48 ideas
9247 | Life will be lived better if it has no meaning [Camus] |
6707 | Suicide - whether life is worth living - is the one serious philosophical problem [Camus] |
9245 | To an absurd mind reason is useless, and there is nothing beyond reason [Camus] |
3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
3312 | There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier) [Benardete,JA] |
3352 | Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA] |
3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
8368 | A correct definition is what can be substituted without loss of meaning [Ducasse] |
3326 | Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics [Benardete,JA] |
3327 | The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it [Benardete,JA] |
3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
9244 | Logic is easy, but what about logic to the point of death? [Camus] |
3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
3330 | Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations [Benardete,JA] |
3337 | Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory) [Benardete,JA] |
3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
3350 | Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA] |
3309 | If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow? [Benardete,JA] |
3351 | One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water [Benardete,JA] |
3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
3306 | The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction [Benardete,JA] |
3349 | If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects [Benardete,JA] |
3341 | Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori' [Benardete,JA] |
3344 | Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic [Benardete,JA] |
3345 | Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge [Benardete,JA] |
9249 | Whether we are free is uninteresting; we can only experience our freedom [Camus] |
9253 | The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it [Camus] |
9250 | Discussing ethics is pointless; moral people behave badly, and integrity doesn't need rules [Camus] |
9252 | The more one loves the stronger the absurd grows [Camus] |
9251 | One can be virtuous through a whim [Camus] |
9243 | If we believe existence is absurd, this should dictate our conduct [Camus] |
6708 | Happiness and the absurd go together, each leading to the other [Camus] |
9242 | Essential problems either risk death, or intensify the passion of life [Camus] |
9246 | Danger and integrity are not in the leap of faith, but in remaining poised just before the leap [Camus] |
9248 | It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will [Camus] |
8367 | Causation is defined in terms of a single sequence, and constant conjunction is no part of it [Ducasse] |
8372 | We see what is in common between causes to assign names to them, not to perceive them [Ducasse] |
8369 | Causes are either sufficient, or necessary, or necessitated, or contingent upon [Ducasse] |
8373 | When a brick and a canary-song hit a window, we ignore the canary if we are interested in the breakage [Ducasse] |
8370 | A cause is a change which occurs close to the effect and just before it [Ducasse] |
8371 | Recurrence is only relevant to the meaning of law, not to the meaning of cause [Ducasse] |
8374 | We are interested in generalising about causes and effects purely for practical purposes [Ducasse] |
3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |