264 ideas
5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
23889 | Among the Greeks Aristotle is the only philosopher in the modern style [Weil] |
23881 | All thought about values is philosophical, and thought about anything else is not philosophy [Weil] |
9218 | Maybe what distinguishes philosophy from science is its pursuit of necessary truths [Sider] |
23885 | Philosophy aims to change the soul, not to accumulate knowledge [Weil] |
14721 | Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider] |
15010 | Your metaphysics is 'cheating' if your ontology won't support the beliefs you accept [Sider] |
23886 | Systems are not unique to each philosopher. The platonist tradition is old and continuous [Weil] |
14977 | Metaphysics is not about what exists or is true or essential; it is about the structure of reality [Sider] |
14994 | Extreme doubts about metaphysics also threaten to undermine the science of unobservables [Sider] |
15003 | It seems unlikely that the way we speak will give insights into the universe [Sider] |
14986 | Conceptual analysts trust particular intuitions much more than general ones [Sider] |
5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
15015 | It seems possible for a correct definition to be factually incorrect, as in defining 'contact' [Sider] |
14981 | Philosophical concepts are rarely defined, and are not understood by means of definitions [Sider] |
23884 | Truth is a value of thought [Weil] |
14992 | We don't care about plain truth, but truth in joint-carving terms [Sider] |
23755 | Genius and love of truth are always accompanied by great humility [Weil] |
23877 | Most people won't question an idea's truth if they depend on it [Weil] |
23825 | We seek truth only because it is good [Weil] |
23853 | Truth is not a object we love - it is the radiant manifestation of reality [Weil] |
15012 | Orthodox truthmaker theories make entities fundamental, but that is poor for explanation [Sider] |
13689 | 'Theorems' are formulas provable from no premises at all [Sider] |
13705 | Truth tables assume truth functionality, and are just pictures of truth functions [Sider] |
13706 | Intuitively, deontic accessibility seems not to be reflexive, but to be serial [Sider] |
13710 | In D we add that 'what is necessary is possible'; then tautologies are possible, and contradictions not necessary [Sider] |
13711 | System B introduces iterated modalities [Sider] |
13708 | S5 is the strongest system, since it has the most valid formulas, because it is easy to be S5-valid [Sider] |
13712 | Epistemic accessibility is reflexive, and allows positive and negative introspection (KK and K¬K) [Sider] |
13714 | We can treat modal worlds as different times [Sider] |
13720 | Converse Barcan Formula: □∀αφ→∀α□φ [Sider] |
13718 | The Barcan Formula ∀x□Fx→□∀xFx may be a defect in modal logic [Sider] |
13723 | System B is needed to prove the Barcan Formula [Sider] |
15023 | The Barcan schema implies if X might have fathered something, there is something X might have fathered [Sider] |
13715 | You can employ intuitionist logic without intuitionism about mathematics [Sider] |
15004 | 'Gunk' is an object in which proper parts all endlessly have further proper parts [Sider] |
14984 | Which should be primitive in mereology - part, or overlap? [Sider] |
14980 | There is a real issue over what is the 'correct' logic [Sider] |
15000 | 'It is raining' and 'it is not raining' can't be legislated, so we can't legislate 'p or ¬p' [Sider] |
15020 | Classical logic is good for mathematics and science, but less good for natural language [Sider] |
13678 | The most popular account of logical consequence is the semantic or model-theoretic one [Sider] |
13679 | Maybe logical consequence is more a matter of provability than of truth-preservation [Sider] |
13682 | Maybe logical consequence is impossibility of the premises being true and the consequent false [Sider] |
13680 | Maybe logical consequence is a primitive notion [Sider] |
15029 | Modal accounts of logical consequence are simple necessity, or essential use of logical words [Sider] |
13722 | A 'theorem' is an axiom, or the last line of a legitimate proof [Sider] |
15019 | Define logical constants by role in proofs, or as fixed in meaning, or as topic-neutral [Sider] |
13696 | When a variable is 'free' of the quantifier, the result seems incapable of truth or falsity [Sider] |
13700 | A 'total' function must always produce an output for a given domain [Sider] |
13703 | λ can treat 'is cold and hungry' as a single predicate [Sider] |
13688 | Good axioms should be indisputable logical truths [Sider] |
13687 | No assumptions in axiomatic proofs, so no conditional proof or reductio [Sider] |
13690 | Proof by induction 'on the length of the formula' deconstructs a formula into its accepted atoms [Sider] |
13691 | Induction has a 'base case', then an 'inductive hypothesis', and then the 'inductive step' [Sider] |
15001 | 'Tonk' is supposed to follow the elimination and introduction rules, but it can't be so interpreted [Sider] |
13685 | Natural deduction helpfully allows reasoning with assumptions [Sider] |
13686 | We can build proofs just from conclusions, rather than from plain formulae [Sider] |
13697 | Valuations in PC assign truth values to formulas relative to variable assignments [Sider] |
13684 | The semantical notion of a logical truth is validity, being true in all interpretations [Sider] |
13704 | It is hard to say which are the logical truths in modal logic, especially for iterated modal operators [Sider] |
13724 | In model theory, first define truth, then validity as truth in all models, and consequence as truth-preservation [Sider] |
13698 | In a complete logic you can avoid axiomatic proofs, by using models to show consequences [Sider] |
13699 | Compactness surprisingly says that no contradictions can emerge when the set goes infinite [Sider] |
13701 | A single second-order sentence validates all of arithmetic - but this can't be proved axiomatically [Sider] |
14760 | Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider] |
23855 | Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil] |
15017 | Supervenience is a modal connection [Sider] |
15008 | Is fundamentality in whole propositions (and holistic), or in concepts (and atomic)? [Sider] |
15013 | Tables and chairs have fundamental existence, but not fundamental natures [Sider] |
15014 | Unlike things, stuff obeys unrestricted composition and mereological essentialism [Sider] |
15009 | We must distinguish 'concrete' from 'abstract' and necessary states of affairs. [Sider] |
13692 | A 'precisification' of a trivalent interpretation reduces it to a bivalent interpretation [Sider] |
13695 | Supervaluational logic is classical, except when it adds the 'Definitely' operator [Sider] |
13693 | A 'supervaluation' assigns further Ts and Fs, if they have been assigned in every precisification [Sider] |
13694 | We can 'sharpen' vague terms, and then define truth as true-on-all-sharpenings [Sider] |
14983 | Accept the ontology of your best theory - and also that it carves nature at the joints [Sider] |
13683 | A relation is a feature of multiple objects taken together [Sider] |
14978 | A property is intrinsic if an object alone in the world can instantiate it [Sider] |
14194 | Proper ontology should only use categorical (actual) properties, not hypothetical ones [Sider] |
14995 | Predicates can be 'sparse' if there is a universal, or if there is a natural property or relation [Sider] |
14745 | If sortal terms fix the kind and the persistence conditions, we need to know what kinds there are [Sider] |
14740 | If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider] |
14752 | Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider] |
14743 | The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider] |
14747 | 'Composition as identity' says that an object just is the objects which compose it [Sider] |
14757 | Mereological essentialism says an object's parts are necessary for its existence [Sider] |
15026 | Essence (even if nonmodal) is not fundamental in metaphysics [Sider] |
14727 | Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider] |
14738 | Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider] |
14726 | Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider] |
14728 | 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider] |
14729 | 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider] |
14730 | Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider] |
14731 | Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider] |
14758 | How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider] |
14762 | Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider] |
14741 | The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider] |
13702 | The identity of indiscernibles is necessarily true, if being a member of some set counts as a property [Sider] |
14754 | If you say Leibniz's Law doesn't apply to 'timebound' properties, you are no longer discussing identity [Sider] |
13721 | 'Strong' necessity in all possible worlds; 'weak' necessity in the worlds where the relevant objects exist [Sider] |
13707 | Maybe metaphysical accessibility is intransitive, if a world in which I am a frog is impossible [Sider] |
13709 | Logical truths must be necessary if anything is [Sider] |
23900 | Chance is compatible with necessity, and the two occur together [Weil] |
13716 | 'If B hadn't shot L someone else would have' if false; 'If B didn't shoot L, someone else did' is true [Sider] |
15030 | Humeans say that we decide what is necessary [Sider] |
15031 | Modal terms in English are entirely contextual, with no modality outside the language [Sider] |
15027 | If truths are necessary 'by convention', that seems to make them contingent [Sider] |
15028 | Conventionalism doesn't seem to apply to examples of the necessary a posteriori [Sider] |
15033 | Humeans says mathematics and logic are necessary because that is how our concept of necessity works [Sider] |
15025 | The world does not contain necessity and possibility - merely how things are [Sider] |
13717 | Transworld identity is not a problem in de dicto sentences, which needn't identify an individual [Sider] |
14763 | Counterparts rest on similarity, so there are many such relations in different contexts [Sider] |
13719 | Barcan Formula problem: there might have been a ghost, despite nothing existing which could be a ghost [Sider] |
23888 | Knowledge is beyond question, as an unavoidable component of thinking [Weil] |
5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
14988 | A theory which doesn't fit nature is unexplanatory, even if it is true [Sider] |
14982 | If I used Ramsey sentences to eliminate fundamentality from my theory, that would be a real loss [Sider] |
14989 | Problem predicates in induction don't reflect the structure of nature [Sider] |
14997 | Two applications of 'grue' do not guarantee a similarity between two things [Sider] |
14990 | Bayes produces weird results if the prior probabilities are bizarre [Sider] |
15005 | Explanations must cite generalisations [Sider] |
15011 | If the ultimate explanation is a list of entities, no laws, patterns or mechanisms can be cited [Sider] |
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] |
15018 | Intentionality is too superficial to appear in the catalogue of ultimate physics [Sider] |
23747 | What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being [Weil] |
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] |
23756 | The mind is imprisoned and limited by language, restricting our awareness of wider thoughts [Weil] |
5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
14999 | Prior to conventions, not all green things were green? [Sider] |
14998 | Conventions are contingent and analytic truths are necessary, so that isn't their explanation [Sider] |
15016 | Analyticity has lost its traditional role, which relied on truth by convention [Sider] |
23878 | Weakness of will is the inadequacy of the original impetus to carry through the action [Weil] |
5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
23899 | The secret of art is that beauty is a just blend of unity and its opposite [Weil] |
23832 | We both desire what is beautiful, and want it to remain as it is [Weil] |
23848 | The aesthete's treatment of beauty as amusement is sacreligious; beauty should nourish [Weil] |
23758 | Beauty is an attractive mystery, leaving nothing to be desired [Weil] |
23887 | Art (like philosophy) establishes a relation between world and self, and between oneself and others [Weil] |
23903 | When we admire a work, we see ourselves as its creator [Weil] |
23898 | Those who say immorality is not an aesthetic criterion must show that all criteria are aesthetic [Weil] |
5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
23814 | Every human yearns for an unattainable transcendent good [Weil] |
23826 | Beauty, goodness and truth are only achieved by applying full attention [Weil] |
23854 | Beauty is the proof of what is good [Weil] |
23824 | Where human needs are satisfied we find happiness, friendship and beauty [Weil] |
23879 | In a violent moral disagreement, it can't be that both sides are just following social morality [Weil] |
21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
23882 | Ends, unlike means, cannot be defined, which is why people tend to pursue means [Weil] |
23760 | All we need are the unity of justice, truth and beauty [Weil] |
5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
23883 | Minds essentially and always strive towards value [Weil] |
23748 | The sacred in every human is their expectation of good rather than evil [Weil] |
21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
23759 | Everything which originates in love is beautiful [Weil] |
23762 | Evil is transmitted by comforts and pleasures, but mostly by doing harm to people [Weil] |
23808 | There are two goods - the absolute good we want, and the reachable opposite of evil [Weil] |
23833 | The good is a nothingness, and yet real [Weil] |
21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
23865 | Morality would improve if people could pursue private interests [Weil] |
23896 | We see our character as a restricting limit, but also as an unshakable support [Weil] |
23894 | The concept of character is at the centre of morality [Weil] |
23893 | We don't see character in a single moment, but only over a period of time [Weil] |
23895 | We modify our character by placing ourselves in situations, or by attending to what seems trivial [Weil] |
23837 | Respect is our only obligation, which can only be expressed through deeds, not words [Weil] |
23815 | We cannot equally respect what is unequal, so equal respect needs a shared ground [Weil] |
23834 | Friendship is partly universal - the love of a person is like the ideal of loving everyone [Weil] |
23823 | Life needs risks to avoid sickly boredom [Weil] |
23844 | The most important human need is to have multiple roots [Weil] |
23838 | The need for order stands above all others, and is understood via the other needs [Weil] |
23836 | Obligations only bind individuals, not collectives [Weil] |
23840 | A citizen should be able to understand the whole of society [Weil] |
23822 | We all need to partipate in public tasks, and take some initiative [Weil] |
23843 | Even the poorest should feel collective ownership, and participation in grand display [Weil] |
23846 | Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil] |
23857 | People in power always try to increase their power [Weil] |
23866 | In oppressive societies the scope of actual control is extended by a religion of power [Weil] |
23812 | Force is what turns man into a thing, and ultimately into a corpse [Weil] |
23831 | The essence of power is illusory prestige [Weil] |
23839 | A lifelong head of society should only be a symbol, not a ruler [Weil] |
23871 | No central authority can initiate decentralisation [Weil] |
23856 | Spontaneous movements are powerless against organised repression [Weil] |
23867 | After a bloody revolution the group which already had the power comes to the fore [Weil] |
23830 | A group is only dangerous if it endorses an abstract entity [Weil] |
23870 | Decentralisation is only possible by co-operation between strong and weak - which is absurd [Weil] |
23809 | Our only social duty is to try to limit evil [Weil] |
23829 | National leaders want to preserve necessary order - but always the existing order [Weil] |
23817 | We need both equality (to attend to human needs) and hierarchy (as a scale of responsibilities) [Weil] |
23842 | Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil] |
23859 | True democracy is the subordination of society to the individual [Weil] |
23863 | Only individual people of good will can achieve social progress [Weil] |
23869 | In the least evil societies people can think, control community life, and be autonomous [Weil] |
23847 | Socialism tends to make a proletariat of the whole population [Weil] |
23750 | It is not more money which the wretched members of society need [Weil] |
23807 | The collective is the one and only object of false idolatry [Weil] |
23749 | The problem of the collective is not suppression of persons, but persons erasing themselves [Weil] |
21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
23861 | Marx showed that capitalist oppression, because of competition, is unstoppable [Weil] |
23897 | Once money is the main aim, society needs everyone to think wealth is possible [Weil] |
23845 | The capitalists neglect the people and the nation, and even their own interests [Weil] |
23828 | National prestige consists of behaving as if you could beat the others in a war [Weil] |
23810 | Charity is the only love, and you can feel that for a country (a place with traditions), but not a nation [Weil] |
23811 | If effort is from necessity rather than for a good, it is slavery [Weil] |
23868 | The pleasure of completing tasks motivates just as well as the whip of slavery [Weil] |
23819 | Deliberate public lying should be punished [Weil] |
23818 | We have liberty in the space between nature and accepted authority [Weil] |
23901 | Relationships depend on equality, so unequal treatment kills them [Weil] |
23753 | People absurdly claim an equal share of things which are essentially privileged [Weil] |
23841 | By making money the sole human measure, inequality has become universal [Weil] |
23864 | Inequality could easily be mitigated, if it were not for the struggle for power [Weil] |
23835 | People have duties, and only have rights because of the obligations of others to them [Weil] |
23751 | Rights are asserted contentiously, and need the backing of force [Weil] |
23752 | Giving centrality to rights stifles all impulses of charity [Weil] |
23820 | People need personal and collective property, and a social class lacking property is shameful [Weil] |
23813 | Only people who understand force, and don't respect it, are capable of justice [Weil] |
23757 | The spirit of justice needs the full attention of truth, and that attention is love [Weil] |
23761 | Justice (concerning harm) is distinct from rights (concerning inequality) [Weil] |
23852 | To punish people we must ourselves be innocent - but that undermines the desire to punish [Weil] |
23764 | The only thing in society worse than crime is repressive justice [Weil] |
23821 | Crime should be punished, to bring the perpetrator freely back to morality [Weil] |
23763 | Punishment aims at the good for men who don't desire it [Weil] |
23827 | Modern wars are fought in the name of empty words which are given capital letters [Weil] |
23880 | When war was a profession, customary morality justified any act of war [Weil] |
23850 | The soldier-civilian distinction should be abolished; every citizen is committed to a war [Weil] |
23858 | War is perpetuated by its continual preparations [Weil] |
23851 | Education is essentially motivation [Weil] |
23873 | Dividing history books into separate chapters is disastrous [Weil] |
23860 | Even if a drowning man is doomed, he should keep swimming to the last [Weil] |
14985 | The notion of law doesn't seem to enhance physical theories [Sider] |
14987 | Many of the key theories of modern physics do not appear to be 'laws' [Sider] |
14725 | Maybe motion is a dynamical quantity intrinsic to a thing at a particular time [Sider] |
14991 | Space has real betweenness and congruence structure (though it is not the Euclidean concepts) [Sider] |
14735 | Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider] |
15021 | The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space? [Sider] |
15024 | The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider] |
14722 | Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider] |
14724 | Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider] |
14756 | For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider] |
14723 | Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider] |
14736 | The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider] |
14734 | The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider] |
23754 | The only choice is between supernatural good, or evil [Weil] |
23816 | Attention to a transcendent reality motivates a duty to foster the good of humanity [Weil] |
23892 | The only legitimate proof of God by order derives from beauty [Weil] |
5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
23904 | The cruelty of the Old Testament put me off Christianity [Weil] |
21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
23849 | Religion should quietly suffuse all human life with its light [Weil] |
23902 | I attach little importance to immortality, which is an undecidable fact, and irrelevant to us [Weil] |
5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |
23765 | The soul is the intrinsic value of a human [Weil] |