110 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 9108 | From an impossibility anything follows [William of Ockham] |
| 16676 | Why use more things when fewer will do? [William of Ockham] |
| 6806 | Do not multiply entities beyond necessity [William of Ockham] |
| 9107 | A proposition is true if its subject and predicate stand for the same thing [William of Ockham] |
| 16300 | Ockham had an early axiomatic account of truth [William of Ockham, by Halbach] |
| 3137 | Varieties of singular terms are used to designate token particulars [Rey] |
| 9106 | The word 'every' only signifies when added to a term such as 'man', referring to all men [William of Ockham] |
| 3143 | Physics requires the existence of properties, and also the abstract objects of arithmetic [Rey] |
| 9113 | Just as unity is not a property of a single thing, so numbers are not properties of many things [William of Ockham] |
| 9110 | The words 'thing' and 'to be' assert the same idea, as a noun and as a verb [William of Ockham] |
| 16608 | Ockham was an anti-realist about the categories [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
| 16654 | Our words and concepts don't always correspond to what is out there [William of Ockham] |
| 18529 | Relations are expressed either as absolute facts, or by a relational concept [William of Ockham] |
| 22132 | Species and genera are individual concepts which naturally signify many individuals [William of Ockham] |
| 9103 | A universal is not a real feature of objects, but only a thought-object in the mind [William of Ockham] |
| 15388 | Universals are single things, and only universal in what they signify [William of Ockham] |
| 16779 | Cut wood doesn't make a new substance, but seems to make separate subjects [William of Ockham] |
| 16757 | Hot water naturally cools down, which is due to the substantial form of the water [William of Ockham] |
| 16599 | Ockham says matter must be extended, so we don't need Quantity [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
| 16681 | Matter gets its quantity from condensation and rarefaction, which is just local motion [William of Ockham] |
| 9109 | If essence and existence were two things, one could exist without the other, which is impossible [William of Ockham] |
| 16792 | If parts change, the whole changes [William of Ockham] |
| 3145 | The Indiscernibility of Identicals is a truism; but the Identity of Indiscernibles depends on possible identical worlds [Rey] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 9089 | Knowledge is a quality existing subjectively in the soul [William of Ockham] |
| 9091 | Sometimes 'knowledge' just concerns the conclusion, sometimes the whole demonstration [William of Ockham] |
| 9100 | Our intellect only assents to what we believe to be true [William of Ockham] |
| 9090 | Knowledge is certain cognition of something that is true [William of Ockham] |
| 20298 | The traditional a priori is justified without experience; post-Quine it became unrevisable by experience [Rey] |
| 3172 | Empiricism says experience is both origin and justification of all knowledge [Rey] |
| 3166 | Animal learning is separate from their behaviour [Rey] |
| 3232 | Abduction could have true data and a false conclusion, and may include data not originally mentioned [Rey] |
| 3128 | It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere [Rey] |
| 3136 | The three theories are reduction, dualism, eliminativism [Rey] |
| 3141 | Is consciousness 40Hz oscillations in layers 5 and 6 of the visual cortex? [Rey] |
| 3148 | Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey] |
| 3164 | Intentional explanations are always circular [Rey] |
| 3138 | Arithmetic and unconscious attitudes have no qualia [Rey] |
| 3142 | Why qualia, and why this particular quale? [Rey] |
| 3224 | If qualia have no function, their attachment to thoughts is accidental [Rey] |
| 3227 | Are qualia a type of propositional attitude? [Rey] |
| 3226 | Are qualia irrelevant to explaining the mind? [Rey] |
| 3229 | If colour fits a cone mapping hue, brightness and saturation, rotating the cone could give spectrum inversion [Rey] |
| 9101 | Abstractive cognition knows universals abstracted from many singulars [William of Ockham] |
| 9102 | If an animal approached from a distance, we might abstract 'animal' from one instance [William of Ockham] |
| 3223 | Self-consciousness may just be nested intentionality [Rey] |
| 3162 | Experiments prove that people are often unaware of their motives [Rey] |
| 3163 | Brain damage makes the unreliability of introspection obvious [Rey] |
| 3195 | If reason could be explained in computational terms, there would be no need for the concept of 'free will' [Rey] |
| 3196 | Free will isn't evidence against a theory of thought if there is no evidence for free will [Rey] |
| 3180 | Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey] |
| 3165 | Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey] |
| 3167 | Animals don't just respond to stimuli, they experiment [Rey] |
| 3173 | How are stimuli and responses 'similar'? [Rey] |
| 3179 | Behaviour is too contingent and irrelevant to be the mind [Rey] |
| 3186 | If a normal person lacked a brain, would you say they had no mind? [Rey] |
| 3127 | Dualism and physicalism explain nothing, and don't suggest any research [Rey] |
| 3188 | Homuncular functionalism (e.g. Freud) could be based on simpler mechanical processes [Rey] |
| 3216 | Is the room functionally the same as a Chinese speaker? [Rey] |
| 3220 | Searle is guilty of the fallacy of division - attributing a property of the whole to a part [Rey] |
| 3206 | One computer program could either play chess or fight a war [Rey] |
| 9114 | There are no secure foundations to prove the separate existence of mind, in reason or experience [William of Ockham] |
| 3140 | If you explain water as H2O, you have reduced water, but not eliminated it [Rey] |
| 3134 | Human behaviour can show law-like regularity, which eliminativism can't explain [Rey] |
| 3200 | Pattern recognition is puzzling for computation, but makes sense for connectionism [Rey] |
| 3201 | Connectionism explains well speed of perception and 'graceful degradation' [Rey] |
| 3202 | Connectionism explains irrationality (such as the Gamblers' Fallacy) quite well [Rey] |
| 3199 | Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes [Rey] |
| 3150 | Can identity explain reason, free will, non-extension, intentionality, subjectivity, experience? [Rey] |
| 3129 | Physicalism offers something called "complexity" instead of mental substance [Rey] |
| 3139 | Some attitudes are information (belief), others motivate (hatred) [Rey] |
| 3171 | Children speak 90% good grammar [Rey] |
| 3174 | Good grammar can't come simply from stimuli [Rey] |
| 3213 | Animals may also use a language of thought [Rey] |
| 3170 | We train children in truth, not in grammar [Rey] |
| 3215 | Images can't replace computation, as they need it [Rey] |
| 3194 | CRTT is good on deduction, but not so hot on induction, abduction and practical reason [Rey] |
| 3147 | Problem-solving clearly involves manipulating images [Rey] |
| 3175 | Animals map things over time as well as over space [Rey] |
| 3207 | Simple externalism is that the meaning just is the object [Rey] |
| 3176 | Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one [Rey] |
| 9104 | A universal is the result of abstraction, which is only a kind of mental picturing [William of Ockham] |
| 3181 | A one hour gap in time might be indirectly verified, but then almost anything could be [Rey] |
| 3204 | The meaning of "and" may be its use, but not of "animal" [Rey] |
| 3205 | Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey] |
| 20300 | Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey] |
| 3209 | Causal theories of reference (by 'dubbing') don't eliminate meanings in the heads of dubbers [Rey] |
| 3210 | If meaning and reference are based on causation, then virtually everything has meaning [Rey] |
| 3149 | Referential Opacity says truth is lost when you substitute one referring term ('mother') for another ('Jocasta') [Rey] |
| 9105 | Some concepts for propositions exist only in the mind, and in no language [William of Ockham] |
| 20294 | 'Married' does not 'contain' its symmetry, nor 'bigger than' its transitivity [Rey] |
| 20293 | Analytic judgements can't be explained by contradiction, since that is what is assumed [Rey] |
| 20297 | Analytic statements are undeniable (because of meaning), rather than unrevisable [Rey] |
| 20301 | The meaning properties of a term are those which explain how the term is typically used [Rey] |
| 20302 | An intrinsic language faculty may fix what is meaningful (as well as grammatical) [Rey] |
| 20303 | Research throws doubts on the claimed intuitions which support analyticity [Rey] |
| 20299 | If we claim direct insight to what is analytic, how do we know it is not sub-consciously empirical? [Rey] |
| 3169 | A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then' [Rey] |
| 3221 | Our desires become important when we have desires about desires [Rey] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 16675 | Every extended material substance is composed of parts distant from one another [William of Ockham] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 19381 | The past has ceased to exist, and the future does not yet exist, so time does not exist [William of Ockham] |
| 9111 | God is not wise, but more-than-wise; God is not good, but more-than-good [William of Ockham] |
| 8010 | William of Ockham is the main spokesman for God's commands being the source of morality [William of Ockham] |
| 9112 | We could never form a concept of God's wisdom if we couldn't abstract it from creatures [William of Ockham] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 9115 | To love God means to love whatever God wills to be loved [William of Ockham] |
| 16679 | Even an angel must have some location [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |