76 ideas
| 13310 | Wisdom does not lie in books, and unread people can also become wise [Seneca] |
| 13295 | Wise people escape necessity by willing it [Seneca] |
| 5196 | Philosophy is a department of logic [Ayer] |
| 13317 | Philosophy aims at happiness [Seneca] |
| 13293 | What philosophy offers humanity is guidance [Seneca] |
| 5189 | Philosophers should abandon speculation, as philosophy is wholly critical [Ayer] |
| 7919 | Humeans rejected the a priori synthetic, and so rejected even Kantian metaphysics [Ayer, by Macdonald,C] |
| 13309 | That something is a necessary condition of something else doesn't mean it caused it [Seneca] |
| 13313 | Even philosophers have got bogged down in analysing tiny bits of language [Seneca] |
| 5195 | Critics say analysis can only show the parts, and not their distinctive configuration [Ayer] |
| 5179 | Philosophy deals with the questions that scientists do not wish to handle [Ayer] |
| 4749 | We cannot analyse the concept of 'truth', because it is simply a mark that a sentence is asserted [Ayer] |
| 5202 | Maths and logic are true universally because they are analytic or tautological [Ayer] |
| 6523 | Positivists regard ontology as either meaningless or stipulated [Ayer, by Robinson,H] |
| 8495 | The distinction between particulars and universals is a mistake made because of language [Ramsey] |
| 8493 | We could make universals collections of particulars, or particulars collections of their qualities [Ramsey] |
| 8494 | Obviously 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates has wisdom' express the same fact [Ramsey] |
| 5183 | Only tautologies can be certain; other propositions can only be probable [Ayer] |
| 6525 | Logical positivists could never give the sense-data equivalent of 'there is a table next door' [Robinson,H on Ayer] |
| 5170 | Material things are constructions from actual and possible occurrences of sense-contents [Ayer] |
| 5198 | We could verify 'a thing can't be in two places at once' by destroying one of the things [Ierubino on Ayer] |
| 2619 | Whether geometry can be applied to reality is an empirical question outside of geometry [Ayer] |
| 5197 | By changing definitions we could make 'a thing can't be in two places at once' a contradiction [Ayer] |
| 5204 | To say that a proposition is true a priori is to say that it is a tautology [Ayer] |
| 6524 | Positivists prefer sense-data to objects, because the vocabulary covers both illusions and perceptions [Ayer, by Robinson,H] |
| 5193 | Causal and representative theories of perception are wrong as they refer to unobservables [Ayer] |
| 5200 | The main claim of rationalism is that thought is an independent source of knowledge [Ayer] |
| 4729 | Empiricism lacked a decent account of the a priori, until Ayer said it was entirely analytic [O'Grady on Ayer] |
| 5180 | All propositions (especially 'metaphysics') must begin with the senses [Ayer] |
| 5169 | My empiricism logically distinguishes analytic and synthetic propositions, and metaphysical verbiage [Ayer] |
| 5185 | It is further sense-experience which informs us of the mistakes that arise out of sense-experience [Ayer] |
| 5199 | Empiricism, it is said, cannot account for our knowledge of necessary truths [Ayer] |
| 5190 | The induction problem is to prove generalisations about the future based on the past [Ayer] |
| 5191 | We can't use the uniformity of nature to prove induction, as that would be circular [Ayer] |
| 13297 | To the four causes Plato adds a fifth, the idea which guided the event [Seneca] |
| 5177 | Other minds are 'metaphysical' objects, because I can never observe their experiences [Ayer] |
| 5178 | A conscious object is by definition one that behaves in a certain way, so behaviour proves consciousness [Ayer] |
| 5172 | If the self is meaningful, it must be constructed from sense-experiences [Ayer] |
| 5173 | Two experiences belong to one self if their contents belong with one body [Ayer] |
| 5176 | Empiricists can define personal identity as bodily identity, which consists of sense-contents [Ayer] |
| 13307 | If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul [Seneca] |
| 5171 | The supposed 'gulf' between mind and matter is based on the senseless concept of 'substances' [Ayer] |
| 5181 | A sentence is factually significant to someone if they know how to verify its proposition [Ayer] |
| 5184 | Factual propositions imply (in conjunction with a few other premises) possible experiences [Ayer] |
| 5186 | Tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions [Ayer] |
| 21399 | Referring to a person, and speaking about him, are very different [Seneca] |
| 5205 | Moral intuition is worthless if there is no criterion to decide between intuitions [Ayer] |
| 23725 | Ayer defends the emotivist version of expressivism [Ayer, by Smith,M] |
| 5206 | To say an act is wrong makes no further statement about it, but merely expresses disapproval [Ayer] |
| 13325 | Trouble in life comes from copying other people, which is following convention instead of reason [Seneca] |
| 22239 | Humans acquired the concept of virtue from an analogy with bodily health and strength [Seneca, by Allen] |
| 13294 | We know death, which is like before birth; ceasing to be and never beginning are the same [Seneca] |
| 13299 | Living is nothing wonderful; what matters is to die well [Seneca] |
| 13300 | It is as silly to lament ceasing to be as to lament not having lived in the remote past [Seneca] |
| 13321 | Is anything sweeter than valuing yourself more when you find you are loved? [Seneca] |
| 13292 | Selfishness does not produce happiness; to live for yourself, live for others [Seneca] |
| 13303 | A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is [Seneca] |
| 13302 | Life is like a play - it is the quality that matters, not the length [Seneca] |
| 13301 | We are scared of death - except when we are immersed in pleasure! [Seneca] |
| 13323 | The whole point of pleasure-seeking is novelty, and abandoning established ways [Seneca] |
| 13318 | Nature doesn't give us virtue; we must unremittingly pursue it, as a training and an art [Seneca] |
| 13324 | Living contrary to nature is like rowing against the stream [Seneca] |
| 13305 | Character is ruined by not looking back over our pasts, since the future rests on the past [Seneca] |
| 13308 | It's no good winning lots of fights, if you are then conquered by your own temper [Seneca] |
| 13312 | Excessive curiosity is a form of intemperance [Seneca] |
| 13315 | To govern used to mean to serve, not to rule; rulers did not test their powers over those who bestowed it [Seneca] |
| 13290 | One joy of learning is making teaching possible [Seneca] |
| 13322 | Both teachers and pupils should aim at one thing - the improvement of the pupil [Seneca] |
| 13298 | Suicide may be appropriate even when it is not urgent, if there are few reasons against it [Seneca] |
| 13319 | If we control our own death, no one has power over us [Seneca] |
| 13320 | Sometimes we have a duty not to commit suicide, for those we love [Seneca] |
| 13311 | Does time exist on its own? Did anything precede it? Did it pre-exist the cosmos? [Seneca] |
| 5208 | A person with non-empirical attributes is unintelligible. [Ayer] |
| 5187 | When we ascribe an attribute to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists [Ayer] |
| 5207 | If theism is non-sensical, then so is atheism. [Ayer] |
| 5209 | The 'truths' expressed by theists are not literally significant [Ayer] |