130 ideas
| 19359 | Leibniz aims to give coherent rational support for empiricism [Leibniz, by Perkins] |
| 13086 | Metaphysics is a science of the intelligible nature of being [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 16710 | Leibniz tried to combine mechanistic physics with scholastic metaphysics [Leibniz, by Pasnau] |
| 16897 | Reason is the faculty for grasping apriori necessary truths [Leibniz, by Burge] |
| 24047 | An account is either a definition or a demonstration [Aristotle] |
| 3346 | For Leibniz rationality is based on non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason [Leibniz, by Benardete,JA] |
| 3347 | Leibniz said the principle of sufficient reason is synthetic a priori, since its denial is not illogical [Leibniz, by Benardete,JA] |
| 4643 | The Principle of Sufficient Reason does not presuppose that all explanations will be causal explanations [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 4633 | You cannot rationally deny the principle of non-contradiction, because all reasoning requires it [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 24052 | From one thing alone we can infer its contrary [Aristotle] |
| 4635 | Dialectic aims at unified truth, unlike analysis, which divides into parts [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 8627 | Leibniz is inclined to regard all truths as provable [Leibniz, by Frege] |
| 4632 | 'Natural' systems of deduction are based on normal rational practice, rather than on axioms [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 4631 | In ideal circumstances, an axiom should be such that no rational agent could possibly object to its use [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 4638 | The principle of bivalence distorts reality, as when claiming that a person is or is not 'thin' [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 1729 | We perceive number by the denial of continuity [Aristotle] |
| 9147 | Number cannot be defined as addition of ones, since that needs the number; it is a single act of abstraction [Fine,K on Leibniz] |
| 19375 | The continuum is not divided like sand, but folded like paper [Leibniz, by Arthur,R] |
| 18080 | A tangent is a line connecting two points on a curve that are infinitely close together [Leibniz] |
| 18081 | Nature uses the infinite everywhere [Leibniz] |
| 24057 | What is prior is always potentially present in what is next in order [Aristotle] |
| 7565 | Leibniz proposes monads, since there must be basic things, which are immaterial in order to have unity [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| 10419 | If relations can be reduced to, or supervene on, monadic properties of relata, they are not real [Leibniz, by Swoyer] |
| 13078 | Relations aren't in any monad, so they are distributed, so they are not real [Leibniz] |
| 16752 | Sight is the essence of the eye, fitting its definition; the eye itself is just the matter [Aristotle] |
| 12713 | Forms have sensation and appetite, the latter being the ability to act on other bodies [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| 13087 | The essence of a thing is its real possibilities [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 12701 | Leibniz moved from individuation by whole entity to individuation by substantial form [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| 13105 | The laws-of-the-series plays a haecceitist role [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 16513 | Identity of a substance is the law of its persistence [Leibniz] |
| 12035 | Leibniz bases pure primitive entities on conjunctions of qualitative properties [Leibniz, by Adams,RM] |
| 24058 | The substance is the cause of a thing's being [Aristotle] |
| 7561 | Substances are essentially active [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| 13091 | Leibnizian substances add concept, law, force, form and soul [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 24055 | Matter is potential, form is actual [Aristotle] |
| 24040 | Scientists explain anger by the matter, dialecticians by the form and the account [Aristotle] |
| 12715 | Leibniz strengthened hylomorphism by connecting it to force in physics [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| 11878 | Leibniz's view (that all properties are essential) is extreme essentialism, not its denial [Leibniz, by Mackie,P] |
| 11862 | Leibniz was not an essentialist [Leibniz, by Wiggins] |
| 4640 | If identity is based on 'true of X' instead of 'property of X' we get the Masked Man fallacy ('I know X but not Y') [Baggini /Fosl, by PG] |
| 4647 | 'I have the same car as you' is fine; 'I have the same fiancée as you' is not so good [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 16504 | Two eggs can't be identical, because the same truths can't apply to both of them [Leibniz] |
