92 ideas
| 2512 | Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language [Wittgenstein] |
| 4148 | What is your aim in philosophy? - To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle [Wittgenstein] |
| 22490 | Bring words back from metaphysics to everyday use [Wittgenstein] |
| 4588 | There is no such thing as 'science'; there are just many different sciences [Heil] |
| 6566 | The problem is to explain the role of contradiction in social life [Wittgenstein] |
| 18743 | Wittgenstein says we want the grammar of problems, not their first-order logical structure [Wittgenstein, by Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 4139 | Naming is a preparation for description [Wittgenstein] |
| 4946 | A name is not determined by a description, but by a cluster or family [Wittgenstein, by Kripke] |
| 4616 | A higher level is 'supervenient' if it is determined by lower levels, but has its own natural laws [Heil] |
| 4603 | Functionalists in Fodor's camp usually say that a genuine property is one that figures in some causal laws [Heil] |
| 4617 | A stone does not possess the property of being a stone; its other properties make it a stone [Heil] |
| 4615 | Complex properties are not new properties, they are merely new combinations of properties [Heil] |
| 4612 | Complex properties are just arrangements of simple properties; they do not "emerge" as separate [Heil] |
| 4587 | From the property predicates P and Q, we can get 'P or Q', but it doesn't have to designate another property [Heil] |
| 4611 | The supporters of 'tropes' treat objects as bundles of tropes, when I think objects 'possess' properties [Heil] |
| 15106 | Essence is expressed by grammar [Wittgenstein] |
| 4592 | If you can have the boat without its current planks, and the planks with no boat, the planks aren't the boat [Heil] |
| 4586 | You can't embrace the formal apparatus of possible worlds, but reject the ontology [Heil] |
| 6600 | The belief that fire burns is like the fear that it burns [Wittgenstein] |
| 4153 | Are sense-data the material of which the universe is made? [Wittgenstein] |
| 4591 | Idealism explains appearances by identifying appearances with reality [Heil] |
| 6501 | As sense-data are necessarily private, they are attacked by Wittgenstein's objections [Wittgenstein, by Robinson,H] |
| 11079 | How do I decide when to accept or obey an intuition? [Wittgenstein] |
| 4160 | One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own beliefs [Wittgenstein] |
| 4610 | Different generations focus on either the quality of mind, or its scientific standing, or the content of thought [Heil] |
| 4618 | If minds are realised materially, it looks as if the material laws will pre-empt any causal role for mind [Heil] |
| 19273 | I don't have the opinion that people have minds; I just treat them as such [Wittgenstein] |
| 5663 | It is irresponsible to generalise from my own case of pain to other people's [Wittgenstein] |
| 19272 | To imagine another's pain by my own, I must imagine a pain I don't feel, by one I do feel [Wittgenstein] |
| 4621 | Whatever exists has qualities, so it is no surprise that states of minds have qualities [Heil] |
| 4161 | If a lion could talk, we could not understand him [Wittgenstein] |
| 7392 | If a lion could talk, it would be nothing like other lions [Dennett on Wittgenstein] |
| 4623 | Propositional attitudes are not the only intentional states; there is also mental imagery [Heil] |
| 4626 | The widespread externalist view says intentionality has content because of causal links of agent to world [Heil] |
| 5676 | To say that I 'know' I am in pain means nothing more than that I AM in pain [Wittgenstein] |
| 4622 | Error must be possible in introspection, because error is possible in all judgements [Heil] |
| 4590 | If causation is just regularities in events, the interaction of mind and body is not a special problem [Heil] |
| 4614 | Disposition is a fundamental feature of reality, since basic particles are capable of endless possible interactions [Heil] |
| 4595 | No mental state entails inevitable behaviour, because other beliefs or desires may intervene [Heil] |
| 4599 | Hearts are material, but functionalism says the property of being a heart is not a material property [Heil] |
| 4624 | If you are a functionalist, there appears to be no room for qualia [Heil] |
| 4601 | Higher-level sciences cannot be reduced, because their concepts mark boundaries invisible at lower levels [Heil] |
| 4602 | Higher-level sciences designate real properties of objects, which are not reducible to lower levels [Heil] |
| 4593 | 'Property dualism' says mind and body are not substances, but distinct families of properties [Heil] |
| 4154 | Why are we not aware of the huge gap between mind and brain in ordinary life? [Wittgenstein] |
