77 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| 9307 | Modern Western culture suddenly appeared in Jena in the 1790s [Svendsen] |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| 9786 | Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R] |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| 9297 | You can't understand love in terms of 'if and only if...' [Svendsen] |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| 9784 | A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R] |
| 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] |
| 6710 | You can only define a statement that something is 'true' by referring to its functional possibilities [James] |
| 13941 | Are the truth-bearers sentences, utterances, ideas, beliefs, judgements, propositions or statements? [Cartwright,R] |
| 13942 | Logicians take sentences to be truth-bearers for rigour, rather than for philosophical reasons [Cartwright,R] |
| 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] |
| 22641 | Realities just are, and beliefs are true of them [James] |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| 9783 | While no two classes coincide in membership, there are distinct but coextensive attributes [Cartwright,R] |
| 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] |
| 14962 | Bodies don't becomes scattered by losing small or minor parts [Cartwright,R] |
| 14961 | Clearly a pipe can survive being taken apart [Cartwright,R] |
| 13952 | Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R] |
| 13954 | The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R] |
| 13955 | Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R] |
| 13953 | An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R] |
| 13945 | A token isn't a unique occurrence, as the case of a word or a number shows [Cartwright,R] |
| 18974 | Truth is a species of good, being whatever proves itself good in the way of belief [James] |
| 9308 | If subjective and objective begin to merge, then so do primary and secondary qualities [Svendsen] |
| 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] |
| 23981 | Rage is inconceivable without bodily responses; so there are no disembodied emotions [James] |
| 9309 | Emotions have intentional objects, while a mood is objectless [Svendsen] |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| 18975 | We return to experience with concepts, where they show us differences [James] |
| 13950 | People don't assert the meaning of the words they utter [Cartwright,R] |
| 13948 | For any statement, there is no one meaning which any sentence asserting it must have [Cartwright,R] |
| 13944 | We can pull apart assertion from utterance, and the action, the event and the subject-matter for each [Cartwright,R] |
| 13947 | 'It's raining' makes a different assertion on different occasions, but its meaning remains the same [Cartwright,R] |
| 13943 | We can attribute 'true' and 'false' to whatever it was that was said [Cartwright,R] |
| 13946 | To assert that p, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to utter some particular words [Cartwright,R] |
| 13951 | Assertions, unlike sentence meanings, can be accurate, probable, exaggerated, false.... [Cartwright,R] |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| 9304 | Death appears to be more frightening the less one has lived [Svendsen] |
| 6570 | Imagine millions made happy on condition that one person suffers endless lonely torture [James] |
| 9310 | The profoundest boredom is boredom with boredom [Svendsen] |
| 9302 | We are bored because everything comes to us fully encoded, and we want personal meaning [Svendsen] |
| 9301 | Boredom is so radical that suicide could not overcome it; only never having existed would do it [Svendsen] |
| 9298 | We can be unaware that we are bored [Svendsen] |
| 9311 | We have achieved a sort of utopia, and it is boring, so that is the end of utopias [Svendsen] |
| 9303 | The concept of 'alienation' seems no longer applicable [Svendsen] |
| 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] |