54 ideas
5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
15477 | Ontology is highly abstract physics, containing placeholders and exclusions [Martin,CB] |
5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
15471 | Truth is a relation between a representation ('bearer') and part of the world ('truthmaker') [Martin,CB] |
15484 | A property is a combination of a disposition and a quality [Martin,CB] |
15478 | Properties are the respects in which objects resemble, which places them in classes [Martin,CB] |
15483 | Properties are ways particular things are, and so they are tied to the identity of their possessor [Martin,CB] |
15480 | Objects are not bundles of tropes (which are ways things are, not parts of things) [Martin,CB] |
15489 | A property that cannot interact is worse than inert - it isn't there at all [Martin,CB] |
15487 | If unmanifested partnerless dispositions are still real, and are not just qualities, they can explain properties [Martin,CB] |
15479 | Properties endow a ball with qualities, and with powers or dispositions [Martin,CB] |
15488 | Qualities and dispositions are aspects of properties - what it exhibits, and what it does [Martin,CB] |
15469 | Dispositions in action can be destroyed, be recovered, or remain unchanged [Martin,CB] |
15467 | Powers depend on circumstances, so can't be given a conditional analysis [Martin,CB] |
15466 | 'The wire is live' can't be analysed as a conditional, because a wire can change its powers [Martin,CB] |
15476 | Structural properties involve dispositionality, so cannot be used to explain it [Martin,CB] |
15465 | Structures don't explain dispositions, because they consist of dispositions [Martin,CB] |
15481 | I favour the idea of a substratum for properties; spacetime seems to be just a bearer of properties [Martin,CB] |
15474 | Properly understood, wholes do no more causal work than their parts [Martin,CB] |
15486 | Only abstract things can have specific and full identity specifications [Martin,CB] |
15475 | The concept of 'identity' must allow for some changes in properties or parts [Martin,CB] |
15472 | It is pointless to say possible worlds are truthmakers, and then deny that possible worlds exist [Martin,CB] |
5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
15492 | Explanations are mind-dependent, theory-laden, and interest-relative [Martin,CB] |
5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
15495 | Analogy works, as when we eat food which others seem to be relishing [Martin,CB] |
5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
15493 | Memory requires abstraction, as reminders of what cannot be fully remembered [Martin,CB] |
5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
7876 | Even if we identify pain with neural events, we can't explain why those neurons cause that feeling [Levine, by Papineau] |
7877 | Only phenomenal states have an explanatory gap; water is fully explained by H2O [Levine, by Papineau] |
7878 | Materialism won't explain phenomenal properties, because the latter aren't seen in causal roles [Papineau on Levine] |
5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
15485 | Instead of a cause followed by an effect, we have dispositions in reciprocal manifestation [Martin,CB] |
15491 | Causation should be explained in terms of dispositions and manifestations [Martin,CB] |
15468 | Causal counterfactuals are just clumsy linguistic attempts to indicate dispositions [Martin,CB] |
15470 | Causal laws are summaries of powers [Martin,CB] |
15482 | We can't think of space-time as empty and propertyless, and it seems to be a substratum [Martin,CB] |
5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |