117 ideas
| 18330 | Judging by the positive forces, the Renaissance was the last great age [Nietzsche] |
| 2900 | I revere Heraclitus [Nietzsche] |
| 2913 | Thucydides was the perfect anti-platonist sophist [Nietzsche] |
| 2909 | Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned [Nietzsche] |
| 2892 | Wanting a system in philosophy is a lack of integrity [Nietzsche] |
| 2896 | I want to understand the Socratic idea that 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' [Nietzsche] |
| 2897 | With dialectics the rabble gets on top [Nietzsche] |
| 2898 | Anything which must first be proved is of little value [Nietzsche] |
| 18317 | The 'real being' of things is a nothingness constructed from contradictions in the actual world [Nietzsche] |
| 18315 | We get the concept of 'being' from the concept of the 'ego' [Nietzsche] |
| 458 | Nothing could come out of nothing, and existence could never completely cease [Empedocles] |
| 5112 | Empedocles says things are at rest, unless love unites them, or hatred splits them [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 14562 | A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14541 | Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18316 | The grounds for an assertion that the world is only apparent actually establish its reality [Nietzsche] |
| 14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14555 | Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14557 | Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14583 | Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14536 | We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 13209 | There is no coming-to-be of anything, but only mixing and separating [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 18314 | In language we treat 'ego' as a substance, and it is thus that we create the concept 'thing' [Nietzsche] |
| 14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 457 | Substance is not created or destroyed in mortals, but there is only mixing and exchange [Empedocles] |
| 14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14552 | Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14578 | Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14549 | Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14585 | We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18309 | The evidence of the senses is falsified by reason [Nietzsche] |
| 462 | One vision is produced by both eyes [Empedocles] |
| 14576 | Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14551 | If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14571 | The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14570 | Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14569 | It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14568 | A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18323 | Any explanation will be accepted as true if it gives pleasure and a feeling of power [Nietzsche] |
| 18310 | The 'highest' concepts are the most general and empty concepts [Nietzsche] |
| 20368 | There are no 'individual' persons; we are each the sum of humanity up to this moment [Nietzsche] |
| 22765 | Wisdom and thought are shared by all things [Empedocles] |
| 14556 | Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 1524 | For Empedocles thinking is almost identical to perception [Empedocles, by Theophrastus] |
| 2899 | The fanatical rationality of Greek philosophy shows that they were in a state of emergency [Nietzsche] |
| 18313 | The big error is to think the will is a faculty producing effects; in fact, it is just a word [Nietzsche] |
| 20133 | The 'motive' is superficial, and may even hide the antecedents of a deed [Nietzsche] |
| 18326 | The beautiful never stands alone; it derives from man's pleasure in man [Nietzsche] |
| 20101 | Without music life would be a mistake [Nietzsche] |
| 2902 | Healthy morality is dominated by an instinct for life [Nietzsche] |
| 18311 | Philosophers hate values having an origin, and want values to be self-sufficient [Nietzsche] |
| 18324 | There are no moral facts, and moralists believe in realities which do not exist [Nietzsche] |
| 2904 | The doctrine of free will has been invented essentially in order to blame and punish people [Nietzsche] |
| 18321 | To evaluate life one must know it, but also be situated outside of it [Nietzsche] |
| 2893 | In every age the wisest people have judged life to be worthless [Nietzsche] |
| 2894 | Value judgements about life can never be true [Nietzsche] |
| 18322 | When we establish values, that is life itself establishing them, through us [Nietzsche] |
| 2895 | The value of life cannot be estimated [Nietzsche] |
| 18308 | A philosopher fails in wisdom if he thinks the value of life is a problem [Nietzsche] |
| 18319 | Love is the spiritualisation of sensuality [Nietzsche] |
| 552 | Empedocles said good and evil were the basic principles [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 2903 | A good human will be virtuous because they are happy [Nietzsche] |
| 2891 | Only the English actually strive after happiness [Nietzsche] |
| 18327 | A wholly altruistic morality, with no egoism, is a thoroughly bad thing [Nietzsche] |
| 15606 | Military idea: what does not kill me makes me stronger [Nietzsche] |
| 18328 | Invalids are parasites [Nietzsche] |
| 18331 | Democracy is organisational power in decline [Nietzsche] |
| 18332 | The creation of institutions needs a determination which is necessarily anti-liberal [Nietzsche] |
| 2911 | True justice is equality for equals and inequality for unequals [Nietzsche] |
| 18320 | To renounce war is to renounce the grand life [Nietzsche] |
| 2908 | There is a need for educators who are themselves educated [Nietzsche] |
| 18329 | Sometimes it is an error to have been born - but we can rectify it [Nietzsche] |
| 589 | 'Nature' is just a word invented by people [Empedocles] |
| 2905 | 'Purpose' is just a human fiction [Nietzsche] |
| 21823 | The principle of 'Friendship' in Empedocles is the One, and is bodiless [Empedocles, by Plotinus] |
| 2680 | Empedocles said that there are four material elements, and two further creative elements [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 6002 | Empedocles says bone is water, fire and earth in ratio 2:4:2 [Empedocles, by Inwood] |
| 13207 | Fire, Water, Air and Earth are elements, being simple as well as homoeomerous [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 13218 | The elements combine in coming-to-be, but how do the elements themselves come-to-be? [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| 459 | All change is unity through love or division through hate [Empedocles] |
| 13225 | Love and Strife only explain movement if their effects are distinctive [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| 460 | If the one Being ever diminishes it would no longer exist, and what could ever increase it? [Empedocles] |
| 14566 | Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14577 | Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14563 | Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14533 | Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14558 | A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14559 | Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14565 | Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14567 | Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14537 | Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14574 | Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14539 | Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14550 | We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14546 | Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14548 | There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14554 | Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14564 | If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 5090 | Maybe bodies are designed by accident, and the creatures that don't work are destroyed [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 466 | God is pure mind permeating the universe [Empedocles] |
| 461 | God is a pure, solitary, and eternal sphere [Empedocles] |
| 1719 | In Empedocles' theory God is ignorant because, unlike humans, he doesn't know one of the elements (strife) [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| 18312 | The supreme general but empty concepts must be compatible, and hence we get 'God' [Nietzsche] |
| 2906 | By denying God we deny human accountability, and thus we redeem the world [Nietzsche] |
| 1522 | It is wretched not to want to think clearly about the gods [Empedocles] |
| 2901 | How could the Church intelligently fight against passion if it preferred poorness of spirit to intelligence? [Nietzsche] |
| 18325 | Christians believe that only God can know what is good for man [Nietzsche] |
| 18318 | People who disparage actual life avenge themselves by imagining a better one [Nietzsche] |