41 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] |
| 15053 | If metaphysics can't be settled, it hardly matters whether it makes sense [Fine,K] |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| 15054 | 'Quietist' says abandon metaphysics because answers are unattainable (as in Kant's noumenon) [Fine,K] |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| 4187 | 'There is nothing without a reason why it should be rather than not be' (a generalisation of 'Why?') [Schopenhauer] |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| 15007 | If you make 'grounding' fundamental, you have to mention some non-fundamental notions [Sider on Fine,K] |
| 15006 | Something is grounded when it holds, and is explained, and necessitated by something else [Fine,K, by Sider] |
| 15055 | Grounding relations are best expressed as relations between sentences [Fine,K] |
| 15050 | Reduction might be producing a sentence which gets closer to the logical form [Fine,K] |
| 15051 | Reduction might be semantic, where a reduced sentence is understood through its reduction [Fine,K] |
| 15052 | Reduction is modal, if the reductions necessarily entail the truth of the target sentence [Fine,K] |
| 15056 | The notion of reduction (unlike that of 'ground') implies the unreality of what is reduced [Fine,K] |
| 15046 | Reality is a primitive metaphysical concept, which cannot be understood in other terms [Fine,K] |
| 15060 | Why should what is explanatorily basic be therefore more real? [Fine,K] |
| 15048 | In metaphysics, reality is regarded as either 'factual', or as 'fundamental' [Fine,K] |
| 15047 | What is real can only be settled in terms of 'ground' [Fine,K] |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| 4192 | All necessity arises from causation, which is conditioned; there is no absolute or unconditioned necessity [Schopenhauer] |
| 4190 | All understanding is an immediate apprehension of the causal relation [Schopenhauer] |
| 15061 | Although colour depends on us, we can describe the world that way if it picks out fundamentals [Fine,K] |
| 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] |
| 15059 | Grounding is an explanation of truth, and needs all the virtues of good explanations [Fine,K] |
| 15057 | Ultimate explanations are in 'grounds', which account for other truths, which hold in virtue of the grounding [Fine,K] |
| 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] |
| 4191 | What we know in ourselves is not a knower but a will [Schopenhauer] |
| 21368 | The knot of the world is the use of 'I' to refer to both willing and knowing [Schopenhauer] |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| 15058 | A proposition ingredient is 'essential' if changing it would change the truth-value [Fine,K] |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| 4189 | Time may be defined as the possibility of mutually exclusive conditions of the same thing [Schopenhauer] |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |