32 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] |
22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
17651 | Without words or other symbols, we have no world [Goodman] |
22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
17652 | Truth is irrelevant if no statements are involved [Goodman] |
17656 | Being primitive or prior always depends on a constructional system [Goodman] |
17661 | We don't recognise patterns - we invent them [Goodman] |
17659 | Reality is largely a matter of habit [Goodman] |
17657 | We build our world, and ignore anything that won't fit [Goodman] |
22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
17654 | A world can be full of variety or not, depending on how we sort it [Goodman] |
17653 | Things can only be judged the 'same' by citing some respect of sameness [Goodman] |
17660 | Discovery is often just finding a fit, like a jigsaw puzzle [Goodman] |
22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
17658 | Users of digital thermometers recognise no temperatures in the gaps [Goodman] |
17650 | We lack frames of reference to transform physics, biology and psychology into one another [Goodman] |
22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
17655 | Grue and green won't be in the same world, as that would block induction entirely [Goodman] |
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] |
22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
19458 | Egoism is the only evil, love the only good; genuine love produces all the other virtues [Feuerbach] |
17649 | If the world is one it has many aspects, and if there are many worlds they will collect into one [Goodman] |
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] |