30 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 22338 | An unexamined life can be virtuous [Murdoch] |
| 22337 | Philosophy must keep returning to the beginning [Murdoch] |
| 23563 | Philosophy moves continually between elaborate theories and the obvious facts [Murdoch] |
| 8996 | If if time is money then if time is not money then time is money then if if if time is not money... [Quine] |
| 8995 | Definition by words is determinate but relative; fixing contexts could make it absolute [Quine] |
| 10064 | Quine quickly dismisses If-thenism [Quine, by Musgrave] |
| 20296 | Logic needs general conventions, but that needs logic to apply them to individual cases [Quine, by Rey] |
| 8998 | Claims that logic and mathematics are conventional are either empty, uninteresting, or false [Quine] |
| 8999 | Logic isn't conventional, because logic is needed to infer logic from conventions [Quine] |
| 9000 | If a convention cannot be communicated until after its adoption, what is its role? [Quine] |
| 8994 | If analytic geometry identifies figures with arithmetical relations, logicism can include geometry [Quine] |
| 8997 | There are four different possible conventional accounts of geometry [Quine] |
| 8993 | If mathematics follows from definitions, then it is conventional, and part of logic [Quine] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 22341 | Literature is the most important aspect of culture, because it teaches understanding of living [Murdoch] |
| 22347 | Appreciating beauty in art or nature opens up the good life, by restricting selfishness [Murdoch] |
| 22348 | Ordinary human love is good evidence of transcendent goodness [Murdoch] |
| 22339 | Love is a central concept in morals [Murdoch] |
| 22343 | If I attend properly I will have no choices [Murdoch] |
| 22349 | Art trains us in the love of virtue [Murdoch] |
| 22340 | It is hard to learn goodness from others, because their virtues are part of their personal history [Murdoch] |
| 22346 | Moral reflection and experience gradually reveals unity in the moral world [Murdoch] |
| 22350 | Only trivial virtues can be possessed on their own [Murdoch] |
| 22351 | Only a philosopher might think choices create values [Murdoch] |
| 22342 | Kantian existentialists care greatly for reasons for action, whereas Surrealists care nothing [Murdoch] |
| 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] |
| 22345 | Moral philosophy needs a central concept with all the traditional attributes of God [Murdoch] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |