29 ideas
22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
7396 | Hobbes created English-language philosophy [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
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] |
16638 | The qualities of the world are mere appearances; reality is the motions which cause them [Hobbes] |
16688 | Evidence is conception, which is imagination, which proceeds from the senses [Hobbes] |
7405 | Experience can't prove universal truths [Hobbes] |
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] |
7408 | It is an error that reason should control the passions, which give right guidance on their own [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
7407 | Good and evil are what please us; goodness and badness the powers causing them [Hobbes] |
22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
7410 | Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
7409 | Hobbes shifted from talk of 'the good' to talk of 'rights' [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
7411 | The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature [Hobbes] |
22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |