26 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 9327 | Organisms understand their worlds better if they understand themselves [Gulick] |
| 16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 9325 | In contrast with knowledge, the notion of understanding emphasizes practical engagement [Gulick] |
| 16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 9326 | Knowing-that is a much richer kind of knowing-how [Gulick] |
| 16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 9319 | Is consciousness a type of self-awareness, or is being self-aware a way of being conscious? [Gulick] |
| 9320 | Higher-order theories divide over whether the higher level involves thought or perception [Gulick] |
| 9321 | Higher-order models reduce the problem of consciousness to intentionality [Gulick] |
| 9322 | Maybe qualia only exist at the lower level, and a higher-level is needed for what-it-is-like [Gulick] |
| 16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 9324 | From the teleopragmatic perspective, life is largely an informational process [Gulick] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |