58 ideas
| 20768 | Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 4901 | Truth has to be correspondence to facts, and a match between relations of ideas and relations in the world [Perry] |
| 4885 | Identity is a very weak relation, which doesn't require interdefinability, or shared properties [Perry] |
| 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] |
| 4887 | We try to cause other things to occur by causing mental events to occur [Perry] |
| 4884 | Brain states must be in my head, and yet the pain seems to be in my hand [Perry] |
| 4888 | It seems plausible that many animals have experiences without knowing about them [Perry] |
| 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] |
| 4889 | Although we may classify ideas by content, we individuate them differently, as their content can change [Perry] |
| 4896 | The intension of an expression is a function from possible worlds to an appropriate extension [Perry] |
| 4897 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds for which its intension delivers truth [Perry] |
| 4890 | A sharp analytic/synthetic line can rarely be drawn, but some concepts are central to thought [Perry] |
| 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] |
| 21167 | Gravity is unusual, in that it always attracts and never repels [New Sci.] |
| 21176 | In the Big Bang general relativity fails, because gravity is too powerful [New Sci.] |
| 21147 | Quantum electrodynamics incorporates special relativity and quantum mechanics [New Sci.] |
| 21155 | Photons have zero rest mass, so virtual photons have infinite range [New Sci.] |
| 21161 | In the standard model all the fundamental force fields merge at extremely high energies [New Sci.] |
| 21146 | Electrons move fast, so are subject to special relativity [New Sci.] |
| 21148 | The strong force is repulsive at short distances, strong at medium, and fades at long [New Sci.] |
| 21152 | The strong force binds quarks tight, and the nucleus more weakly [New Sci.] |
| 21151 | Gluons, the particles carrying the strong force, interact because of their colour charge [New Sci.] |
| 21150 | Three different colours of quark (as in the proton) can cancel out to give no colour [New Sci.] |
| 21143 | Quarks in threes can build hadrons with spin ½ or with spin 3/2 [New Sci.] |
| 21142 | Classifying hadrons revealed two symmetry patterns, produced by three basic elements [New Sci.] |
| 21145 | The four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong) are the effects of particles [New Sci.] |
| 21153 | The weak force explains beta decay, and the change of type by quarks and leptons [New Sci.] |
| 21156 | The weak force particles are heavy, so the force has a short range [New Sci.] |
| 21164 | Why do the charges of the very different proton and electron perfectly match up? [New Sci.] |
| 21170 | The Standard Model cannot explain dark energy, survival of matter, gravity, or force strength [New Sci.] |
| 21154 | Three particles enable the weak force: W+ and W- are charged, and Z° is not [New Sci.] |
| 21140 | Spin is a built-in ration of angular momentum [New Sci.] |
| 21157 | Particles are spread out, with wave-like properties, and higher energy shortens the wavelength [New Sci.] |
| 21158 | Fermions, with spin ½, are antisocial, and cannot share quantum states [New Sci.] |
| 21165 | Spin is akin to rotation, and is easily measured in a magnetic field [New Sci.] |
| 21149 | Quarks have red, green or blue colour charge (akin to electric charge) [New Sci.] |
| 21163 | The mass of protons and neutrinos is mostly binding energy, not the quarks [New Sci.] |
| 21168 | Gravitional mass turns out to be the same as inertial mass [New Sci.] |
| 21144 | Top, bottom, charm and strange quarks quickly decay into up and down [New Sci.] |
| 21138 | Neutrons are slightly heavier than protons, and decay into them by emitting an electron [New Sci.] |
| 21141 | Neutrinos were proposed as the missing energy in neutron beta decay [New Sci.] |
| 21169 | Only neutrinos spin anticlockwise [New Sci.] |
| 21166 | Standard antineutrinos have opposite spin and opposite lepton number [New Sci.] |
| 21171 | The symmetry of unified electromagnetic and weak forces was broken by the Higgs field [New Sci.] |
| 21175 | String theory might be tested by colliding strings to make bigger 'stringballs' [New Sci.] |
| 21177 | String theory offers a quantum theory of gravity, by describing the graviton [New Sci.] |
| 21178 | String theory is now part of 11-dimensional M-Theory, involving p-branes [New Sci.] |
| 21179 | Supersymmetric string theory can be expressed using loop quantum gravity [New Sci.] |
| 21159 | Supersymmetry has extra heavy bosons and heavy fermions [New Sci.] |
| 21162 | Only supersymmetry offers to incorporate gravity into the scheme [New Sci.] |
| 21172 | The evidence for supersymmetry keeps failing to appear [New Sci.] |
| 21173 | Supersymmetry says particles and superpartners were unities, but then split [New Sci.] |
| 21160 | The Higgs field means even low energy space is not empty [New Sci.] |
| 21174 | Dark matter must have mass, to produce gravity, and no electric charge, to not reflect light [New Sci.] |