59 ideas
1922 | Spiritual qualities only become advantageous with the growth of wisdom [Plato] |
14018 | Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne] |
14008 | The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne] |
11259 | How can you seek knowledge of something if you don't know it? [Plato] |
14010 | All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne] |
14009 | It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne] |
20219 | True opinions only become really valuable when they are tied down by reasons [Plato] |
4266 | Having beliefs involves recognition, expectation and surprise [Scruton] |
4265 | If an animal has beliefs, that implies not only that it can make mistakes, but that it can learn from them [Scruton] |
5985 | Seeking and learning are just recollection [Plato] |
5986 | The slave boy learns geometry from questioning, not teaching, so it is recollection [Plato] |
4264 | Perception (which involves an assessment) is a higher state than sensation [Scruton] |
1923 | As a guide to action, true opinion is as good as knowledge [Plato] |
1919 | You don't need to learn what you know, and how do you seek for what you don't know? [Plato] |
4271 | There is consciousness whenever behaviour must be explained in terms of mental activity [Scruton] |
4272 | Our concept of a person is derived from Roman law [Scruton] |
4267 | Conditioning may change behaviour without changing the mind [Scruton] |
4269 | An emotion is a motive which is also a feeling [Scruton] |
4270 | Do we use reason to distinguish people from animals, or use that difference to define reason? [Scruton] |
4284 | All moral life depends ultimately on piety, which is our recognition of our own dependence [Scruton] |
4273 | Kant's Moral Law is the rules rational beings would accept when trying to live by agreement [Scruton] |
1913 | Is virtue taught, or achieved by practice, or a natural aptitude, or what? [Plato] |
1921 | If virtue is a type of knowledge then it ought to be taught [Plato] |
1927 | It seems that virtue is neither natural nor taught, but is a divine gift [Plato] |
1918 | How can you know part of virtue without knowing the whole? [Plato] |
1916 | Even if virtues are many and various, they must have something in common to make them virtues [Plato] |
4274 | The modern virtues are courage, prudence, wisdom, temperance, justice, charity and loyalty [Scruton] |
4286 | Only just people will drop their own self-interests when faced with an impartial verdict [Scruton] |
4283 | Sympathy can undermine the moral order just as much as crime does [Scruton] |
4290 | That which can only be done by a callous person, ought not to be done [Scruton] |
4285 | As soon as we drop self-interest and judge impartially, we find ourselves agreeing about conflicts [Scruton] |
4287 | Utilitarianism merely guides us (by means of sympathy) when the moral law is silent [Scruton] |
4282 | Morality is not a sort of calculation, it is what sets the limits to when calculation is appropriate [Scruton] |
4281 | Utilitarianism says we can't blame Stalin yet, but such a theory is a sick joke [Scruton] |
4280 | Utilitarianism is wrong precisely because it can't distinguish animals from people [Scruton] |
4296 | Brutal animal sports are banned because they harm the personality of the watcher [Scruton] |
4288 | Many breeds of animals have needs which our own ancestors planted in them [Scruton] |
4293 | Introducing a natural means of controlling animal population may not be very compassionate [Scruton] |
4295 | We favour our own animals over foreign ones because we see them as fellow citizens [Scruton] |
4268 | Animals command our sympathy and moral concern initially because of their intentionality [Scruton] |
4291 | Letting your dog kill wild rats, and keeping rats for your dog to kill, are very different [Scruton] |
4263 | Many of the stranger forms of life (e.g. worms) interest us only as a species, not as individuals [Scruton] |
4276 | An animal has individuality if it is nameable, and advanced animals can respond to their name [Scruton] |
4277 | I may avoid stepping on a spider or flower, but fellow-feeling makes me protect a rabbit [Scruton] |
4278 | Lucky animals are eaten by large predators, the less lucky starve, and worst is death by small predators [Scruton] |
4279 | We can easily remove the risk of suffering from an animal's life, but we shouldn't do it [Scruton] |
4289 | Sheep and cattle live comfortable lives, and die an enviably easy death [Scruton] |
4292 | Concern for one animal may harm the species, if the individual is part of a bigger problem [Scruton] |
4294 | Animals are outside the community of rights, but we still have duties towards them [Scruton] |
14016 | The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne] |
14019 | Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne] |
14013 | Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne] |
14015 | No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne] |
14007 | How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne] |
14011 | Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne] |
14017 | Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne] |
14003 | Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne] |
14005 | B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne] |
14006 | Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne] |