50 ideas
3600 | Slow and accurate thought makes the greatest progress [Descartes] |
3601 | Most things in human life seem vain and useless [Descartes] |
3602 | Almost every daft idea has been expressed by some philosopher [Descartes] |
3603 | Methodical thinking is cautious, analytical, systematic, and panoramic [Descartes, by PG] |
3612 | Clear and distinct conceptions are true because a perfect God exists [Descartes] |
3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
15879 | The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair [Harré] |
15891 | Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions [Harré] |
15878 | Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range [Harré] |
15874 | Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them [Harré] |
15884 | Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged [Harré] |
3605 | We can believe a thing without knowing we believe it [Descartes] |
1583 | In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes] |
3607 | In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes] |
3617 | I aim to find the principles and causes of everything, using the seeds within my mind [Descartes] |
3611 | Understanding, rather than imagination or senses, gives knowledge [Descartes] |
3606 | I was searching for reliable rock under the shifting sand [Descartes] |
3604 | When rebuilding a house, one needs alternative lodgings [Descartes] |
15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered [Harré] |
3618 | Only experiments can settle disagreements between rival explanations [Descartes] |
15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature [Harré] |
15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions [Harré] |
15882 | Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them [Harré] |
15888 | The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science [Harré] |
15887 | 'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour [Harré] |
15889 | It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected [Harré] |
15890 | Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black' [Harré] |
15885 | The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism [Harré] |
3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out [Harré] |
3609 | I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support [Descartes] |
3608 | I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes] |
3613 | Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes] |
3616 | The soul must unite with the body to have appetites and sensations [Descartes] |
3614 | A machine could speak in response to physical stimulus, but not hold a conversation [Descartes] |
5996 | Critolaus redefined Aristotle's moral aim as fulfilment instead of happiness [Critolaus, by White,SA] |
1581 | Greeks elevate virtues enormously, but never explain them [Descartes] |
15886 | Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds [Harré] |
15864 | Classification is just as important as laws in natural science [Harré] |
15865 | Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces [Harré] |
15862 | Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures [Harré] |
15870 | Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three? [Harré] |
15871 | Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities? [Harré] |
15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? [Harré] |
16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
15892 | Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms [Harré] |
15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré] |