97 ideas
| 2512 | Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language [Wittgenstein] |
| 4148 | What is your aim in philosophy? - To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle [Wittgenstein] |
| 22490 | Bring words back from metaphysics to everyday use [Wittgenstein] |
| 6566 | The problem is to explain the role of contradiction in social life [Wittgenstein] |
| 9847 | A contextual definition permits the elimination of the expression by a substitution [Dummett] |
| 9820 | In classical logic, logical truths are valid formulas; in higher-order logics they are purely logical [Dummett] |
| 18743 | Wittgenstein says we want the grammar of problems, not their first-order logical structure [Wittgenstein, by Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 4139 | Naming is a preparation for description [Wittgenstein] |
| 4946 | A name is not determined by a description, but by a cluster or family [Wittgenstein, by Kripke] |
| 1553 | No perceptible object is truly straight or curved [Protagoras] |
| 9896 | A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone [Dummett] |
| 18255 | Addition of quantities is prior to ordering, as shown in cyclic domains like angles [Dummett] |
| 9895 | A number is a multitude composed of units [Dummett] |
| 9852 | We understand 'there are as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them as by counting them [Dummett] |
| 9829 | The identity of a number may be fixed by something outside structure - by counting [Dummett] |
| 9828 | Numbers aren't fixed by position in a structure; it won't tell you whether to start with 0 or 1 [Dummett] |
| 9876 | Set theory isn't part of logic, and why reduce to something more complex? [Dummett] |
| 9884 | The distinction of concrete/abstract, or actual/non-actual, is a scale, not a dichotomy [Dummett] |
| 9869 | Realism is just the application of two-valued semantics to sentences [Dummett] |
| 9880 | Nominalism assumes unmediated mental contact with objects [Dummett] |
| 9885 | The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem [Dummett] |
| 9858 | Abstract objects nowadays are those which are objective but not actual [Dummett] |
| 9859 | It is absurd to deny the Equator, on the grounds that it lacks causal powers [Dummett] |
| 9860 | 'We've crossed the Equator' has truth-conditions, so accept the Equator - and it's an object [Dummett] |
| 9872 | Abstract objects need the context principle, since they can't be encountered directly [Dummett] |
| 15106 | Essence is expressed by grammar [Wittgenstein] |
| 9848 | Content is replaceable if identical, so replaceability can't define identity [Dummett, by Dummett] |
| 9842 | Frege introduced criteria for identity, but thought defining identity was circular [Dummett] |
| 6600 | The belief that fire burns is like the fear that it burns [Wittgenstein] |
| 1549 | Everything that exists consists in being perceived [Protagoras] |
| 4153 | Are sense-data the material of which the universe is made? [Wittgenstein] |
| 6501 | As sense-data are necessarily private, they are attacked by Wittgenstein's objections [Wittgenstein, by Robinson,H] |
| 11079 | How do I decide when to accept or obey an intuition? [Wittgenstein] |
| 1545 | Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything [Protagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 4160 | One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own beliefs [Wittgenstein] |
| 1547 | Man is the measure of all things - of things that are, and of things that are not [Protagoras] |
| 3305 | There is no more purely metaphysical doctrine than Protagorean relativism [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
| 3317 | You can only state the problem of the relative warmth of an object by agreeing on the underlying object [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
| 3313 | If my hot wind is your cold wind, then wind is neither hot nor cold, and so not as cold as itself [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
| 247 | God is "the measure of all things", more than any man [Plato on Protagoras] |
| 606 | Protagoras absurdly thought that the knowing or perceiving man is 'the measure of all things' [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
| 612 | Relativists think if you poke your eye and see double, there must be two things [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
| 19273 | I don't have the opinion that people have minds; I just treat them as such [Wittgenstein] |
| 5663 | It is irresponsible to generalise from my own case of pain to other people's [Wittgenstein] |
| 19272 | To imagine another's pain by my own, I must imagine a pain I don't feel, by one I do feel [Wittgenstein] |
| 4161 | If a lion could talk, we could not understand him [Wittgenstein] |
| 7392 | If a lion could talk, it would be nothing like other lions [Dennett on Wittgenstein] |
| 5676 | To say that I 'know' I am in pain means nothing more than that I AM in pain [Wittgenstein] |
| 4154 | Why are we not aware of the huge gap between mind and brain in ordinary life? [Wittgenstein] |
| 4158 | An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria [Wittgenstein] |
| 6165 | Every course of action can either accord or conflict with a rule, so there is no accord or conflict [Wittgenstein] |
| 4143 | One cannot obey a rule 'privately', because that is a practice, not the same as thinking one is obeying [Wittgenstein] |
| 7092 | If individuals can't tell if they are following a rule, how does a community do it? [Grayling on Wittgenstein] |
| 4138 | Is white simple, or does it consist of the colours of the rainbow? [Wittgenstein] |
| 7055 | Externalist accounts of mental content begin in Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, by Heil] |
| 12576 | Possessing a concept is knowing how to go on [Wittgenstein, by Peacocke] |
| 4157 | Concepts direct our interests and investigations, and express those interests [Wittgenstein] |
| 12606 | Man learns the concept of the past by remembering [Wittgenstein] |
| 4141 | Various games have a 'family resemblance', as their similarities overlap and criss-cross [Wittgenstein] |
| 9849 | Maybe a concept is 'prior' to another if it can be defined without the second concept [Dummett] |
| 9850 | An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation [Dummett] |
| 9873 | Abstract terms are acceptable as long as we know how they function linguistically [Dummett] |
| 9993 | There is no reason why abstraction by equivalence classes should be called 'logical' [Dummett, by Tait] |
| 9857 | We arrive at the concept 'suicide' by comparing 'Cato killed Cato' with 'Brutus killed Brutus' [Dummett] |
| 9833 | To abstract from spoons (to get the same number as the forks), the spoons must be indistinguishable too [Dummett] |
| 23450 | Wittgenstein rejected his earlier view that the form of language is the form of the world [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| 4150 | Asking about verification is only one way of asking about the meaning of a proposition [Wittgenstein] |
| 6567 | For Wittgenstein, words are defined by their use, just as chess pieces are [Wittgenstein, by Fogelin] |
| 6169 | We do not achieve meaning and understanding in our heads, but in the world [Wittgenstein, by Rowlands] |
| 4155 | We all seem able to see quite clearly how sentences represent things when we use them [Wittgenstein] |
| 4137 | In the majority of cases the meaning of a word is its use in the language [Wittgenstein] |
| 4142 | To understand a sentence means to understand a language [Wittgenstein] |
| 4149 | We don't have 'meanings' in our minds in addition to verbal expressions [Wittgenstein] |
| 4156 | Make the following experiment: say "It's cold here" and mean "It's warm here" [Wittgenstein] |
| 4145 | How do words refer to sensations? [Wittgenstein] |
| 4140 | The standard metre in Paris is neither one metre long nor not one metre long [Wittgenstein] |
| 9836 | Fregean semantics assumes a domain articulated into individual objects [Dummett] |
| 6166 | Was Wittgenstein's problem between individual and community, or between occasions for an individual? [Rowlands on Wittgenstein] |
| 7875 | If a brilliant child invented a name for a private sensation, it couldn't communicate it [Wittgenstein] |
| 4146 | We cannot doublecheck mental images for correctness (or confirm news with many copies of the paper) [Wittgenstein] |
| 4147 | If we only named pain by our own case, it would be like naming beetles by looking in a private box [Wittgenstein] |
| 5659 | If the reference is private, that is incompatible with the sense being public [Wittgenstein, by Scruton] |
| 4152 | Getting from perceptions to words cannot be a private matter; the rules need an institution of use [Wittgenstein] |
| 4136 | To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life [Wittgenstein] |
| 4144 | Common human behaviour enables us to interpret an unknown language [Wittgenstein] |
| 11049 | To communicate, language needs agreement in judgment as well as definition [Wittgenstein] |
| 6658 | What is left over if I subtract my arm going up from my raising my arm? [Wittgenstein] |
| 6016 | Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD] |
| 1580 | For Protagoras the only bad behaviour is that which interferes with social harmony [Protagoras, by Roochnik] |
| 205 | Protagoras contradicts himself by saying virtue is teachable, but then that it is not knowledge [Plato on Protagoras] |
| 1659 | Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos] |
| 532 | Successful education must go deep into the soul [Protagoras] |
| 1552 | He spent public money on education, as it benefits the individual and the state [Protagoras, by Diodorus of Sicily] |
| 18257 | Why should the limit of measurement be points, not intervals? [Dummett] |
| 1551 | He said he didn't know whether there are gods - but this is the same as atheism [Diogenes of Oen. on Protagoras] |
| 4151 | Grammar tells what kind of object anything is - and theology is a kind of grammar [Wittgenstein] |
| 4159 | The human body is the best picture of the human soul [Wittgenstein] |