Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth' and 'Matters of Mind'

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26 ideas

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 2. Ancient Thought
Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales]
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 7. Falsehood
Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell]
4. Formal Logic / C. Predicate Calculus PC / 2. Tools of Predicate Calculus / e. Existential quantifier ∃
There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 4. Pure Logic
The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does [Russell]
5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle
Questions wouldn't lead anywhere without the law of excluded middle [Russell]
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / e. or
'Or' expresses hesitation, in a dog at a crossroads, or birds risking grabbing crumbs [Russell]
A disjunction expresses indecision [Russell]
Disjunction may also arise in practice if there is imperfect memory. [Russell]
'Or' expresses a mental state, not something about the world [Russell]
Maybe the 'or' used to describe mental states is not the 'or' of logic [Russell]
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 6. Paradoxes in Language / c. Grelling's paradox
A 'heterological' predicate can't be predicated of itself; so is 'heterological' heterological? Yes=no! [Russell]
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 5. Modality from Actuality
Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius]
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 1. Knowledge
All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell]
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 1. Perceptual Realism / a. Naïve realism
Naïve realism leads to physics, but physics then shows that naïve realism is false [Russell]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell]
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / e. Questions about mind
Mindless bodies are zombies, bodiless minds are ghosts [Sturgeon]
Types are properties, and tokens are events. Are they split between mental and physical, or not? [Sturgeon]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / b. Qualia and intentionality
Intentionality isn't reducible, because of its experiential aspect [Sturgeon]
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 1. Reductionism critique
Rule-following can't be reduced to the physical [Sturgeon]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 5. Causal Argument
The main argument for physicalism is its simple account of causation [Sturgeon]
18. Thought / C. Content / 10. Causal Semantics
Do facts cause thoughts, or embody them, or what? [Sturgeon]
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / b. Intellectualism
A mother cat is paralysed if equidistant between two needy kittens [Russell]
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 6. Early Matter Theories / c. Ultimate substances
Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle]
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / a. Explaining movement
Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle]
29. Religion / A. Polytheistic Religion / 2. Greek Polytheism
Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius]