17 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 9143 | Implicit definitions must be satisfiable, creative definitions introduce things, contextual definitions build on things [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| 10143 | 'Creative definitions' do not presuppose the existence of the objects defined [Fine,K] |
| 10145 | Abstracts cannot be identified with sets [Fine,K] |
| 10136 | Points in Euclidean space are abstract objects, but not introduced by abstraction [Fine,K] |
| 10144 | Postulationism says avoid abstract objects by giving procedures that produce truth [Fine,K] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 6027 | From the fact that some men die, we cannot infer that they all do [Philodemus] |
| 9144 | Fine's 'procedural postulationism' uses creative definitions, but avoids abstract ontology [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| 10141 | Many different kinds of mathematical objects can be regarded as forms of abstraction [Fine,K] |
| 10135 | We can abstract from concepts (e.g. to number) and from objects (e.g. to direction) [Fine,K] |
| 9142 | Fine considers abstraction as reconceptualization, to produce new senses by analysing given senses [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| 10137 | Abstractionism can be regarded as an alternative to set theory [Fine,K] |
| 10138 | An object is the abstract of a concept with respect to a relation on concepts [Fine,K] |
| 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] |