Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Sayings of Confucius', 'Some Remarks on Essentialism' and 'The Blank Slate'

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22 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
7508 Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
13952 Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
13954 The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
13955 Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
13953 An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 2. Associationism
7510 Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 4. Memory
7513 Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker]
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
7509 Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
7511 Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker]
7512 There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG]
19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
7357 People who control others with fluent language often end up being hated [Kongzi (Confucius)]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / h. Against ethics
7358 All men prefer outward appearance to true excellence [Kongzi (Confucius)]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
7362 Humans are similar, but social conventions drive us apart (sages and idiots being the exceptions) [Kongzi (Confucius)]
7505 Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker]
23. Ethics / B. Contract Ethics / 2. Golden Rule
7360 Do not do to others what you would not desire yourself [Kongzi (Confucius)]
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / f. The Mean
7359 Excess and deficiency are equally at fault [Kongzi (Confucius)]
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
7363 The virtues of the best people are humility, maganimity, sincerity, diligence, and graciousness [Kongzi (Confucius)]
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 2. Leaders / d. Elites
7361 Men of the highest calibre avoid political life completely [Kongzi (Confucius)]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 3. Conservatism
23393 Confucianism assumes that all good developments have happened, and there is only one Way [Norden on Kongzi (Confucius)]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 2. Life
7516 In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
7515 All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker]
7514 Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker]