48 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 4901 | Truth has to be correspondence to facts, and a match between relations of ideas and relations in the world [Perry] |
| 4938 | Prior to language, concepts are universals created by self-mapping of brain activity [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4885 | Identity is a very weak relation, which doesn't require interdefinability, or shared properties [Perry] |
| 12155 | Statements of 'relative identity' are really statements of resemblance [Perry] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 4899 | Possible worlds thinking has clarified the logic of modality, but is problematic in epistemology [Perry] |
| 4898 | Possible worlds are indices for a language, or concrete realities, or abstract possibilities [Perry] |
| 12149 | Indexicals are a problem for beliefs being just subject-proposition relations [Perry] |
| 4934 | Cultures have a common core of colour naming, based on three axes of colour pairs [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4887 | We try to cause other things to occur by causing mental events to occur [Perry] |
| 4924 | A conscious human being rapidly reunifies its mind after any damage to the brain [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4932 | A conscious state endures for about 100 milliseconds, known as the 'specious present' [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4884 | Brain states must be in my head, and yet the pain seems to be in my hand [Perry] |
| 4931 | Consciousness is a process (of neural interactions), not a location, thing, property, connectivity, or activity [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4923 | The three essentials of conscious experience are privateness, unity and informativeness [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4941 | Consciousness can create new axioms, but computers can't do that [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4930 | Consciousness arises from high speed interactions between clusters of neurons [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4888 | It seems plausible that many animals have experiences without knowing about them [Perry] |
| 4929 | Dreams and imagery show the brain can generate awareness and meaning without input [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4940 | Physicists see information as a measure of order, but for biologists it is symbolic exchange between animals [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4935 | The sensation of red is a point in neural space created by dimensions of neuronal activity [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4936 | The self is founded on bodily awareness centred in the brain stem [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4939 | A sense of self begins either internally, or externally through language and society [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4925 | Brains can initiate free actions before the person is aware of their own decision [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4891 | If epiphenomenalism just says mental events are effects but not causes, it is consistent with physicalism [Perry] |
| 4900 | Prior to Kripke, the mind-brain identity theory usually claimed that the identity was contingent [Perry] |
| 4892 | If physicalists stick with identity (not supervenience), Martian pain will not be like ours [Perry] |
| 4933 | Consciousness is a process, not a thing, as it maintains unity as its composition changes [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 16391 | Indexical thoughts are about themselves, and ascribe properties to themselves [Perry, by Recanati] |
| 4928 | Brain complexity balances segregation and integration, like a good team of specialists [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4927 | Information-processing views of the brain assume the existence of 'information', and dubious brain codes [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4889 | Although we may classify ideas by content, we individuate them differently, as their content can change [Perry] |
| 4922 | Consciousness involves interaction with persons and the world, as well as brain functions [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 4896 | The intension of an expression is a function from possible worlds to an appropriate extension [Perry] |
| 5793 | Concepts and generalisations result from brain 'global mapping' by 'reentry' [Edelman/Tononi, by Searle] |
| 4926 | Concepts arise when the brain maps its own activities [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 12151 | If we replace 'I' in sentences about me, they are different beliefs and explanations of behaviour [Perry] |
| 18412 | Indexicals individuate certain belief states, helping in explanation and prediction [Perry] |
| 4897 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds for which its intension delivers truth [Perry] |
| 12150 | Indexicals reveal big problems with the traditional idea of a proposition [Perry] |
| 4890 | A sharp analytic/synthetic line can rarely be drawn, but some concepts are central to thought [Perry] |
| 4937 | Systems that generate a sense of value are basic to the primitive brain [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 15203 | Tense is essential for thought and action [Perry, by Le Poidevin] |
| 15204 | Actual tensed sentences cannot be tenseless, because they can cite their own context [Perry, by Le Poidevin] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |