141 ideas
13773 | For the truth you need Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, not his one-drachma course [Socrates] |
343 | The unexamined life is not worth living for men [Socrates] |
7421 | A philosopher is one who cares about what other people care about [Socrates, by Foucault] |
1649 | Socrates opened philosophy to all, but Plato confined moral enquiry to a tiny elite [Vlastos on Socrates] |
5842 | Philosophical discussion involves dividing subject-matter into categories [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
164 | It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate [Socrates] |
115 | Socrates was pleased if his mistakes were proved wrong [Socrates] |
22099 | The method of Socrates shows the student is discovering the truth within himself [Socrates, by Carlisle] |
5844 | Socrates always proceeded in argument by general agreement at each stage [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
1647 | In Socratic dialogue you must say what you believe, so unasserted premises are not debated [Vlastos on Socrates] |
11389 | Socrates sought essences, which are the basis of formal logic [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
639 | Socrates developed definitions as the basis of syllogisms, and also inductive arguments [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
3137 | Varieties of singular terms are used to designate token particulars [Rey] |
3143 | Physics requires the existence of properties, and also the abstract objects of arithmetic [Rey] |
4913 | Brain lesions can erase whole categories of perception, suggesting they are hard-wired [Carter,R] |
1652 | Socrates did not consider universals or definitions as having separate existence, but Plato made Forms of them [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
3145 | The Indiscernibility of Identicals is a truism; but the Identity of Indiscernibles depends on possible identical worlds [Rey] |
20298 | The traditional a priori is justified without experience; post-Quine it became unrevisable by experience [Rey] |
4910 | Sense organs don't discriminate; they reduce various inputs to the same electrical pulses [Carter,R] |
4911 | The recognition sequence is: classify, name, locate, associate, feel [Carter,R, by PG] |
3172 | Empiricism says experience is both origin and justification of all knowledge [Rey] |
4919 | There seems to be no dividing line between a memory and a thought [Carter,R] |
3166 | Animal learning is separate from their behaviour [Rey] |
3232 | Abduction could have true data and a false conclusion, and may include data not originally mentioned [Rey] |
3128 | It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere [Rey] |
3136 | The three theories are reduction, dualism, eliminativism [Rey] |
4908 | No one knows if animals are conscious [Carter,R] |
4902 | Pain doesn't have one brain location, but is linked to attention and emotion [Carter,R] |
4915 | In primates, brain size correlates closely with size of social group [Carter,R] |
4904 | Proper brains appear at seven weeks, and neonates have as many neurons as adults do [Carter,R] |
4917 | Consciousness involves awareness, perception, self-awareness, attention and reflection [Carter,R] |
3141 | Is consciousness 40Hz oscillations in layers 5 and 6 of the visual cortex? [Rey] |
4916 | There is enormous evidence that consciousness arises in the frontal lobes of the brain [Carter,R] |
3148 | Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey] |
3164 | Intentional explanations are always circular [Rey] |
3138 | Arithmetic and unconscious attitudes have no qualia [Rey] |
3142 | Why qualia, and why this particular quale? [Rey] |
4905 | Normal babies seem to have overlapping sense experiences [Carter,R] |
3224 | If qualia have no function, their attachment to thoughts is accidental [Rey] |
3227 | Are qualia a type of propositional attitude? [Rey] |
3226 | Are qualia irrelevant to explaining the mind? [Rey] |
3229 | If colour fits a cone mapping hue, brightness and saturation, rotating the cone could give spectrum inversion [Rey] |
4918 | In blindsight V1 (normal vision) is inactive, but V5 (movement) lights up [Carter,R] |
3223 | Self-consciousness may just be nested intentionality [Rey] |
3162 | Experiments prove that people are often unaware of their motives [Rey] |
3163 | Brain damage makes the unreliability of introspection obvious [Rey] |
1650 | For Socrates our soul, though hard to define, is our self [Vlastos on Socrates] |
3196 | Free will isn't evidence against a theory of thought if there is no evidence for free will [Rey] |
3195 | If reason could be explained in computational terms, there would be no need for the concept of 'free will' [Rey] |
4912 | Out-of-body experiences may be due to temporary loss of proprioception [Carter,R] |
3165 | Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey] |
3180 | Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey] |
3167 | Animals don't just respond to stimuli, they experiment [Rey] |
3173 | How are stimuli and responses 'similar'? [Rey] |
3179 | Behaviour is too contingent and irrelevant to be the mind [Rey] |
3186 | If a normal person lacked a brain, would you say they had no mind? [Rey] |
3127 | Dualism and physicalism explain nothing, and don't suggest any research [Rey] |
3188 | Homuncular functionalism (e.g. Freud) could be based on simpler mechanical processes [Rey] |
3216 | Is the room functionally the same as a Chinese speaker? [Rey] |
3220 | Searle is guilty of the fallacy of division - attributing a property of the whole to a part [Rey] |
3206 | One computer program could either play chess or fight a war [Rey] |
4903 | Scans of brains doing similar tasks produce very similar patterns of activation [Carter,R] |
4920 | Thinking takes place on the upper side of the prefrontal cortex [Carter,R] |
3140 | If you explain water as H2O, you have reduced water, but not eliminated it [Rey] |
3134 | Human behaviour can show law-like regularity, which eliminativism can't explain [Rey] |
3199 | Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes [Rey] |
3201 | Connectionism explains well speed of perception and 'graceful degradation' [Rey] |
3202 | Connectionism explains irrationality (such as the Gamblers' Fallacy) quite well [Rey] |
3200 | Pattern recognition is puzzling for computation, but makes sense for connectionism [Rey] |
3150 | Can identity explain reason, free will, non-extension, intentionality, subjectivity, experience? [Rey] |
3129 | Physicalism offers something called "complexity" instead of mental substance [Rey] |
3139 | Some attitudes are information (belief), others motivate (hatred) [Rey] |
4906 | Babies show highly emotional brain events, but may well be unaware of them [Carter,R] |
4909 | The only way we can control our emotions is by manipulating the outside world that influences them [Carter,R] |
23252 | Socrates first proposed that we are run by mind or reason [Socrates, by Frede,M] |
4914 | A frog will starve to death surrounded by dead flies [Carter,R] |
3174 | Good grammar can't come simply from stimuli [Rey] |
3171 | Children speak 90% good grammar [Rey] |
3170 | We train children in truth, not in grammar [Rey] |
3213 | Animals may also use a language of thought [Rey] |
3215 | Images can't replace computation, as they need it [Rey] |
3194 | CRTT is good on deduction, but not so hot on induction, abduction and practical reason [Rey] |
3147 | Problem-solving clearly involves manipulating images [Rey] |
3175 | Animals map things over time as well as over space [Rey] |
3207 | Simple externalism is that the meaning just is the object [Rey] |
3176 | Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one [Rey] |
3181 | A one hour gap in time might be indirectly verified, but then almost anything could be [Rey] |
3204 | The meaning of "and" may be its use, but not of "animal" [Rey] |
3205 | Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey] |
20300 | Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey] |
3209 | Causal theories of reference (by 'dubbing') don't eliminate meanings in the heads of dubbers [Rey] |
3210 | If meaning and reference are based on causation, then virtually everything has meaning [Rey] |
3149 | Referential Opacity says truth is lost when you substitute one referring term ('mother') for another ('Jocasta') [Rey] |
20294 | 'Married' does not 'contain' its symmetry, nor 'bigger than' its transitivity [Rey] |
20293 | Analytic judgements can't be explained by contradiction, since that is what is assumed [Rey] |
20297 | Analytic statements are undeniable (because of meaning), rather than unrevisable [Rey] |
20301 | The meaning properties of a term are those which explain how the term is typically used [Rey] |
20302 | An intrinsic language faculty may fix what is meaningful (as well as grammatical) [Rey] |
20303 | Research throws doubts on the claimed intuitions which support analyticity [Rey] |
20299 | If we claim direct insight to what is analytic, how do we know it is not sub-consciously empirical? [Rey] |
3169 | A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then' [Rey] |
5843 | People do what they think they should do, and only ever do what they think they should do [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
5253 | Socrates was shocked by the idea of akrasia, but observation shows that it happens [Aristotle on Socrates] |
195 | No one willingly commits an evil or base act [Socrates] |
1653 | Socrates did not accept the tripartite soul (which permits akrasia) [Vlastos on Socrates] |
199 | The common belief is that people can know the best without acting on it [Socrates] |
5839 | For Socrates, wisdom and prudence were the same thing [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
5867 | For Socrates, virtues are forms of knowledge, so knowing justice produces justice [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
5069 | Socrates was the first to base ethics upon reason, and use reason to explain it [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
5836 | All human virtues are increased by study and practice [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
5840 | The wise perform good actions, and people fail to be good without wisdom [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
185 | Socrates despised good looks [Socrates, by Plato] |
5070 | Socrates conservatively assumed that Athenian conventions were natural and true [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
5838 | A well-made dung basket is fine, and a badly-made gold shield is base, because of function [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
339 | Men fear death as a great evil when it may be a great blessing [Socrates] |
344 | If death is like a night of dreamless sleep, such nights are very pleasant [Socrates] |
5837 | Things are both good and fine by the same standard [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
3017 | The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance [Socrates, by Diog. Laertius] |
1646 | Socrates was the first to put 'eudaimonia' at the centre of ethics [Socrates, by Vlastos] |
4907 | The 'locus coeruleus' is one of several candidates for the brain's 'pleasure centre' [Carter,R] |
2 | We should not even harm someone who harms us [Socrates] |
1663 | By 'areté' Socrates means just what we mean by moral virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
345 | A good man cannot be harmed, either in life or in death [Socrates] |
4323 | Socrates is torn between intellectual virtue, which is united and teachable, and natural virtue, which isn't [PG on Socrates] |
8003 | Socrates agrees that virtue is teachable, but then denies that there are teachers [Socrates, by MacIntyre] |
126 | We should ask what sort of people we want to be [Socrates] |
3221 | Our desires become important when we have desires about desires [Rey] |
4111 | Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement [Socrates, by Williams,B] |
7808 | Socrates made the civic values of justice and friendship paramount [Socrates, by Grayling] |
346 | One ought not to return a wrong or injury to any person, whatever the provocation [Socrates] |
23907 | Courage is scientific knowledge [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
341 | Wealth is good if it is accompanied by virtue [Socrates] |
7585 | Socrates emphasises that the knower is an existing individual, with existence his main task [Socrates, by Kierkegaard] |
5841 | Obedience to the law gives the best life, and success in war [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
347 | Will I stand up against the law, simply because I have been unjustly judged? [Socrates] |
1661 | Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates] |
5846 | A lover using force is a villain, but a seducer is much worse, because he corrupts character [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
1657 | Socrates holds that right reason entails virtue, and this must also apply to the gods [Vlastos on Socrates] |
1662 | A new concept of God as unswerving goodness emerges from Socrates' commitment to virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
338 | Socrates is accused of denying the gods, saying sun is stone and moon is earth [Socrates, by Plato] |