99 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| 22642 | Man has an intense natural interest in the consistency of his own thinking [James] |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| 18019 | People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 17998 | Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor] |
| 18012 | Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor] |
| 18013 | Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor] |
| 18011 | Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor] |
| 18016 | Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor] |
| 18015 | The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18017 | If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18021 | Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 18030 | A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18031 | If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18032 | Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18034 | Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18037 | Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor] |
| 18039 | If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor] |
| 18041 | Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor] |
| 18055 | In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor] |
| 18056 | Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor] |
| 18057 | 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor] |
| 18058 | Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor] |
| 18059 | The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor] |
| 6710 | You can only define a statement that something is 'true' by referring to its functional possibilities [James] |
| 18986 | Truth is just a name for verification-processes [James] |
| 18983 | In many cases there is no obvious way in which ideas can agree with their object [James] |
| 18972 | Ideas are true in so far as they co-ordinate our experiences [James] |
| 18973 | New opinions count as 'true' if they are assimilated to an individual's current beliefs [James] |
| 22305 | If the hypothesis of God is widely successful, it is true [James] |
| 18984 | True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify (and false otherwise) [James] |
| 18040 | Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor] |
| 13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
| 17997 | Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 22641 | Realities just are, and beliefs are true of them [James] |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| 18987 | A 'thing' is simply carved out of reality for human purposes [James] |
| 18981 | 'Substance' is just a word for groupings and structures in experience [James] |
| 18060 | We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor] |
| 18974 | Truth is a species of good, being whatever proves itself good in the way of belief [James] |
| 18989 | Pragmatism accepts any hypothesis which has useful consequences [James] |
| 22640 | We find satisfaction in consistency of all of our beliefs, perceptions and mental connections [James] |
| 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
| 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
| 18971 | Theories are practical tools for progress, not answers to enigmas [James] |
| 18982 | Pragmatism says all theories are instrumental - that is, mental modes of adaptation to reality [James] |
| 18985 | True thoughts are just valuable instruments of action [James] |
| 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
| 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| 9286 | Consciousness is not a stuff, but is explained by the relations between experiences [James] |
| 9285 | 'Consciousness' is a nonentity, a mere echo of the disappearing 'soul' [James] |
| 18020 | Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor] |
| 23981 | Rage is inconceivable without bodily responses; so there are no disembodied emotions [James] |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| 18035 | Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor] |
| 18975 | We return to experience with concepts, where they show us differences [James] |
| 18018 | To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor] |
| 18008 | Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor] |
| 18010 | 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor] |
| 18053 | The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor] |
| 17999 | Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18000 | Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor] |
| 18014 | Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor] |
| 18001 | Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor] |
| 18036 | A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor] |
| 18051 | In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor] |
| 18043 | The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor] |
| 18042 | The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor] |
| 18047 | A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor] |
| 18048 | A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor] |
| 18049 | The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor] |
| 18050 | If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor] |
| 18054 | Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor] |
| 18028 | Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18029 | Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor] |
| 18022 | Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor] |
| 18024 | One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor] |
| 18023 | Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18025 | The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor] |
| 18026 | Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor] |
| 18027 | Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor] |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| 6570 | Imagine millions made happy on condition that one person suffers endless lonely torture [James] |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| 18980 | If there is a 'greatest knower', it doesn't follow that they know absolutely everything [James] |
| 18978 | It is hard to grasp a cosmic mind which produces such a mixture of goods and evils [James] |
| 18991 | If the God hypothesis works well, then it is true [James] |
| 18977 | The wonderful design of a woodpecker looks diabolical to its victims [James] |
| 18979 | Things with parts always have some structure, so they always appear to be designed [James] |
| 18976 | Private experience is the main evidence for God [James] |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |
| 18990 | Nirvana means safety from sense experience, and hindus and buddhists are just afraid of life [James] |