90 ideas
19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
15626 | Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel] |
15616 | If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel] |
15615 | Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel] |
21767 | Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel] |
15638 | Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel] |
15639 | Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel] |
19070 | Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel] |
5644 | In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton] |
19072 | In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel] |
19071 | The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel] |
18395 | Sets are mereological sums of the singletons of their members [Lewis, by Armstrong] |
15496 | We can build set theory on singletons: classes are then fusions of subclasses, membership is the singleton [Lewis] |
15500 | Classes divide into subclasses in many ways, but into members in only one way [Lewis] |
15499 | A subclass of a subclass is itself a subclass; a member of a member is not in general a member [Lewis] |
15503 | We needn't accept this speck of nothingness, this black hole in the fabric of Reality! [Lewis] |
15498 | We can accept the null set, but there is no null class of anything [Lewis] |
15502 | There are four main reasons for asserting that there is an empty set [Lewis] |
15506 | If we don't understand the singleton, then we don't understand classes [Lewis] |
15497 | We can replace the membership relation with the member-singleton relation (plus mereology) [Lewis] |
15511 | If singleton membership is external, why is an object a member of one rather than another? [Lewis] |
15513 | Maybe singletons have a structure, of a thing and a lasso? [Lewis] |
15507 | Set theory has some unofficial axioms, generalisations about how to understand it [Lewis] |
10191 | Set theory reduces to a mereological theory with singletons as the only atoms [Lewis, by MacBride] |
15508 | If singletons are where their members are, then so are all sets [Lewis] |
15514 | A huge part of Reality is only accepted as existing if you have accepted set theory [Lewis] |
15523 | Set theory isn't innocent; it generates infinities from a single thing; but mathematics needs it [Lewis] |
21595 | Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel] |
15525 | Plural quantification lacks a complete axiom system [Lewis] |
15518 | I like plural quantification, but am not convinced of its connection with second-order logic [Lewis] |
15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
12215 | The existence of numbers is not a matter of identities, but of constituents of the world [Fine,K] |
15524 | Zermelo's model of arithmetic is distinctive because it rests on a primitive of set theory [Lewis] |
15517 | Giving up classes means giving up successful mathematics because of dubious philosophy [Lewis] |
15515 | To be a structuralist, you quantify over relations [Lewis] |
12211 | It is plausible that x^2 = -1 had no solutions before complex numbers were 'introduced' [Fine,K] |
12209 | The indispensability argument shows that nature is non-numerical, not the denial of numbers [Fine,K] |
12214 | 'Exists' is a predicate, not a quantifier; 'electrons exist' is like 'electrons spin' [Fine,K] |
15520 | Existence doesn't come in degrees; once asserted, it can't then be qualified [Lewis] |
12212 | Just as we introduced complex numbers, so we introduced sums and temporal parts [Fine,K] |
12216 | Real objects are those which figure in the facts that constitute reality [Fine,K] |
12218 | Being real and being fundamental are separate; Thales's water might be real and divisible [Fine,K] |
15501 | We have no idea of a third sort of thing, that isn't an individual, a class, or their mixture [Lewis] |
15504 | Atomless gunk is an individual whose parts all have further proper parts [Lewis] |
12217 | For ontology we need, not internal or external views, but a view from outside reality [Fine,K] |
12213 | Ontological claims are often universal, and not a matter of existential quantification [Fine,K] |
22078 | Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel] |
15634 | Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel] |
15516 | A property is any class of possibilia [Lewis] |
21981 | The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel] |
14748 | The many are many and the one is one, so they can't be identical [Lewis] |
6129 | Lewis affirms 'composition as identity' - that an object is no more than its parts [Lewis, by Merricks] |
15512 | In mereology no two things consist of the same atoms [Lewis] |
15519 | Trout-turkeys exist, despite lacking cohesion, natural joints and united causal power [Lewis] |
15521 | Given cats, a fusion of cats adds nothing further to reality [Lewis] |
15522 | The one has different truths from the many; it is one rather than many, one rather than six [Lewis] |
14244 | Lewis only uses fusions to create unities, but fusions notoriously flatten our distinctions [Oliver/Smiley on Lewis] |
10660 | A commitment to cat-fusions is not a further commitment; it is them and they are it [Lewis] |
10566 | Lewis prefers giving up singletons to giving up sums [Lewis, by Fine,K] |
15637 | Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel] |
15613 | Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel] |
15636 | The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel] |
22300 | Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel] |
15609 | The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel] |
15509 | Some say qualities are parts of things - as repeatable universals, or as particulars [Lewis] |
15625 | Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel] |
15619 | Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel] |
15620 | Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel] |
15622 | Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel] |
15621 | Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel] |
15632 | The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel] |
15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
15617 | In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel] |
15608 | The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel] |
21986 | Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
15607 | We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel] |
15610 | Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel] |
15614 | Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel] |
15635 | The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel] |
21980 | God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel] |
15618 | If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel] |
15633 | We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel] |