49 ideas
| 7490 | Because of Darwin, wisdom as a definite attainable state has faded [Watson] |
| 7461 | The three key ideas are the soul, Europe, and the experiment [Watson] |
| 7464 | The big idea: imitation, the soul, experiments, God, heliocentric universe, evolution? [Watson] |
| 8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
| 8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
| 8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
| 8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
| 7465 | Babylonian thinking used analogy, rather than deduction or induction [Watson] |
| 7466 | Mesopotamian numbers applied to specific things, and then became abstract [Watson] |
| 8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
| 8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
| 8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
| 21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
| 8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
| 8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
| 8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
| 8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
| 8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
| 8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
| 8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
| 8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
| 8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
| 8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
| 8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
| 8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
| 5996 | Critolaus redefined Aristotle's moral aim as fulfilment instead of happiness [Critolaus, by White,SA] |
| 8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
| 7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
| 8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
| 8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
| 8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
| 8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
| 7477 | Modern democracy is actually elective oligarchy [Watson] |
| 7478 | Greek philosophers invented the concept of 'nature' as their special subject [Watson] |
| 7462 | DNA mutation suggests humans and chimpanzees diverged 6.6 million years ago [Watson] |
| 8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |
| 7470 | During the rise of civilizations, the main gods changed from female to male [Watson] |
| 7474 | Hinduism has no founder, or prophet, or creed, or ecclesiastical structure [Watson] |
| 7480 | Monotheism was a uniquely Israelite creation within the Middle East [Watson] |
| 7479 | Modern Judaism became stabilised in 200 CE [Watson] |
| 7481 | The Israelites may have asserted the uniqueness of Yahweh to justify land claims [Watson] |
| 7471 | The Gathas (hymns) of Zoroastrianism date from about 1000 BCE [Watson] |
| 7473 | Zoroaster conceived the afterlife, judgement, heaven and hell, and the devil [Watson] |
| 7484 | Jesus never intended to start a new religion [Watson] |
| 7483 | Paul's early writings mention few striking episodes from Jesus' life [Watson] |
| 7475 | Confucius revered the spiritual world, but not the supernatural, or a personal god, or the afterlife [Watson] |
| 7476 | Taoism aims at freedom from the world, the body, the mind, and nature [Watson] |
| 7463 | The three basic ingredients of religion are: the soul, seers or priests, and ritual [Watson] |
| 7468 | In ancient Athens the souls of the dead are received by the 'upper air' [Watson] |