120 ideas
1695 | Without extensive examination firm statements are hard, but studying the difficulties is profitable [Aristotle] |
2056 | Philosophers are always switching direction to something more interesting [Plato] |
2086 | Understanding mainly involves knowing the elements, not their combinations [Plato] |
2083 | Either a syllable is its letters (making parts as knowable as whole) or it isn't (meaning it has no parts) [Plato] |
2082 | A rational account is essentially a weaving together of things with names [Plato] |
1698 | Both sides of contraries need not exist (as health without sickness, white without black) [Aristotle] |
1697 | The contrary of good is bad, but the contrary of bad is either good or another evil [Aristotle] |
2052 | Eristic discussion is aggressive, but dialectic aims to help one's companions in discussion [Plato] |
15854 | A primary element has only a name, and no logos, but complexes have an account, by weaving the names [Plato] |
11034 | The differentiae of genera which are different are themselves different in kind [Aristotle] |
18367 | A true existence statement has its truth caused by the existence of the thing [Aristotle] |
11033 | Predications of predicates are predications of their subjects [Aristotle] |
11044 | One is prior to two, because its existence is implied by two [Aristotle] |
11042 | Parts of a line join at a point, so it is continuous [Aristotle] |
11041 | Some quantities are discrete, like number, and others continuous, like lines, time and space [Aristotle] |
10216 | We master arithmetic by knowing all the numbers in our soul [Plato] |
11286 | Primary being must be more than mere indeterminate ultimate subject of predication [Politis on Aristotle] |
2060 | There seem to be two sorts of change: alteration and motion [Plato] |
1700 | There are six kinds of change: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, change of place [Aristotle] |
14562 | A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14541 | Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum] |
1699 | A thing is prior to another if it implies its existence [Aristotle] |
18366 | Of interdependent things, the prior one causes the other's existence [Aristotle] |
3311 | The categories (substance, quality, quantity, relation, action, passion, place, time) peter out inconsequentially [Benardete,JA on Aristotle] |
11035 | There are ten basic categories for thinking about things [Aristotle] |
13121 | Substance,Quantity,Quality,Relation,Place,Time,Being-in-a-position,Having,Doing,Being affected [Aristotle, by Westerhoff] |
16116 | Aristotle derived categories as answers to basic questions about nature, size, quality, location etc. [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
21345 | Aristotle said relations are not substances, so (if they exist) they must be accidents [Aristotle, by Heil] |
16155 | Aristotle promoted the importance of properties and objects (rather than general and particular) [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
11032 | Some things said 'of' a subject are not 'in' the subject [Aristotle] |
11038 | We call them secondary 'substances' because they reveal the primary substances [Aristotle] |
14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |
16739 | Four species of quality: states, capacities, affects, and forms [Aristotle, by Pasnau] |
14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
14555 | Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum] |
14557 | Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14583 | Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum] |
14536 | We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum] |
14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
11037 | Colour must be in an individual body, or it is not embodied [Aristotle] |
16154 | Aristotle gave up his earlier notion of individuals, because it relied on universals [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
12351 | Genus and species are substances, because only they reveal the primary substance [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
1694 | Substances have no opposites, and don't come in degrees (including if the substance is a man) [Aristotle] |
16091 | Is primary substance just an ultimate subject, or some aspect of a complex body? [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
11280 | Primary being is 'that which lies under', or 'particular substance' [Aristotle, by Politis] |
11040 | A single substance can receive contrary properties [Aristotle] |
16140 | Secondary substances do have subjects, so they are not ultimate in the ontology [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
10965 | In earlier Aristotle the substances were particulars, not kinds [Aristotle, by Lawson-Tancred] |
11036 | A 'primary' substance is in each subject, with species or genera as 'secondary' substances [Aristotle] |
8287 | Earlier Aristotle had objects as primary substances, but later he switched to substantial form [Aristotle, by Lowe] |
12350 | Things are called 'substances' because they are subjects for everything else [Aristotle] |
14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
2084 | If a word has no parts and has a single identity, it turns out to be the same kind of thing as a letter [Plato] |
15844 | A sum is that from which nothing is lacking, which is a whole [Plato] |
15843 | The whole can't be the parts, because it would be all of the parts, which is the whole [Plato] |
11039 | A primary substance reveals a 'this', which is an individual unit [Aristotle] |
12361 | Primary substances are ontological in 'Categories', and explanatory in 'Metaphysics' [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
3315 | Aristotle denigrates the category of relation, but for modern absolutists self-relation is basic [Benardete,JA on Aristotle] |
14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |
14552 | Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum] |
14578 | Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum] |
14549 | Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum] |
2080 | Things are only knowable if a rational account (logos) is possible [Plato] |
16126 | Expertise is knowledge of the whole by means of the parts [Plato] |
2050 | It is impossible to believe something which is held to be false [Plato] |
2076 | How can a belief exist if its object doesn't exist? [Plato] |
2045 | Perception is infallible, suggesting that it is knowledge [Plato] |
2067 | Our senses could have been separate, but they converge on one mind [Plato] |
14585 | We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum] |
2068 | With what physical faculty do we perceive pairs of opposed abstract qualities? [Plato] |
2078 | You might mistake eleven for twelve in your senses, but not in your mind [Plato] |
2069 | Thought must grasp being itself before truth becomes possible [Plato] |
2089 | An inadequate rational account would still not justify knowledge [Plato] |
2085 | Parts and wholes are either equally knowable or equally unknowable [Plato] |
2091 | Without distinguishing marks, how do I know what my beliefs are about? [Plato] |
2087 | A rational account might be seeing an image of one's belief, like a reflection in a mirror [Plato] |
2090 | A rational account involves giving an image, or analysis, or giving a differentiating mark [Plato] |
2081 | Maybe primary elements can be named, but not receive a rational account [Plato] |
2088 | A rational account of a wagon would mean knowledge of its hundred parts [Plato] |
2047 | What evidence can be brought to show whether we are dreaming or not? [Plato] |
2053 | If you claim that all beliefs are true, that includes beliefs opposed to your own [Plato] |
2059 | How can a relativist form opinions about what will happen in the future? [Plato] |
2054 | Clearly some people are superior to others when it comes to medicine [Plato] |
14576 | Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum] |
14551 | If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum] |
14571 | The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum] |
14570 | Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
14569 | It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum] |
14568 | A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum] |
14556 | Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum] |
12349 | Only what can be said of many things is a predicable [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
11837 | Some predicates signify qualification of a substance, others the substance itself [Aristotle] |
14566 | Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum] |
14577 | Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14563 | Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |
14533 | Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum] |
14558 | A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum] |
14559 | Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14565 | Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum] |
14567 | Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum] |
14537 | Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum] |
14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum] |
14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14574 | Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum] |
14539 | Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
14550 | We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
14546 | Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum] |
14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
11043 | It is not possible for fire to be cold or snow black [Aristotle] |
14548 | There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum] |
14554 | Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14564 | If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum] |
1696 | Change goes from possession to loss (as in baldness), but not the other way round [Aristotle] |
2058 | God must be the epitome of goodness, and we can only approach a divine state by being as good as possible [Plato] |
2057 | There must always be some force of evil ranged against good [Plato] |