38 ideas
| 7623 | For ancient Greeks being wise was an ethical value [Putnam] |
| 192 | Only one thing can be contrary to something [Plato] |
| 20768 | Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 4714 | Putnam's epistemic notion of truth replaces the realism of correspondence with ontological relativism [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| 7617 | Before Kant, all philosophers had a correspondence theory of truth [Putnam] |
| 4716 | The correspondence theory is wrong, because there is no one correspondence between reality and fact [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| 7616 | Truth is an idealisation of rational acceptability [Putnam] |
| 14203 | Intension is not meaning, as 'cube' and 'square-faced polyhedron' are intensionally the same [Putnam] |
| 14207 | If cats equal cherries, model theory allows reinterpretation of the whole language preserving truth [Putnam] |
| 14214 | If we try to cure the abundance of theories with causal links, this is 'just more theory' [Putnam, by Lewis] |
| 14205 | The sentence 'A cat is on a mat' remains always true when 'cat' means cherry and 'mat' means tree [Putnam] |
| 7610 | A fact is simply what it is rational to accept [Putnam] |
| 7618 | Very nominalistic philosophers deny properties, though scientists accept them [Putnam] |
| 190 | If asked whether justice itself is just or unjust, you would have to say that it is just [Plato] |
| 4718 | If necessity is always relative to a description in a language, then there is only 'de dicto' necessity [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| 20184 | The only real evil is loss of knowledge [Plato] |
| 20185 | The most important things in life are wisdom and knowledge [Plato] |
| 7620 | Some kind of objective 'rightness' is a presupposition of thought itself [Putnam] |
| 14204 | Naïve operationalism would have meanings change every time the tests change [Putnam] |
| 191 | Everything resembles everything else up to a point [Plato] |
| 7611 | Rationality is one part of our conception of human flourishing [Putnam] |
| 14200 | 'Water' on Twin Earth doesn't refer to water, but no mental difference can account for this [Putnam] |
| 7612 | Reference is social not individual, because we defer to experts when referring to elm trees [Putnam] |
| 7613 | Concepts are (at least in part) abilities and not occurrences [Putnam] |
| 14202 | Neither individual nor community mental states fix reference [Putnam] |
| 14201 | Maybe the total mental state of a language community fixes the reference of a term [Putnam] |
| 14206 | There are infinitely many interpretations of a sentence which can all seem to be 'correct' [Putnam] |
| 203 | Courage is knowing what should or shouldn't be feared [Plato] |
| 7624 | The word 'inconsiderate' nicely shows the blurring of facts and values [Putnam] |
| 202 | No one willingly and knowingly embraces evil [Plato] |
| 193 | Some things are good even though they are not beneficial to men [Plato] |
| 197 | Some pleasures are not good, and some pains are not evil [Plato] |
| 200 | People tend only to disapprove of pleasure if it leads to pain, or prevents future pleasure [Plato] |
| 204 | Socrates is contradicting himself in claiming virtue can't be taught, but that it is knowledge [Plato] |
| 188 | Socrates did not believe that virtue could be taught [Plato] |
| 189 | If we punish wrong-doers, it shows that we believe virtue can be taught [Plato] |
| 3049 | The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 3549 | Ariston says rules are useless for the virtuous and the non-virtuous [Ariston, by Annas] |