28 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] |
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] |
22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
13795 | Properties only have identity in the context of their contraries [Elder] |
13798 | Maybe we should give up the statue [Elder] |
13797 | The loss of an essential property means the end of an existence [Elder] |
13794 | Essential properties by nature occur in clusters or packages [Elder] |
13796 | Essential properties are bound together, and would be lost together [Elder] |
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] |
22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
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] |
22445 | Morality shows murder is wrong, but not what counts as a murder [Foot] |
22444 | A moral system must deal with the dangers and benefits of life [Foot] |
22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
22447 | Saying something 'just is' right or wrong creates an illusion of fact and objectivity [Foot] |
22448 | We sometimes just use the word 'should' to impose a rule of conduct on someone [Foot] |
22446 | In the case of something lacking independence, calling it a human being is a matter of choice [Foot] |
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] |