25 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] |
1749 | If all laws were abolished, philosophers would still live as they do now [Aristippus elder] |
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] |
22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
9159 | You can't simply convert geometry into algebra, as some spatial content is lost [Burge] |
22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [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] |
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] |
22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
3558 | Only the Cyrenaics reject the idea of a final moral end [Aristippus elder, by Annas] |
22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
5835 | The road of freedom is the surest route to happiness [Aristippus elder, by Xenophon] |
1751 | Pleasure is the good, because we always seek it, it satisfies us, and its opposite is the most avoidable thing [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
3018 | People who object to extravagant pleasures just love money [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
1755 | Errors result from external influence, and should be corrected, not hated [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |