] |
6734 | If properties and qualities arise from an inward essence, we will remain ignorant of nature [Berkeley] |
6735 | All motion is relative, so a single body cannot move [Berkeley] |
6733 | I cannot imagine time apart from the flow of ideas in my mind [Berkeley] |
23341 | God created humans as spectators and interpreters of God's works [Epictetus] |
23348 | Both god and the good bring benefits, so their true nature seems to be the same [Epictetus] |
3950 | There must be a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him [Berkeley] |
3951 | There must be a God, because I and my ideas are not independent [Berkeley] |
3949 | It has been proved that creation is the workmanship of God, from its beauty and usefulness [Berkeley] |
23360 | Each of the four elements in you is entirely scattered after death [Epictetus] |
6737 | Particular evils are really good when linked to the whole system of beings [Berkeley] |
3956 | People are responsible because they have limited power, though this ultimately derives from God [Berkeley] |
3955 | If sin is not just physical, we don't consider God the origin of sin because he causes physical events [Berkeley] |