| 4597 | Early identity theory talked of mind and brain 'processes', but now the focus is properties [Heil] |
| 4609 | It seems contradictory to be asked to believe that we can be eliminativist about beliefs [Heil] |
| 4596 | The appeal of the identity theory is its simplicity, and its solution to the mental causation problem [Heil] |
| 4598 | Functionalists emphasise that mental processes are not to be reduced to what realises them [Heil] |
| 4619 | 'Multiple realisability' needs to clearly distinguish low-level realisers from what is realised [Heil] |
| 4620 | Multiple realisability is not a relation among properties, but an application of predicates to resembling things [Heil] |
| 4594 | A scientist could know everything about the physiology of headaches, but never have had one [Heil] |
| 4625 | Is mental imagery pictorial, or is it propositional? [Heil] |
| 4607 | Folk psychology and neuroscience are no more competitors than cartography and geology are [Heil] |
| 4158 | An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria [Wittgenstein] |
| 6165 | Every course of action can either accord or conflict with a rule, so there is no accord or conflict [Wittgenstein] |
| 4143 | One cannot obey a rule 'privately', because that is a practice, not the same as thinking one is obeying [Wittgenstein] |
| 7092 | If individuals can't tell if they are following a rule, how does a community do it? [Grayling on Wittgenstein] |
| 4138 | Is white simple, or does it consist of the colours of the rainbow? [Wittgenstein] |
| 7055 | Externalist accounts of mental content begin in Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, by Heil] |
| 12576 | Possessing a concept is knowing how to go on [Wittgenstein, by Peacocke] |
| 4157 | Concepts direct our interests and investigations, and express those interests [Wittgenstein] |
| 12606 | Man learns the concept of the past by remembering [Wittgenstein] |
| 4141 | Various games have a 'family resemblance', as their similarities overlap and criss-cross [Wittgenstein] |
| 23450 | Wittgenstein rejected his earlier view that the form of language is the form of the world [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| 4605 | Truth-conditions correspond to the idea of 'literal meaning' [Heil] |
| 4150 | Asking about verification is only one way of asking about the meaning of a proposition [Wittgenstein] |
| 6567 | For Wittgenstein, words are defined by their use, just as chess pieces are [Wittgenstein, by Fogelin] |
| 6169 | We do not achieve meaning and understanding in our heads, but in the world [Wittgenstein, by Rowlands] |
| 4155 | We all seem able to see quite clearly how sentences represent things when we use them [Wittgenstein] |
| 4137 | In the majority of cases the meaning of a word is its use in the language [Wittgenstein] |
| 4142 | To understand a sentence means to understand a language [Wittgenstein] |
| 4606 | To understand 'birds warble' and 'tigers growl', you must also understand 'tigers warble' [Heil] |
| 4149 | We don't have 'meanings' in our minds in addition to verbal expressions [Wittgenstein] |
| 4156 | Make the following experiment: say "It's cold here" and mean "It's warm here" [Wittgenstein] |
| 4145 | How do words refer to sensations? [Wittgenstein] |
| 4140 | The standard metre in Paris is neither one metre long nor not one metre long [Wittgenstein] |
| 4604 | If propositions are abstract entities, how do human beings interact with them? [Heil] |
| 6166 | Was Wittgenstein's problem between individual and community, or between occasions for an individual? [Rowlands on Wittgenstein] |
| 7875 | If a brilliant child invented a name for a private sensation, it couldn't communicate it [Wittgenstein] |
| 4146 | We cannot doublecheck mental images for correctness (or confirm news with many copies of the paper) [Wittgenstein] |
| 4147 | If we only named pain by our own case, it would be like naming beetles by looking in a private box [Wittgenstein] |
| 5659 | If the reference is private, that is incompatible with the sense being public [Wittgenstein, by Scruton] |
| 4152 | Getting from perceptions to words cannot be a private matter; the rules need an institution of use [Wittgenstein] |
| 4136 | To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life [Wittgenstein] |
| 4144 | Common human behaviour enables us to interpret an unknown language [Wittgenstein] |
| 11049 | To communicate, language needs agreement in judgment as well as definition [Wittgenstein] |
| 6658 | What is left over if I subtract my arm going up from my raising my arm? [Wittgenstein] |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| 4151 | Grammar tells what kind of object anything is - and theology is a kind of grammar [Wittgenstein] |
| 4159 | The human body is the best picture of the human soul [Wittgenstein] |