| 4639 | Leibniz's Law is about the properties of objects; the Identity of Indiscernibles is about perception of objects [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 8650 | Things are the same if one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth [Leibniz] |
| 13828 | Necessary truths are those provable from identities by pure logic in finite steps [Leibniz, by Hacking] |
| 4646 | Is 'events have causes' analytic a priori, synthetic a posteriori, or synthetic a priori? [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 13084 | How can things be incompatible, if all positive terms seem to be compatible? [Leibniz] |
| 4307 | A reason must be given why contingent beings should exist rather than not exist [Leibniz] |
| 15883 | Leibniz narrows down God's options to one, by non-contradiction, sufficient reason, indiscernibles, compossibility [Leibniz, by Harré] |
| 18822 | Each monad expresses all its compatible monads; a possible world is the resulting equivalence class [Leibniz, by Rumfitt] |
| 7837 | Leibniz proposed possible worlds, because they might be evil, where God would not create evil things [Leibniz, by Stewart,M] |
| 13080 | Leibniz has a counterpart view of de re counterfactuals [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 19332 | For Leibniz, divine understanding grasps every conceivable possibility [Leibniz, by Perkins] |
| 5509 | Leibniz said dualism of mind and body is illusion, and there is only mind [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi] |
| 7568 | Leibniz is an idealist insofar as the basic components of his universe are all mental [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| 4645 | 'A priori' does not concern how you learn a proposition, but how you show whether it is true or false [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 5051 | The intellect has potential to think, like a tablet on which nothing has yet been written [Aristotle] |
| 16723 | Perception of sensible objects is virtually never wrong [Aristotle] |
| 1724 | Perception necessitates pleasure and pain, which necessitates appetite [Aristotle] |
| 1730 | Why do we have many senses, and not just one? [Aristotle] |
| 17711 | Our minds take on the form of what is being perceived [Aristotle, by Mares] |
| 1725 | Why can't we sense the senses? And why do senses need stimuli? [Aristotle] |
| 1732 | Sense organs aren't the end of sensation, or they would know what does the sensing [Aristotle] |
| 1728 | Many objects of sensation are common to all the senses [Aristotle] |
| 1727 | Some objects of sensation are unique to one sense, where deception is impossible [Aristotle] |
| 1734 | In moral thought images are essential, to be pursued or avoided [Aristotle] |
| 1726 | We may think when we wish, but not perceive, because universals are within the mind [Aristotle] |
| 4582 | Basic beliefs are self-evident, or sensual, or intuitive, or revealed, or guaranteed [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 16647 | Demonstration starts from a definition of essence, so we can derive (or conjecture about) the properties [Aristotle] |
| 24048 | Demonstrations move from starting-points to deduced conclusions [Aristotle] |
| 4644 | A proposition such as 'some swans are purple' cannot be falsified, only verified [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 4584 | The problem of induction is how to justify our belief in the uniformity of nature [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 4583 | How can an argument be good induction, but poor deduction? [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 16646 | To understand a triangle summing to two right angles, we need to know the essence of a line [Aristotle] |
| 13092 | The essence of substance is the law of its changes, as in the series of numbers [Leibniz] |
| 4634 | Abduction aims at simplicity, testability, coherence and comprehensiveness [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 4637 | To see if an explanation is the best, it is necessary to investigate the alternative explanations [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 1714 | Mind involves movement, perception, incorporeality [Aristotle] |
| 5507 | Aristotle led to the view that there are several souls, all somewhat physical [Aristotle, by Martin/Barresi] |
| 24051 | Soul is seen as what moves, or what is least physical, or a combination of elements [Aristotle] |
| 12086 | Psuché is the form and actuality of a body which potentially has life [Aristotle] |
| 16754 | The soul is the cause or source of movement, the essence of body, and its end [Aristotle] |
| 24046 | Understanding is impossible, if it involves the understanding having parts [Aristotle] |
| 1717 | If the soul is composed of many physical parts, it can't be a true unity [Aristotle] |
| 24053 | If a soul have parts, what unites them? [Aristotle] |
| 1721 | What unifies the soul would have to be a super-soul, which seems absurd [Aristotle] |
| 1735 | In a way the soul is everything which exists, through its perceptions and thoughts [Aristotle] |
| 19354 | Leibniz introduced the idea of degrees of consciousness, essential for his monads [Leibniz, by Perkins] |
| 24061 | If we divide the mind up according to its capacities, there are a lot of them [Aristotle] |
| 24062 | Self-moving animals must have desires, and that entails having imagination [Aristotle] |
| 7841 | We think we are free because the causes of the will are unknown; determinism is a false problem [Leibniz] |
| 1710 | Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them [Aristotle] |
| 24056 | The soul (or parts of it) is not separable from the body [Aristotle] |
| 24039 | All the emotions seem to involve the body, simultaneously with the feeling [Aristotle] |
| 5510 | Leibniz has a panpsychist view that physical points are spiritual [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi] |
| 7564 | Occasionalism give a false view of natural laws, miracles, and substances [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| 24049 | Thinkers place the soul within the body, but never explain how they are attached [Aristotle] |
| 1514 | Early thinkers concentrate on the soul but ignore the body, as if it didn't matter what body received the soul [Aristotle] |
| 24050 | If soul is separate from body, why does it die when the body dies? [Aristotle] |
| 1718 | Does the mind think or pity, or does the whole man do these things? [Aristotle] |
| 2683 | Aristotle has a problem fitting his separate reason into the soul, which is said to be the form of the body [Ackrill on Aristotle] |
| 13275 | The soul and the body are inseparable, like the imprint in some wax [Aristotle] |
| 1733 | Thinking is not perceiving, but takes the form of imagination and speculation [Aristotle] |
| 4629 | Consistency is the cornerstone of rationality [Baggini /Fosl] |
| 23307 | Aristotle makes belief a part of reason, but sees desires as separate [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| 19372 | Concepts are ordered, and show eternal possibilities, deriving from God [Leibniz, by Arthur,R] |
| 13467 | Leibniz was the first modern to focus on sentence-sized units (where empiricists preferred word-size) [Leibniz, by Hart,WD] |
| 24060 | Self-controlled follow understanding, when it is opposed to desires [Aristotle] |
| 19365 | Limited awareness leads to bad choices, and unconscious awareness makes us choose the bad [Leibniz, by Perkins] |
| 8110 | Leibniz identified beauty with intellectual perfection [Leibniz, by Gardner] |
| 7569 | Humans are moral, and capable of reward and punishment, because of memory and self-consciousness [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| 4376 | Pleasure and pain are perceptions of things as good or bad [Aristotle] |
| 7574 | Natural law theory is found in Aquinas, in Leibniz, and at the Nuremberg trials [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| 1740 | Nature does nothing in vain [Aristotle] |
| 12728 | Leibniz rejected atoms, because they must be elastic, and hence have parts [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| 19374 | Microscopes and the continuum suggest that matter is endlessly divisible [Leibniz] |
| 7560 | Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz] |
| 16683 | Leibniz eventually said resistance, rather than extension, was the essence of body [Leibniz, by Pasnau] |
| 12725 | Leibniz wanted to explain motion and its laws by the nature of body [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| 16507 | The law within something fixes its persistence, and accords with general laws of nature [Leibniz] |
| 7859 | Leibniz had an unusual commitment to the causal completeness of physics [Leibniz, by Papineau] |
| 24045 | Movement is spatial, alteration, withering or growth [Aristotle] |
| 1738 | Practical reason is based on desire, so desire must be the ultimate producer of movement [Aristotle] |
| 24044 | Movement can be intrinsic (like a ship) or relative (like its sailors) [Aristotle] |
| 1739 | If all movement is either pushing or pulling, there must be a still point in between where it all starts [Aristotle] |
| 24064 | If something is pushed, it pushes back [Aristotle] |
| 15307 | Leibniz uses 'force' to mean both activity and potential [Leibniz] |
| 24063 | What is born has growth, a prime, and a withering away [Aristotle] |
| 3889 | God's existence is either necessary or impossible [Leibniz, by Scruton] |
| 7842 | Leibniz was closer than Spinoza to atheism [Leibniz, by Stewart,M] |