17 ideas
| 13917 | Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe] |
| 13919 | Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe] |
| 7508 | Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker] |
| 13918 | Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe] |
| 13921 | All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe] |
| 13922 | Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe] |
| 13920 | Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe] |
| 7510 | Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker] |
| 7513 | Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker] |
| 7509 | Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker] |
| 7511 | Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker] |
| 7512 | There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG] |
| 7505 | Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker] |
| 7516 | In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker] |
| 7515 | All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker] |
| 7514 | Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker] |
| 6011 | There is a remote first god (the Good), and a second god who organises the material world [Numenius, by O'Meara] |