22 ideas
9271 | Human knowledge may not produce well-being; the examined life may not be worth living [Gray] |
20768 | Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
5311 | If observation goes up a level, we expect the laws of the lower level to remain in force [Wilson,EO] |
5312 | A child first sees objects as distinct, and later as members of groups [Wilson,EO] |
5309 | Beliefs are really enabling mechanisms for survival [Wilson,EO] |
9275 | Knowledge does not need minds or nervous systems; it is found in all living things [Gray] |
9276 | The will hardly ever does anything; most of our life just happens to us [Gray] |
5310 | Philosophers study the consequences of ethics instead of its origins [Wilson,EO] |
5313 | The rules of human decision-making converge and overlap in a 'human nature' [Wilson,EO] |
5316 | We undermine altruism by rewarding it, but we reward it to encourage it [Wilson,EO] |
5318 | Pure hard-core altruism based on kin selection is the enemy of civilisation [Wilson,EO] |
5317 | The actor is most convincing who believes that his performance is real [Wilson,EO] |
3049 | The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
3549 | Ariston says rules are useless for the virtuous and the non-virtuous [Ariston, by Annas] |
9278 | Nowadays we identify the free life with the good life [Gray] |
5308 | The only human purpose is that created by our genetic history [Wilson,EO] |
5314 | Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and fast, biological evolution is Darwinian and slow [Wilson,EO] |
5315 | Over 99 percent of human evolution has been in the hunter-gatherer phase [Wilson,EO] |
9280 | Over forty percent of the Earth's living tissue is human [Gray] |
9279 | What was our original sin, and how could Christ's suffering redeem it? [Gray] |
9272 | Without Christianity we lose the idea that human history has a meaning [Gray] |
5320 | It is estimated that mankind has produced 100,000 religions [Wilson,EO] |