49 ideas
| 6259 | Why can't a wise man doubt everything? [Montaigne] |
| 6263 | No wisdom could make us comfortably walk a wide beam if it was high in the air [Montaigne] |
| 23122 | Montaigne was the founding father of liberalism [Montaigne, by Gopnik] |
| 12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
| 12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
| 12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
| 20388 | 'Necessary' conditions are requirements, and 'sufficient' conditions are guarantees [Davies,S] |
| 12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
| 20389 | A definition of a thing gives all the requirements which add up to a guarantee of it [Davies,S] |
| 20391 | Feminists warn that ideologies use timeless objective definitions as a tool of repression [Davies,S] |
| 6258 | Virtue is the distinctive mark of truth, and its greatest product [Montaigne] |
| 6262 | We lack some sense or other, and hence objects may have hidden features [Montaigne] |
| 14919 | Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen] |
| 6783 | To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| 6260 | Sceptics say there is truth, but no means of making or testing lasting judgements [Montaigne] |
| 14917 | To accept a scientific theory, we only need to believe that it is empirically adequate [Fraassen] |
| 6784 | Why should the true explanation be one of the few we have actually thought of? [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| 12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
| 13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
| 12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
| 6261 | The soul is in the brain, as shown by head injuries [Montaigne] |
| 20387 | Aesthetic experience involves perception, but also imagination and understanding [Davies,S] |
| 20385 | The faculty of 'taste' was posited to explain why only some people had aesthetic appreciation [Davies,S] |
| 20386 | The sublime is negative in awareness of insignificance, and positive in showing understanding [Davies,S] |
| 20384 | The idea that art forms are linked into a single concept began in the 1740s [Davies,S] |
| 20390 | Defining art as representation or expression or form were all undermined by the avant-garde [Davies,S] |
| 20392 | 'Aesthetic functionalism' says art is what is intended to create aesthetic experiences [Davies,S] |
| 20405 | Music may be expressive by being 'associated' with other emotional words or events [Davies,S] |
| 20403 | It seems unlikely that sad music expresses a composer's sadness; it takes ages to write [Davies,S] |
| 20393 | The 'institutional' theory says art is just something appropriately placed in the 'artworld' [Davies,S] |
| 20402 | Music is too definite to be put into words (not too indefinite!) [Davies,S] |
| 20395 | The title of a painting can be vital, and the artist decrees who the portrait represents [Davies,S] |
| 20396 | We must know what the work is meant to be, to evaluate the artist's achievement [Davies,S] |
| 20399 | Intentionalism says either meaning just is intention, or ('moderate') meaning is successful intention [Davies,S] |
| 20401 | The meaning is given by the audience's best guess at the author's intentions [Davies,S] |
| 20397 | If we could perfectly clone the Mona Lisa, the original would still be special [Davies,S] |
| 20398 | Art that is multiply instanced may require at least one instance [Davies,S] |
| 20404 | Music isn't just sad because it makes the listener feel sad [Davies,S] |
| 22705 | If the depiction of evil is glorified, that is an artistic flaw [Davies,S] |
| 22707 | It is an artistic defect if excessive moral outrage distorts the story, and narrows our sympathies [Davies,S] |
| 22704 | Immorality may or may not be an artistic defect [Davies,S] |
| 22706 | A work which seeks approval for immorality, but alienates the audience, is a failure [Davies,S] |
| 7496 | Rules and duties are based on the will, as that is all we control [Montaigne] |
| 7495 | Apart from the fear, dying is an easy duty [Montaigne] |
| 22269 | We must fight fiercely to hang on to the few pleasures which survive into old age [Montaigne] |
| 20482 | Virtue inspires Stoics, but I want a good temperament [Montaigne] |
| 20480 | There is not much point in only becoming good near the end of your life [Montaigne] |
| 20481 | Nothing we say can be worse than unsaying it in the face of authority [Montaigne] |
| 20479 | People at home care far more than soldiers risking death about the outcome of wars [Montaigne] |