105 ideas
| 23890 | For Plato true wisdom is supernatural [Plato, by Weil] |
| 3060 | Plato never mentions Democritus, and wished to burn his books [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
| 15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
| 15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
| 15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
| 21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
| 21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
| 22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
| 15626 | Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel] |
| 15616 | If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel] |
| 15615 | Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel] |
| 23891 | Two contradictories force us to find a relation which will correlate them [Plato, by Weil] |
| 21767 | Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel] |
| 15638 | Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel] |
| 15639 | Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel] |
| 19070 | Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel] |
| 5644 | In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 19072 | In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel] |
| 19071 | The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel] |
| 21595 | Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel] |
| 1618 | We study bound variables not to know reality, but to know what reality language asserts [Quine] |
| 8455 | Canonical notation needs quantification, variables and predicates, but not names [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| 8456 | Quine extended Russell's defining away of definite descriptions, to also define away names [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| 1611 | Names can be converted to descriptions, and Russell showed how to eliminate those [Quine] |
| 15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
| 15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
| 15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
| 1613 | Logicists cheerfully accept reference to bound variables and all sorts of abstract entities [Quine] |
| 1616 | Formalism says maths is built of meaningless notations; these build into rules which have meaning [Quine] |
| 1615 | Intuitionism says classes are invented, and abstract entities are constructed from specified ingredients [Quine] |
| 1614 | Conceptualism holds that there are universals but they are mind-made [Quine] |
| 10241 | For Quine, there is only one way to exist [Quine, by Shapiro] |
| 4064 | The idea of a thing and the idea of existence are two sides of the same coin [Quine, by Crane] |
| 19277 | Quine rests existence on bound variables, because he thinks singular terms can be analysed away [Quine, by Hale] |
| 12210 | Quine's ontology is wrong; his question is scientific, and his answer is partly philosophical [Fine,K on Quine] |
| 8496 | What actually exists does not, of course, depend on language [Quine] |
| 1610 | To be is to be the value of a variable, which amounts to being in the range of reference of a pronoun [Quine] |
| 8459 | Fictional quantification has no ontology, so we study ontology through scientific theories [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| 8497 | An ontology is like a scientific theory; we accept the simplest scheme that fits disorderly experiences [Quine] |
| 16261 | If commitment rests on first-order logic, we obviously lose the ontology concerning predication [Maudlin on Quine] |
| 7698 | If to be is to be the value of a variable, we must already know the values available [Jacquette on Quine] |
| 22078 | Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel] |
| 15634 | Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel] |
| 14502 | Plato's idea of 'structure' tends to be mathematically expressed [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| 1612 | Realism, conceptualism and nominalism in medieval universals reappear in maths as logicism, intuitionism and formalism [Quine] |
| 3039 | When Diogenes said he could only see objects but not their forms, Plato said it was because he had eyes but no intellect [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 17948 | Plato's Forms meant that the sophists only taught the appearance of wisdom and virtue [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| 20906 | Platonists argue for the indivisible triangle-in-itself [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| 556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
| 563 | If gods are like men, they are just eternal men; similarly, Forms must differ from particulars [Aristotle on Plato] |
| 565 | The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato] |
| 557 | A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato] |
| 15402 | There is no entity called 'redness', and that some things are red is ultimate and irreducible [Quine] |
| 4443 | Quine has argued that predicates do not have any ontological commitment [Quine, by Armstrong] |
| 8498 | Treating scattered sensations as single objects simplifies our understanding of experience [Quine] |
| 9607 | The greatest discovery in human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects [Brown,JR on Plato] |
| 13263 | We can grasp whole things in science, because they have a mathematics and a teleology [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| 13261 | Plato sees an object's structure as expressible in mathematics [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| 13265 | Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the source of unity in a complex object [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| 21981 | The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel] |
| 593 | Plato's holds that there are three substances: Forms, mathematical entities, and perceptible bodies [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| 13260 | Plato says wholes are either containers, or they're atomic, or they don't exist [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| 11237 | Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis] |
| 11238 | Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis] |
| 15637 | Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel] |
| 15613 | Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel] |
| 8856 | Quine's indispensability argument said arguments for abstracta were a posteriori [Quine, by Yablo] |
| 12443 | Can an unactualized possible have self-identity, and be distinct from other possibles? [Quine] |
| 15636 | The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel] |
| 18209 | We can never translate our whole language of objects into phenomenalism [Quine] |
| 22300 | Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel] |
| 15609 | The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel] |
| 15625 | Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel] |
| 15619 | Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel] |
| 15620 | Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel] |
| 15622 | Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel] |
| 15621 | Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel] |
| 15632 | The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel] |
| 15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
| 17085 | A good explanation totally rules out the opposite explanation (so Forms are required) [Plato, by Ruben] |
| 15617 | In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel] |
| 15608 | The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel] |
| 1651 | Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato] |
| 21986 | Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
| 15607 | We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel] |
| 15610 | Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel] |
| 1619 | There is an attempt to give a verificationist account of meaning, without the error of reducing everything to sensations [Dennett on Quine] |
| 1609 | I do not believe there is some abstract entity called a 'meaning' which we can 'have' [Quine] |
| 1617 | The word 'meaning' is only useful when talking about significance or about synonymy [Quine] |
| 19159 | Quine relates predicates to their objects, by being 'true of' them [Quine, by Davidson] |
| 3324 | Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato] |
| 7503 | Plato never refers to examining the conscience [Plato, by Foucault] |
| 2173 | As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato] |
| 9274 | Plato's legacy to European thought was the Good, the Beautiful and the True [Plato, by Gray] |
| 94 | Pleasure is better with the addition of intelligence, so pleasure is not the good [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| 17947 | Plato decided that the virtuous and happy life was the philosophical life [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| 6015 | Plato, unusually, said that theoretical and practical wisdom are inseparable [Plato, by Kraut] |
| 2912 | Plato is boring [Nietzsche on Plato] |
| 15614 | Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel] |
| 1526 | Almost everyone except Plato thinks that time could not have been generated [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| 15635 | The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel] |
| 21980 | God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel] |
| 15618 | If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel] |
| 15633 | We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel] |