29 ideas
19579 | The history of philosophy is just experiments in how to do philosophy [Novalis] |
19583 | Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis] |
19581 | A problem is a solid mass, which the mind must break up [Novalis] |
19584 | Whoever first counted to two must have seen the possibility of infinite counting [Novalis] |
22025 | Novalis thought self-consciousness cannot disclose 'being', because we are temporal creatures [Novalis, by Pinkard] |
8439 | Maybe each event has only one possible causal history [Bennett] |
8440 | Maybe an event's time of occurrence is essential to it [Bennett] |
5311 | If observation goes up a level, we expect the laws of the lower level to remain in force [Wilson,EO] |
5312 | A child first sees objects as distinct, and later as members of groups [Wilson,EO] |
5309 | Beliefs are really enabling mechanisms for survival [Wilson,EO] |
22067 | Poetry is true idealism, and the self-consciousness of the universe [Novalis] |
19585 | Every person has his own language [Novalis] |
19582 | Morality and philosophy are mutually dependent [Novalis] |
5310 | Philosophers study the consequences of ethics instead of its origins [Wilson,EO] |
5313 | The rules of human decision-making converge and overlap in a 'human nature' [Wilson,EO] |
5316 | We undermine altruism by rewarding it, but we reward it to encourage it [Wilson,EO] |
5318 | Pure hard-core altruism based on kin selection is the enemy of civilisation [Wilson,EO] |
5317 | The actor is most convincing who believes that his performance is real [Wilson,EO] |
22027 | Life isn't given to us like a novel - we write the novel [Novalis] |
19580 | If the pupil really yearns for the truth, they only need a hint [Novalis] |
5308 | The only human purpose is that created by our genetic history [Wilson,EO] |
8441 | Delaying a fire doesn't cause it, but hastening it might [Bennett] |
8436 | Either cause and effect are subsumed under a conditional because of properties, or it is counterfactual [Bennett] |
8435 | Causes are between events ('the explosion') or between facts/states of affairs ('a bomb dropped') [Bennett] |
8437 | The full counterfactual story asserts a series of events, because counterfactuals are not transitive [Bennett] |
8438 | A counterfactual about an event implies something about the event's essence [Bennett] |
5314 | Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and fast, biological evolution is Darwinian and slow [Wilson,EO] |
5315 | Over 99 percent of human evolution has been in the hunter-gatherer phase [Wilson,EO] |
5320 | It is estimated that mankind has produced 100,000 religions [Wilson,EO] |