34 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| 9821 | A definition need not capture the sense of an expression - just get the reference right [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 9585 | Since every definition is an equation, one cannot define equality itself [Frege] |
| 17446 | Counting rests on one-one correspondence, of numerals to objects [Frege] |
| 9582 | Husserl rests sameness of number on one-one correlation, forgetting the correlation with numbers themselves [Frege] |
| 9586 | In a number-statement, something is predicated of a concept [Frege] |
| 9580 | Our concepts recognise existing relations, they don't change them [Frege] |
| 9589 | Numbers are not real like the sea, but (crucially) they are still objective [Frege] |
| 9577 | The naïve view of number is that it is like a heap of things, or maybe a property of a heap [Frege] |
| 9578 | If objects are just presentation, we get increasing abstraction by ignoring their properties [Frege] |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| 3016 | Even the gods cannot strive against necessity [Pittacus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
| 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
| 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
| 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| 9581 | Many people have the same thought, which is the component, not the private presentation [Frege] |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| 9579 | Disregarding properties of two cats still leaves different objects, but what is now the difference? [Frege] |
| 9587 | How do you find the right level of inattention; you eliminate too many or too few characteristics [Frege] |
| 9588 | Number-abstraction somehow makes things identical without changing them! [Frege] |
| 9583 | Psychological logicians are concerned with sense of words, but mathematicians study the reference [Frege] |
| 9584 | Identity baffles psychologists, since A and B must be presented differently to identify them [Frege] |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |