62 ideas
3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
23183 | Different abilities are needed for living in an incomplete and undogmatic system [Nietzsche] |
23188 | Bad writers use shapeless floating splotches of concepts [Nietzsche] |
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] |
23212 | A text has many interpretations, but no 'correct' one [Nietzsche] |
21560 | Any linguistic expression may lack meaning when taken out of context [Russell] |
21561 | 'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are meaningless [Russell] |
23199 | What is the search for truth if it isn't moral? [Nietzsche] |
23202 | Like all philosophers, I love truth [Nietzsche] |
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] |
18130 | Axiom of Reducibility: there is always a function of the lowest possible order in a given level [Russell, by Bostock] |
23196 | Logic is a fiction, which invents the view that one thought causes another [Nietzsche] |
3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
23186 | Numbers enable us to manage the world - to the limits of counting [Nietzsche] |
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] |
23211 | Events are just interpretations of groups of appearances [Nietzsche] |
12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
21562 | There is no complexity without relations, so no propositions, and no truth [Russell] |
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] |
23201 | The 'I' does not think; it is a construction of thinking, like other useful abstractions [Nietzsche] |
23207 | Appearance is the sole reality of things, to which all predicates refer [Nietzsche] |
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] |
23197 | Memory is essential, and is only possible by means of abbreviation signs [Nietzsche] |
23206 | Schematic minds think thoughts are truer if they slot into a scheme [Nietzsche] |
23209 | Each of our personal drives has its own perspective [Nietzsche] |
23184 | The mind is a simplifying apparatus [Nietzsche] |
23190 | Consciousness is our awareness of our own mental life [Nietzsche] |
23191 | Minds have an excluding drive to scare things off, and a selecting one to filter facts [Nietzsche] |
23213 | The greatest drive of life is to discharge strength, rather than preservation [Nietzsche] |
23210 | That all events are necessary does not mean they are compelled [Nietzsche] |
23189 | Concepts are rough groups of simultaneous sensations [Nietzsche] |
23192 | Concepts don’t match one thing, but many things a little bit [Nietzsche] |
23187 | Whatever their origin, concepts survive by being useful [Nietzsche] |
23205 | Thought starts as ambiguity, in need of interpretation and narrowing [Nietzsche] |
23198 | Aesthetics can be more basic than morality, in our pleasure in certain patterns of experience [Nietzsche] |
23208 | Caesar and Napoleon point to the future, when they pursue their task regardless of human sacrifice [Nietzsche] |
23193 | Napoleon was very focused, and rightly ignored compassion [Nietzsche] |
23214 | For the strongest people, nihilism gives you wings! [Nietzsche] |
23203 | The great question is approaching, of how to govern the earth as a whole [Nietzsche] |
23200 | The controlling morality of aristocracy is the desire to resemble their ancestors [Nietzsche] |
23194 | People feel united as a nation by one language, but then want a common ancestry and history [Nietzsche] |
23204 | To be someone you need property, and wanting more is healthy [Nietzsche] |
23195 | Laws of nature are actually formulas of power relations [Nietzsche] |
3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
23185 | In chemistry every substance pushes, and thus creates new substances [Nietzsche] |
3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |