63 ideas
| 13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
| 13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
| 16943 | Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine] |
| 13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
| 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] |
| 16949 | Klein summarised geometry as grouped together by transformations [Quine] |
| 2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
| 16939 | Mass terms just concern spread, but other terms involve both spread and individuation [Quine] |
| 22355 | In the realist view, the real external world explains how it (and perceptions of it) are possible [Williams,B] |
| 13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
| 16948 | Once we know the mechanism of a disposition, we can eliminate 'similarity' [Quine] |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 4244 | It is very confused to deduce a nonrelativist morality of universal toleration from relativism [Williams,B] |
| 4243 | Our ability to react to an alien culture shows that ethical thought extends beyond cultural boundaries [Williams,B] |
| 16944 | Science is common sense, with a sophisticated method [Quine] |
| 16940 | Induction is just more of the same: animal expectations [Quine] |
| 16941 | Induction relies on similar effects following from each cause [Quine] |
| 16933 | Grue is a puzzle because the notions of similarity and kind are dubious in science [Quine] |
| 13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| 16932 | Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine] |
| 4114 | Philosophers try to produce ethical theories because they falsely assume that ethics can be simple [Williams,B] |
| 4128 | Intuitionism has been demolished by critics, and no longer looks interesting [Williams,B] |
| 4132 | The category of person is a weak basis for ethics, because it is not fixed but comes in degrees [Williams,B] |
| 4134 | The weakness of prescriptivism is shown by "I simply don't like staying at good hotels" [Williams,B] |
| 4135 | Some ethical ideas, such as 'treachery' and 'promise', seem to express a union of facts and values [Williams,B] |
| 4120 | It is an error of consequentialism to think we just aim at certain states of affairs; we also want to act [Williams,B] |
| 4252 | Promise keeping increases reliability, by making deliberation focus on something which would be overlooked [Williams,B] |
| 4116 | A weakness of contractual theories is the position of a person of superior ability and power [Williams,B] |
| 13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
| 4112 | A crucial feature of moral thought is second-order desire - the desire to have certain desires [Williams,B] |
| 4113 | 'Deon' in Greek means what one must do; there was no word meaning 'duty' [Williams,B] |
| 4250 | The concept of a 'duty to myself' is fraudulent [Williams,B] |
| 4110 | Obligation and duty look backwards (because of a promise or job), although the acts are in the future [Williams,B] |
| 4248 | Not all moral deliberations lead to obligations; some merely reveal what 'may' be done [Williams,B] |
| 4249 | "Ought implies can" is a famous formula in connection with moral obligation [Williams,B] |
| 4121 | Why should I think of myself as both the legislator and the citizen who follows the laws? [Williams,B] |
| 4122 | If the self becomes completely impartial, it no longer has enough identity to worry about its interests [Williams,B] |
| 4124 | Utilitarian benevolence involves no particular attachments, and is immune to the inverse square law [Williams,B] |
| 4245 | Ethical conviction must be to some extent passive, and can't just depend on the will and decisions [Williams,B] |
| 4246 | Taking responsibility won't cure ethical uncertainty by; we are uncertain what to decide [Williams,B] |
| 4247 | It is a mark of our having ethical values that we aim to reproduce them in our children [Williams,B] |
| 4131 | Most women see an early miscarriage and a late stillbirth as being very different in character [Williams,B] |
| 4133 | Speciesism isn't like racism, because the former implies a viewpoint which belongs to no one [Williams,B] |
| 7375 | Quine probably regrets natural kinds now being treated as essences [Quine, by Dennett] |
| 16935 | If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine] |
| 16936 | Comparative similarity allows the kind 'colored' to contain the kind 'red' [Quine] |
| 16937 | You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine] |
| 16942 | It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine] |
| 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] |