45 ideas
| 5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
| 12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
| 12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
| 12112 | Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena [Comte] |
| 5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
| 12106 | Positivism gives up absolute truth, and seeks phenomenal laws, by reason and observation [Comte] |
| 7491 | The phases of human thought are theological, then metaphysical, then positivist [Comte, by Watson] |
| 12111 | Positivism is the final state of human intelligence [Comte] |
| 12114 | Science can drown in detail, so we need broad scientists (to keep out the metaphysicians) [Comte] |
| 12116 | Only positivist philosophy can terminate modern social crises [Comte] |
| 12108 | All real knowledge rests on observed facts [Comte] |
| 3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 12109 | We must observe in order to form theories, but connected observations need prior theories [Comte] |
| 5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
| 12107 | Positivism explains facts by connecting particular phenomena with general facts [Comte] |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| 21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| 12115 | Introspection is pure illusion; we can obviously observe everything except ourselves [Comte] |
| 5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
| 5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
| 5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
| 5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
| 5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
| 5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
| 5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
| 5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
| 5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
| 5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| 21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
| 5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
| 5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
| 5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
| 5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
| 21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
| 5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
| 21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
| 21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
| 21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
| 12113 | The search for first or final causes is futile [Comte] |
| 12110 | We can never know origins, purposes or inner natures [Comte] |
| 5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
| 21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
| 5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |