272 ideas
7396 | Hobbes created English-language philosophy [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
12644 | Who cares what 'philosophy' is? Most pre-1950 thought doesn't now count as philosophy [Fodor] |
17240 | Definitions are the first step in philosophy [Hobbes] |
6211 | Laughter is a sudden glory in realising the infirmity of others, or our own formerly [Hobbes] |
9217 | Modern empirical metaphysics focuses on ontological commitments of discourse, or on presuppositions [Loux/Zimmerman] |
8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
12633 | Definitions often give necessary but not sufficient conditions for an extension [Fodor] |
2474 | It seems likely that analysis of concepts is impossible, but justification can survive without it [Fodor] |
2481 | Despite all the efforts of philosophers, nothing can ever be reduced to anything [Fodor] |
2505 | Turing invented the idea of mechanical rationality (just based on syntax) [Fodor] |
2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
17237 | Definitions of things that are caused must express their manner of generation [Hobbes] |
17239 | Definition is resolution of names into successive genera, and finally the difference [Hobbes] |
17241 | A defined name should not appear in the definition [Hobbes] |
12619 | We have no successful definitions, because they all use indefinable words [Fodor] |
2470 | Transcendental arguments move from knowing Q to knowing P because it depends on Q [Fodor] |
17242 | 'Petitio principii' is reusing the idea to be defined, in disguised words [Hobbes] |
2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
17245 | A part of a part is a part of a whole [Hobbes] |
2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
12664 | A truth-table, not inferential role, defines 'and' [Fodor] |
3005 | 'Jocasta' needs to be distinguished from 'Oedipus's mother' because they are connected by different properties [Fodor] |
12648 | Names in thought afford a primitive way to bring John before the mind [Fodor] |
12650 | 'Paderewski' has two names in mentalese, for his pianist file and his politician file [Fodor] |
12656 | P-and-Q gets its truth from the truth of P and truth of Q, but consistency isn't like that [Fodor] |
17258 | If we just say one, one, one, one, we don't know where we have got to [Hobbes] |
12620 | If 'exist' is ambiguous in 'chairs and numbers exist', that mirrors the difference between chairs and numbers [Fodor] |
16789 | Only supernatural means could annihilate anything once it had being [Hobbes] |
17253 | Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes] |
7559 | Every part of the universe is body, and non-body is not part of it [Hobbes] |
2469 | The world is full of messy small things producing stable large-scale properties (e.g. mountains) [Fodor] |
16670 | Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes] |
7014 | A particle and a coin heads-or-tails pick out to perfectly well-defined predicates and properties [Fodor] |
16621 | Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes] |
16734 | The complete power of an event is just the aggregate of the qualities that produced it [Hobbes] |
12613 | Empiricists use dispositions reductively, as 'possibility of sensation' or 'possibility of experimental result' [Fodor] |
2475 | Don't define something by a good instance of it; a good example is a special case of the ordinary example [Fodor] |
17247 | The only generalities or universals are names or signs [Hobbes] |
14960 | Bodies are independent of thought, and coincide with part of space [Hobbes] |
17250 | If you separate the two places of one thing, you will also separate the thing [Hobbes] |
17249 | If you separated two things in the same place, you would also separate the places [Hobbes] |
17248 | If a whole body is moved, its parts must move with it [Hobbes] |
16620 | A chair is wood, and its shape is the form; it isn't 'compounded' of the matter and form [Hobbes] |
16790 | A body is always the same, whether the parts are together or dispersed [Hobbes] |
17244 | To make a whole, parts needn't be put together, but can be united in the mind [Hobbes] |
17233 | Particulars contain universal things [Hobbes] |
17246 | Some accidental features are permanent, unless the object perishes [Hobbes] |
17251 | The feature which picks out or names a thing is usually called its 'essence' [Hobbes] |
16622 | Essence is just an artificial word from logic, giving a way of thinking about substances [Hobbes] |
17257 | It is the same river if it has the same source, no matter what flows in it [Hobbes] |
12853 | Some individuate the ship by unity of matter, and others by unity of form [Hobbes] |
17256 | If a new ship were made of the discarded planks, would two ships be numerically the same? [Hobbes] |
16794 | As an infant, Socrates was not the same body, but he was the same human being [Hobbes] |
17255 | Two bodies differ when (at some time) you can say something of one you can't say of the other [Hobbes] |
12653 | There's statistical, logical, nomological, conceptual and metaphysical possibility [Fodor] |
6215 | 'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes] |
16582 | We can imagine a point swelling and contracting - but not how this could be done [Hobbes] |
12651 | Some beliefs are only inferred when needed, like 'Shakespeare had not telephone' [Fodor] |
2502 | How do you count beliefs? [Fodor] |
12628 | Knowing that must come before knowing how [Fodor] |
2501 | Berkeley seems to have mistakenly thought that chairs are the same as after-images [Fodor] |
3008 | Evolution suggests that innate knowledge of human psychology would be beneficial [Fodor] |
2990 | Contrary to commonsense, most of what is in the mind seems to be unlearned [Fodor] |
3009 | Sticklebacks have an innate idea that red things are rivals [Fodor] |
16638 | The qualities of the world are mere appearances; reality is the motions which cause them [Hobbes] |
2356 | Appearance and reality can be separated by mirrors and echoes [Hobbes] |
2465 | Maybe explaining the mechanics of perception will explain the concepts involved [Fodor] |
2504 | Rationalism can be based on an evolved computational brain with innate structure [Fodor] |
16688 | Evidence is conception, which is imagination, which proceeds from the senses [Hobbes] |
7405 | Experience can't prove universal truths [Hobbes] |
2493 | According to empiricists abstraction is the fundamental mental process [Fodor] |
3978 | Associations are held to connect Ideas together in the way the world is connected together [Fodor] |
12617 | Associationism can't explain how truth is preserved [Fodor] |
12625 | Pragmatism is the worst idea ever [Fodor] |
2494 | Rationalists say there is more to a concept than the experience that prompts it [Fodor] |
2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
2357 | Dreams must be false because they seem absurd, but dreams don't see waking as absurd [Hobbes] |
2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
17238 | Science aims to show causes and generation of things [Hobbes] |
2503 | Empirical approaches see mind connections as mirrors/maps of reality [Fodor] |
2508 | The function of a mind is obvious [Fodor] |
12636 | Mental states have causal powers [Fodor] |
2994 | In CRTT thought may be represented, content must be [Fodor] |
2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
15473 | How does anything get outside itself? [Fodor, by Martin,CB] |
2485 | Do intentional states explain our behaviour? [Fodor] |
2981 | Is intentionality outwardly folk psychology, inwardly mentalese? [Lyons on Fodor] |
15494 | We can't use propositions to explain intentional attitudes, because they would need explaining [Fodor] |
7326 | Intentionality doesn't go deep enough to appear on the physicists' ultimate list of things [Fodor] |
3976 | Intentional science needs objects with semantic and causal properties, and which obey laws [Fodor] |
3980 | Intentional states and processes may be causal relations among mental symbols [Fodor] |
17260 | Imagination is just weakened sensation [Hobbes] |
12661 | The different types of resemblance don't resemble one another [Fodor] |
19373 | A 'conatus' is an initial motion, experienced by us as desire or aversion [Hobbes, by Arthur,R] |
2506 | If I have a set of mental modules, someone had better be in charge of them! [Fodor] |
2358 | Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd [Hobbes] |
2384 | Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary [Hobbes] |
6213 | A man cannot will to will, or will to will to will, so the idea of a voluntary will is absurd [Hobbes] |
2385 | If a man suddenly develops an intention of doing something, the cause is out of his control, not in his will [Hobbes] |
6214 | Liberty and necessity are consistent, as when water freely flows, by necessity [Hobbes] |
2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
2599 | Either intentionality causes things, or epiphenomenalism is true [Fodor] |
3001 | Behaviourism has no theory of mental causation [Fodor] |
2467 | Functionalists see pains as properties involving relations and causation [Fodor] |
2993 | Any piece of software can always be hard-wired [Fodor] |
12632 | In the Representational view, concepts play the key linking role [Fodor] |
3011 | Causal powers must be a crucial feature of mental states [Fodor] |
5498 | Mind is a set of hierarchical 'homunculi', which are made up in turn from subcomponents [Fodor, by Lycan] |
2597 | Contrary to the 'anomalous monist' view, there may well be intentional causal laws [Fodor] |
2489 | Why bother with neurons? You don't explain bird flight by examining feathers [Fodor] |
2985 | Are beliefs brains states, but picked out at a "higher level"? [Lyons on Fodor] |
2995 | Supervenience gives good support for mental causation [Fodor] |
2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
2468 | Type physicalism is a stronger claim than token physicalism [Fodor] |
2948 | Sensation is merely internal motion of the sentient being [Hobbes] |
6208 | Conceptions and apparitions are just motion in some internal substance of the head [Hobbes] |
2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
2490 | Modern connectionism is just Hume's theory of the 'association' of 'ideas' [Fodor] |
12624 | Only the labels of nodes have semantic content in connectionism, and they play no role [Fodor] |
2991 | Hume's associationism offers no explanation at all of rational thought [Fodor] |
3002 | If mind is just physical, how can it follow the rules required for intelligent thought? [Fodor] |
2598 | Lots of physical properties are multiply realisable, so why shouldn't beliefs be? [Fodor] |
3981 | Most psychological properties seem to be multiply realisable [Fodor] |
2476 | The goal of thought is to understand the world, not instantly sort it into conceptual categories [Fodor] |
12640 | Associative thinking avoids syntax, but can't preserve sense, reference or truth [Fodor] |
2992 | We may be able to explain rationality mechanically [Fodor] |
12641 | Connectionism gives no account of how constituents make complex concepts [Fodor] |
2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
23987 | The 'simple passions' are appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief [Hobbes, by Goldie] |
17261 | Apart from pleasure and pain, the only emotions are appetite and aversion [Hobbes] |
2988 | Folk psychology is the only explanation of behaviour we have [Fodor] |
3975 | Folk psychology explains behaviour by reference to intentional states like belief and desire [Fodor] |
2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
2499 | Modules analyse stimuli, they don't tell you what to do [Fodor] |
2496 | Blindness doesn't destroy spatial concepts [Fodor] |
2498 | Modules make the world manageable [Fodor] |
2500 | Babies talk in consistent patterns [Fodor] |
2507 | Rationality rises above modules [Fodor] |
2497 | Something must take an overview of the modules [Fodor] |
2509 | Modules have in-built specialist information [Fodor] |
22186 | Mental modules are specialised, automatic, and isolated [Fodor, by Okasha] |
2491 | Modules have encapsulation, inaccessibility, private concepts, innateness [Fodor] |
2495 | Obvious modules are language and commonsense explanation [Fodor] |
2483 | Mentalese doesn't require a theory of meaning [Fodor] |
12643 | Ambiguities in English are the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English [Fodor] |
8090 | Since the language of thought is the same for all, it must be something like logical form [Fodor, by Devlin] |
2604 | We must have expressive power BEFORE we learn language [Fodor] |
2480 | Language is ambiguous, but thought isn't [Fodor] |
2487 | Mentalese may also incorporate some natural language [Fodor] |
3010 | Belief and desire are structured states, which need mentalese [Fodor] |
12649 | We think in file names [Fodor] |
17236 | Words are not for communication, but as marks for remembering what we have learned [Hobbes] |
12647 | Mental representations name things in the world, but also files in our memory [Fodor] |
3135 | Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey] |
12655 | Frame Problem: how to eliminate most beliefs as irrelevant, without searching them? [Fodor] |
2983 | Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor] |
12615 | Mental representations are the old 'Ideas', but without images [Fodor] |
2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
12630 | If concept content is reference, then my Twin and I are referring to the same stuff [Fodor] |
2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
3982 | How could the extrinsic properties of thoughts supervene on their intrinsic properties? [Fodor] |
3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
2999 | Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism [Fodor] |
2486 | Content can't be causal role, because causal role is decided by content [Fodor] |
3012 | Do identical thoughts have identical causal roles? [Fodor] |
2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
12658 | Nobody knows how concepts are acquired [Fodor] |
2492 | Experience can't explain itself; the concepts needed must originate outside experience [Fodor] |
11143 | If concept-learning is hypothesis-testing, that needs innate concepts to get started [Fodor, by Margolis/Laurence] |
6650 | Fodor is now less keen on the innateness of concepts [Fodor, by Lowe] |
12662 | We have an innate capacity to form a concept, once we have grasped the stereotype [Fodor] |
12618 | It is essential to the concept CAT that it be satisfied by cats [Fodor] |
12635 | Having a concept isn't a pragmatic matter, but being able to think about the concept [Fodor] |
12652 | Concepts have two sides; they are files that face thought, and also face subject-matter [Fodor] |
12626 | Cartesians put concept individuation before concept possession [Fodor] |
2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
12614 | I prefer psychological atomism - that concepts are independent of epistemic capacities [Fodor] |
2471 | Are concepts best seen as capacities? [Fodor] |
2472 | For Pragmatists having a concept means being able to do something [Fodor] |
12637 | Frege's puzzles suggest to many that concepts have sense as well as reference [Fodor] |
12638 | If concepts have sense, we can't see the connection to their causal powers [Fodor] |
12639 | Belief in 'senses' may explain intentionality, but not mental processes [Fodor] |
12654 | You can't think 'brown dog' without thinking 'brown' and 'dog' [Fodor] |
12621 | Definable concepts have constituents, which are necessary, individuate them, and demonstrate possession [Fodor] |
12622 | Many concepts lack prototypes, and complex prototypes aren't built from simple ones [Fodor] |
12659 | Maybe stereotypes are a stage in concept acquisition (rather than a by-product) [Fodor] |
12660 | One stereotype might be a paradigm for two difference concepts [Fodor] |
12623 | The theory theory can't actually tell us what concepts are [Fodor] |
12629 | For the referential view of thought, the content of a concept is just its reference [Fodor] |
12631 | Compositionality requires that concepts be atomic [Fodor] |
12657 | Abstractionism claims that instances provide criteria for what is shared [Fodor] |
2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
2998 | Grice thinks meaning is inherited from the propositional attitudes which sentences express [Fodor] |
2482 | It seems unlikely that meaning can be reduced to communicative intentions, or any mental states [Fodor] |
3006 | Whatever in the mind delivers falsehood is parasitic on what delivers truth [Fodor] |
2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
3007 | Many different verification procedures can reach 'star', but it only has one semantic value [Fodor] |
3004 | The meaning of a sentence derives from its use in expressing an attitude [Fodor] |
3000 | Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine [Fodor] |
2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
2477 | If to understand "fish" you must know facts about them, where does that end? [Fodor] |
3003 | Very different mental states can share their contents, so content doesn't seem to be constructed from functional role [Fodor] |
12634 | 'Inferential-role semantics' says meaning is determined by role in inference [Fodor] |
2996 | Mental states may have the same content but different extensions [Fodor] |
12642 | Co-referring terms differ if they have different causal powers [Fodor] |
12663 | We refer to individuals and to properties, and we use singular terms and predicates [Fodor] |
2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
12616 | English has no semantic theory, just associations between sentences and thoughts [Fodor] |
12645 | Semantics (esp. referential semantics) allows inferences from utterances to the world [Fodor] |
12646 | Semantics relates to the world, so it is never just psychological [Fodor] |
2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
2473 | Analysis is impossible without the analytic/synthetic distinction [Fodor] |
2484 | The theory of the content of thought as 'Mentalese' explains why the Private Language Argument doesn't work [Fodor] |
2362 | The will is just the last appetite before action [Hobbes] |
7408 | It is an error that reason should control the passions, which give right guidance on their own [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
12627 | Before you can plan action, you must decide on the truth of your estimate of success [Fodor] |
2363 | Reason is usually general, but deliberation is of particulars [Hobbes] |
7407 | Good and evil are what please us; goodness and badness the powers causing them [Hobbes] |
2360 | 'Good' is just what we desire, and 'Evil' what we hate [Hobbes] |
7410 | Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
2368 | Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so [Hobbes] |
6209 | There is no absolute good, for even the goodness of God is goodness to us [Hobbes] |
2359 | Desire and love are the same, but in the desire the object is absent, and in love it is present [Hobbes] |
2370 | All voluntary acts aim at some good for the doer [Hobbes] |
7409 | Hobbes shifted from talk of 'the good' to talk of 'rights' [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
6210 | Life has no end (not even happiness), because we have desires, which presuppose a further end [Hobbes] |
2371 | A contract is a mutual transfer of rights [Hobbes] |
2372 | The person who performs first in a contract is said to 'merit' the return, and is owed it [Hobbes] |
8015 | Hobbes wants a contract to found morality, but shared values are needed to make a contract [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
5337 | For Hobbes the Golden Rule concerns not doing things, whereas Jesus encourages active love [Hobbes, by Flanagan] |
2374 | In the violent state of nature, the merest suspicion is enough to justify breaking a contract [Hobbes] |
8016 | Fear of sanctions is the only motive for acceptance of authority that Hobbes can think of [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
2375 | Suspicion will not destroy a contract, if there is a common power to enforce it [Hobbes] |
2377 | No one who admitted to not keeping contracts could ever be accepted as a citizen [Hobbes] |
2379 | If there is a good reason for breaking a contract, the same reason should have stopped the making of it [Hobbes] |
2373 | The first performer in a contract is handing himself over to an enemy [Hobbes] |
2382 | Someone who keeps all his contracts when others are breaking them is making himself a prey to others [Hobbes] |
2383 | Virtues are a means to peaceful, sociable and comfortable living [Hobbes] |
2376 | Injustice is the failure to keep a contract, and justice is the constant will to give what is owed [Hobbes] |
2367 | In time of war the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short [Hobbes] |
19764 | Hobbes attributed to savages the passions which arise in a law-bound society [Hobbes, by Rousseau] |
20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala] |
2366 | There is not enough difference between people for one to claim more benefit than another [Hobbes] |
20485 | Hobbes says people are roughly equal; Locke says there is no right to impose inequality [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
2369 | If we seek peace and defend ourselves, we must compromise on our rights [Hobbes] |
20484 | We should obey the laws of nature, provided other people are also obeying them [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
7573 | The legal positivism of Hobbes said law is just formal or procedural [Hobbes, by Jolley] |
2380 | Punishment should only be for reform or deterrence [Hobbes] |
23609 | I act justly if I follow my Prince in an apparently unjust war, and refusing to fight would be injustice [Hobbes] |
2361 | If fear of unknown powers is legal it is religion, if it is illegal it is superstition [Hobbes] |
6212 | Lust involves pleasure, and also the sense of power in pleasing others [Hobbes] |
16600 | Prime matter is body considered with mere size and extension, and potential [Hobbes] |
17252 | Acting on a body is either creating or destroying a property in it [Hobbes] |
17254 | An effect needs a sufficient and necessary cause [Hobbes] |
2364 | Causation is only observation of similar events following each other, with nothing visible in between [Hobbes] |
17235 | A cause is the complete sum of the features which necessitate the effect [Hobbes] |
3977 | Laws are true generalisations which support counterfactuals and are confirmed by instances [Fodor] |
17234 | Motion is losing one place and acquiring another [Hobbes] |
17259 | 'Force' is the quantity of movement imposed on something [Hobbes] |
17243 | Past times can't exist anywhere, apart from in our memories [Hobbes] |
7411 | The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature [Hobbes] |
2365 | Religion is built on ignorance and misinterpretation of what is unknown or frightening [Hobbes] |
2378 | Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip [Hobbes] |