21 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
13917 | Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe] |
13919 | Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe] |
19306 | It is a principle of reasoning not to clutter your mind with trivialities [Harman] |
19307 | If there is a great cost to avoiding inconsistency, we learn to reason our way around it [Harman] |
19309 | Logic has little relevance to reasoning, except when logical conclusions are immediate [Harman] |
19304 | The rules of reasoning are not the rules of logic [Harman] |
19303 | Implication just accumulates conclusions, but inference may also revise our views [Harman] |
13918 | Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe] |
13921 | All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe] |
13922 | Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe] |
13920 | Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe] |
19305 | The Gambler's Fallacy (ten blacks, so red is due) overemphasises the early part of a sequence [Harman] |
19310 | High probability premises need not imply high probability conclusions [Harman] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
19308 | We strongly desire to believe what is true, even though logic does not require it [Harman] |
19311 | In revision of belief, we need to keep track of justifications for foundations, but not for coherence [Harman] |
19312 | Coherence is intelligible connections, especially one element explaining another [Harman] |
1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |