62 ideas
13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
23728 | Analysis aims to express the full set of platitudes surrounding a given concept [Smith,M] |
5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
23744 | Defining a set of things by paradigms doesn't pin them down enough [Smith,M] |
13776 | Truths say of what is that it is, falsehoods say of what is that it is not [Plato] |
13777 | A name is a sort of tool [Plato] |
13790 | A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato] |
13791 | Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato] |
13789 | Anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing [Plato] |
2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
23743 | Capturing all the common sense facts about rationality is almost impossible [Smith,M] |
23739 | Goals need desires, and so only desires can motivate us [Smith,M] |
23724 | A pure desire could be criticised if it were based on a false belief [Smith,M] |
23736 | A person can have a desire without feeling it [Smith,M] |
23723 | In the Humean account, desires are not true/false, or subject to any rational criticism [Smith,M] |
23735 | Subjects may be fallible about the desires which explain their actions [Smith,M] |
23738 | Humeans (unlike their opponents) say that desires and judgements can separate [Smith,M] |
23742 | If first- and second-order desires conflict, harmony does not require the second-order to win [Smith,M] |
23746 | Objective reasons to act might be the systematic desires of a fully rational person [Smith,M] |
23733 | Motivating reasons are psychological, while normative reasons are external [Smith,M] |
23740 | Humeans take maximising desire satisfaction as the normative reasons for actions [Smith,M] |
23745 | We cannot expect even fully rational people to converge on having the same desires for action [Smith,M] |
5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
23731 | 'Externalists' say moral judgements are not reasons, and maybe not even motives [Smith,M] |
23732 | A person could make a moral judgement without being in any way motivated by it [Smith,M] |
23729 | Moral internalism says a judgement of rightness is thereby motivating [Smith,M] |
23730 | 'Rationalism' says the rightness of an action is a reason to perform it [Smith,M] |
23727 | Expressivists count attitudes as 'moral' if they concern features of things, rather than their mere existence [Smith,M] |
23741 | Is valuing something a matter of believing or a matter of desiring? [Smith,M] |
5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
13779 | The natural offspring of a lion is called a 'lion' (but what about the offspring of a king?) [Plato] |
13783 | Even the gods love play [Plato] |
5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |