20 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 8368 | A correct definition is what can be substituted without loss of meaning [Ducasse] |
| 14963 | Surely the past phases of a thing are not parts of the thing? [Broad] |
| 14759 | A thing is simply a long event, linked by qualities, and spatio-temporal unity [Broad] |
| 11842 | If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs? [Broad] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 7628 | Broad rejects the inferential component of the representative theory [Broad, by Maund] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 8367 | Causation is defined in terms of a single sequence, and constant conjunction is no part of it [Ducasse] |
| 8372 | We see what is in common between causes to assign names to them, not to perceive them [Ducasse] |
| 8369 | Causes are either sufficient, or necessary, or necessitated, or contingent upon [Ducasse] |
| 8373 | When a brick and a canary-song hit a window, we ignore the canary if we are interested in the breakage [Ducasse] |
| 8370 | A cause is a change which occurs close to the effect and just before it [Ducasse] |
| 8371 | Recurrence is only relevant to the meaning of law, not to the meaning of cause [Ducasse] |
| 8374 | We are interested in generalising about causes and effects purely for practical purposes [Ducasse] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 8160 | The present and past exist, but the future does not [Broad, by Dummett] |
| 14609 | We could say present and past exist, but not future, so that each event adds to the total history [Broad] |
| 22933 | We imagine the present as a spotlight, moving across events from past to future [Broad] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |