42 ideas
| 3600 | Slow and accurate thought makes the greatest progress [Descartes] |
| 3601 | Most things in human life seem vain and useless [Descartes] |
| 3602 | Almost every daft idea has been expressed by some philosopher [Descartes] |
| 12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
| 12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
| 12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
| 12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| 3603 | Methodical thinking is cautious, analytical, systematic, and panoramic [Descartes, by PG] |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| 3612 | Clear and distinct conceptions are true because a perfect God exists [Descartes] |
| 3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| 14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
| 14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
| 14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
| 14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| 3605 | We can believe a thing without knowing we believe it [Descartes] |
| 1583 | In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes] |
| 3607 | In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes] |
| 3617 | I aim to find the principles and causes of everything, using the seeds within my mind [Descartes] |
| 3611 | Understanding, rather than imagination or senses, gives knowledge [Descartes] |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| 3606 | I was searching for reliable rock under the shifting sand [Descartes] |
| 3604 | When rebuilding a house, one needs alternative lodgings [Descartes] |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| 3618 | Only experiments can settle disagreements between rival explanations [Descartes] |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| 3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| 3609 | I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support [Descartes] |
| 3608 | I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes] |
| 3613 | Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes] |
| 3616 | The soul must unite with the body to have appetites and sensations [Descartes] |
| 3614 | A machine could speak in response to physical stimulus, but not hold a conversation [Descartes] |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| 1581 | Greeks elevate virtues enormously, but never explain them [Descartes] |
| 12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
| 16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |