76 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| 21887 | Derrida focuses on other philosophers, rather than on science [Derrida] |
| 21888 | Philosophy is just a linguistic display [Derrida] |
| 21896 | Philosophy aims to build foundations for thought [Derrida, by May] |
| 21893 | Philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and its writing is aesthetic [Derrida] |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| 21892 | Interpretations can be interpreted, so there is no original 'meaning' available [Derrida] |
| 20925 | Hermeneutics blunts truth, by conforming it to the interpreter [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| 20934 | Hermeneutics is hostile, trying to overcome the other person's difference [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| 21895 | Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning [Derrida] |
| 21934 | The idea of being as persistent presence, and meaning as conscious intelligibility, are self-destructive [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 21883 | Sincerity can't be verified, so fiction infuses speech, and hence reality also [Derrida] |
| 21882 | Sentences are contradictory, as they have opposite meanings in some contexts [Derrida] |
| 21881 | We aim to explore the limits of expression (as in Mallarmé's poetry) [Derrida] |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| 2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| 2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
| 4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
| 21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
| 2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
| 21878 | Names have a subjective aspect, especially the role of our own name [Derrida] |
| 21889 | 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description [Derrida] |
| 21879 | Even Kripke can't explain names; the word is the thing, and the thing is the word [Derrida] |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| 2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
| 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
| 2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
| 2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
| 2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
| 2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
| 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
| 2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
| 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
| 2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| 21890 | Heidegger showed that passing time is the key to consciousness [Derrida] |
| 2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
| 2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
| 2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
| 2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
| 2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
| 21880 | 'Tacit theory' controls our thinking (which is why Freud is important) [Derrida] |
| 2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| 2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| 2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
| 2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| 2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
| 2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
| 2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
| 21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
| 21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
| 21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
| 21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
| 21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
| 21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
| 2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| 2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
| 2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
| 21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
| 2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
| 2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
| 2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| 21891 | The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida] |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |