Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge' and 'Impossible Objects: interviews'

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20 ideas

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 2. Ancient Thought
1597 Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales]
1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 2. Ancient Philosophy / b. Pre-Socratic philosophy
20455 Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / d. Philosophy as puzzles
20446 Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
13407 All worthwhile philosophy is synthetic theorizing, evaluated by experience [Papineau]
20449 Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 2. Phenomenology
20448 Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
13409 Our best theories may commit us to mathematical abstracta, but that doesn't justify the commitment [Papineau]
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 5. Modality from Actuality
3013 Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius]
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 9. A Priori from Concepts
13406 A priori knowledge is analytic - the structure of our concepts - and hence unimportant [Papineau]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
13408 Intuition and thought-experiments embody substantial information about the world [Papineau]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
13410 Verificationism about concepts means you can't deny a theory, because you can't have the concept [Papineau]
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 8. The Arts / b. Literature
20454 Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley]
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
20456 Interesting art is always organised around ethical demands [Critchley]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / d. Ethical theory
20447 The problems is not justifying ethics, but motivating it. Why should a self seek its good? [Critchley]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 2. Anarchism
20450 The state, law, bureaucracy and capital are limitations on life, so I prefer federalist anarchism [Critchley]
20452 Anarchism used to be libertarian (especially for sexuality), but now concerns responsibility [Critchley]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 3. Conservatism
20451 Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics [Critchley]
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 6. Early Matter Theories / c. Ultimate substances
1494 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
1713 Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle]
29. Religion / A. Polytheistic Religion / 2. Greek Polytheism
1742 Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius]