Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Intro to 'Philosophical Essays'' and '(Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics'

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23 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 / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
9786 Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R]
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence
12596 Reasoning aims at increasing explanatory coherence [Harman]
12599 Reason conservatively: stick to your beliefs, and prefer reasoning that preserves most of them [Harman]
9784 A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 1. Overview of Logic
12595 We have a theory of logic (implication and inconsistency), but not of inference or reasoning [Harman]
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / d. and
12597 I might accept P and Q as likely, but reject P-and-Q as unlikely [Harman]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality
12598 Reality is the overlap of true complete theories [Harman]
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 5. Modality from Actuality
3013 Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius]
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 6. Anti-Individualism
12602 There is no natural border between inner and outer [Harman]
12603 We can only describe mental attitudes in relation to the external world [Harman]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / c. Explaining qualia
12601 The way things look is a relational matter, not an intrinsic matter [Harman]
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / a. Concepts and language
12592 Concepts in thought have content, but not meaning, which requires communication [Harman]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
12590 Take meaning to be use in calculation with concepts, rather than in communication [Harman]
12593 The use theory attaches meanings to words, not to sentences [Harman]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / c. Meaning by Role
12588 Meaning from use of thoughts, constructed from concepts, which have a role relating to reality [Harman]
12589 Some regard conceptual role semantics as an entirely internal matter [Harman]
12600 The content of thought is relations, between mental states, things in the world, and contexts [Harman]
19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
12594 If one proposition negates the other, which is the negative one? [Harman]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / a. Translation
12591 Mastery of a language requires thinking, and not just communication [Harman]
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]