24 ideas
3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |
3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
5122 | Maybe consequentialism is a critique of ordinary morality, rather than describing it [Harman] |
5123 | Maybe there is no such thing as character, and the virtues and vices said to accompany it [Harman] |
5124 | If a person's two acts of timidity have different explanations, they are not one character trait [Harman] |
5125 | Virtue ethics might involve judgements about the virtues of actions, rather than character [Harman] |
12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |