55 ideas
| 22338 | An unexamined life can be virtuous [Murdoch] |
| 22337 | Philosophy must keep returning to the beginning [Murdoch] |
| 23563 | Philosophy moves continually between elaborate theories and the obvious facts [Murdoch] |
| 15682 | Even fairly simple animals make judgements based on categories [Gelman] |
| 15691 | Children accept real stable categories, with nonobvious potential that gives causal explanations [Gelman] |
| 15700 | In India, upper-castes essentialize caste more than lower-castes do [Gelman] |
| 15685 | Essentialism is either natural to us, or an accident of our culture, or a necessary result of language [Gelman] |
| 15684 | Children's concepts include nonobvious features, like internal parts, functions and causes [Gelman] |
| 15681 | Essentialism: real or representational? sortal, causal or ideal? real particulars, or placeholders? [Gelman] |
| 15678 | Essentialism says categories have a true hidden nature which gives an object its identity [Gelman] |
| 15683 | Sortals are needed for determining essence - the thing must be categorised first [Gelman] |
| 15697 | Kind (unlike individual) essentialism assumes preexisting natural categories [Gelman] |
| 15687 | Kinship is essence that comes in degrees, and age groups are essences that change over time [Gelman] |
| 15679 | Essentialism comes from the cognitive need to categorise [Gelman] |
| 15698 | We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children [Gelman] |
| 15709 | Essentialism is useful for predictions, but it is not the actual structure of reality [Gelman] |
| 15696 | Peope favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is [Gelman] |
| 15707 | There is intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist and deontological understanding [Gelman] |
| 15703 | Memories often conform to a theory, rather than being neutral [Gelman] |
| 15708 | Inductive success is rewarded with more induction [Gelman] |
| 15694 | Children overestimate the power of a single example [Gelman] |
| 15695 | Children make errors in induction by focusing too much on categories [Gelman] |
| 15692 | People tend to be satisfied with shallow explanations [Gelman] |
| 22591 | We know perfection when we see what is imperfect [Murdoch] |
| 15680 | Folk essentialism rests on belief in natural kinds, in hidden properties, and on words indicating structures [Gelman] |
| 15686 | Labels may indicate categories which embody an essence [Gelman] |
| 15690 | Causal properties are seen as more central to category concepts [Gelman] |
| 15688 | Categories are characterized by distance from a prototype [Gelman] |
| 15689 | Theory-based concepts use rich models to show which similarities really matter [Gelman] |
| 15699 | Prelinguistic infants acquire and use many categories [Gelman] |
| 22709 | We should first decide what are the great works of art, with aesthetic theory following from that [Murdoch] |
| 22341 | Literature is the most important aspect of culture, because it teaches understanding of living [Murdoch] |
| 22715 | Great art proves the absurdity of art for art's sake [Murdoch] |
| 22714 | Because art is love, it improves us morally [Murdoch] |
| 22347 | Appreciating beauty in art or nature opens up the good life, by restricting selfishness [Murdoch] |
| 22712 | Art and morals are essentially the same, and are both identical with love [Murdoch] |
| 22713 | Love is realising something other than oneself is real [Murdoch] |
| 22339 | Love is a central concept in morals [Murdoch] |
| 22348 | Ordinary human love is good evidence of transcendent goodness [Murdoch] |
| 22343 | If I attend properly I will have no choices [Murdoch] |
| 22349 | Art trains us in the love of virtue [Murdoch] |
| 22340 | It is hard to learn goodness from others, because their virtues are part of their personal history [Murdoch] |
| 22350 | Only trivial virtues can be possessed on their own [Murdoch] |
| 22346 | Moral reflection and experience gradually reveals unity in the moral world [Murdoch] |
| 20765 | Man is a brave naked will, separate from a background of values and realities [Murdoch] |
| 22342 | Kantian existentialists care greatly for reasons for action, whereas Surrealists care nothing [Murdoch] |
| 22351 | Only a philosopher might think choices create values [Murdoch] |
| 15693 | One sample of gold is enough, but one tree doesn't give the height of trees [Gelman] |
| 15701 | Nouns seem to invoke stable kinds more than predicates do [Gelman] |
| 15702 | Essentialism doesn't mean we know the essences [Gelman] |
| 15705 | Essentialism encourages us to think about the world scientifically [Gelman] |
| 15704 | Essentialism starts from richly structured categories, leading to a search for underlying properties [Gelman] |
| 15706 | A major objection to real essences is the essentialising of social categories like race, caste and occupation [Gelman] |
| 22345 | Moral philosophy needs a central concept with all the traditional attributes of God [Murdoch] |
| 3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |