37 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
2956 | There is nothing so obvious that a philosopher cannot be found to deny it [Lockwood] |
2963 | There may only be necessary and sufficient conditions (and counterfactuals) because we intervene in the world [Lockwood] |
2958 | No one has ever succeeded in producing an acceptable non-trivial analysis of anything [Lockwood] |
8368 | A correct definition is what can be substituted without loss of meaning [Ducasse] |
2959 | If something is described in two different ways, is that two facts, or one fact presented in two ways? [Lockwood] |
2969 | How does a direct realist distinguish a building from Buckingham Palace? [Lockwood] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
2970 | Dogs seem to have beliefs, and beliefs require concepts [Lockwood] |
2961 | Empiricism is a theory of meaning as well as of knowledge [Lockwood] |
2960 | Commonsense realism must account for the similarity of genuine perceptions and known illusions [Lockwood] |
2952 | A 1988 estimate gave the brain 3 x 10-to-the-14 synaptic junctions [Lockwood] |
2964 | How come unconscious states also cause behaviour? [Lockwood] |
2951 | Could there be unconscious beliefs and desires? [Lockwood] |
2953 | Fish may operate by blindsight [Lockwood] |
2967 | We might even learn some fundamental physics from introspection [Lockwood] |
2966 | Can phenomenal qualities exist unsensed? [Lockwood] |
2955 | If mental events occur in time, then relativity says they are in space [Lockwood] |
2950 | Only logical positivists ever believed behaviourism [Lockwood] |
2954 | Identity theory likes the identity of lightning and electrical discharges [Lockwood] |
16362 | An identity statement aims at getting the hearer to merge two mental files [Lockwood] |
2971 | Perhaps logical positivism showed that there is no dividing line between science and metaphysics [Lockwood] |
4056 | If the soul is held to leave the body at brain-death, it should arrive at the time of brain-creation [Lockwood] |
4055 | It isn't obviously wicked to destroy a potential human being (e.g. an ununited egg and sperm) [Lockwood] |
4054 | I may exist before I become a person, just as I exist before I become an adult [Lockwood] |
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] |
2962 | Maybe causation is a form of rational explanation, not an observation or a state of mind [Lockwood] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
2949 | We have the confused idea that time is a process of change [Lockwood] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |