40 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] |
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] |
15200 | How could change consist of a conjunction of changeless facts? [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
14761 | Change is not just having two different qualities at different points in some series [McTaggart] |
22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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] |
13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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] |
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] |
2608 | For McTaggart time is seen either as fixed, or as relative to events [McTaggart, by Ayer] |
22936 | A-series time positions are contradictory, and yet all events occupy all of them! [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
4231 | Time involves change, only the A-series explains change, but it involves contradictions, so time is unreal [McTaggart, by Lowe] |
8591 | There could be no time if nothing changed [McTaggart] |
22935 | The B-series can be inferred from the A-series, but not the other way round [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
7802 | A-series uses past, present and future; B-series uses 'before' and 'after' [McTaggart, by Girle] |
4230 | A-series expressions place things in time, and their truth varies; B-series is relative, and always true [McTaggart, by Lowe] |
15199 | The B-series must depend on the A-series, because change must be explained [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |