50 ideas
| 13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
| 13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
| 7490 | Because of Darwin, wisdom as a definite attainable state has faded [Watson] |
| 7461 | The three key ideas are the soul, Europe, and the experiment [Watson] |
| 7464 | The big idea: imitation, the soul, experiments, God, heliocentric universe, evolution? [Watson] |
| 13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
| 7465 | Babylonian thinking used analogy, rather than deduction or induction [Watson] |
| 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] |
| 7466 | Mesopotamian numbers applied to specific things, and then became abstract [Watson] |
| 2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
| 7508 | Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker] |
| 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] |
| 7510 | Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker] |
| 7513 | Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker] |
| 13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
| 13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
| 7509 | Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker] |
| 7511 | Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker] |
| 7512 | There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG] |
| 7505 | Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker] |
| 13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
| 7477 | Modern democracy is actually elective oligarchy [Watson] |
| 7478 | Greek philosophers invented the concept of 'nature' as their special subject [Watson] |
| 7516 | In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker] |
| 7515 | All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker] |
| 7514 | Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker] |
| 7462 | DNA mutation suggests humans and chimpanzees diverged 6.6 million years ago [Watson] |
| 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] |
| 7470 | During the rise of civilizations, the main gods changed from female to male [Watson] |
| 7474 | Hinduism has no founder, or prophet, or creed, or ecclesiastical structure [Watson] |
| 7479 | Modern Judaism became stabilised in 200 CE [Watson] |
| 7481 | The Israelites may have asserted the uniqueness of Yahweh to justify land claims [Watson] |
| 7480 | Monotheism was a uniquely Israelite creation within the Middle East [Watson] |
| 7471 | The Gathas (hymns) of Zoroastrianism date from about 1000 BCE [Watson] |
| 7473 | Zoroaster conceived the afterlife, judgement, heaven and hell, and the devil [Watson] |
| 7484 | Jesus never intended to start a new religion [Watson] |
| 7483 | Paul's early writings mention few striking episodes from Jesus' life [Watson] |
| 7475 | Confucius revered the spiritual world, but not the supernatural, or a personal god, or the afterlife [Watson] |
| 7476 | Taoism aims at freedom from the world, the body, the mind, and nature [Watson] |
| 7463 | The three basic ingredients of religion are: the soul, seers or priests, and ritual [Watson] |
| 7468 | In ancient Athens the souls of the dead are received by the 'upper air' [Watson] |