66 ideas
| 18495 | The best philosophers I know are the best people I know [Heil] |
| 3600 | Slow and accurate thought makes the greatest progress [Descartes] |
| 3601 | Most things in human life seem vain and useless [Descartes] |
| 3602 | Almost every daft idea has been expressed by some philosopher [Descartes] |
| 18494 | Using a technical vocabulary actually prevents discussion of the presuppositions [Heil] |
| 18506 | Questions of explanation should not be confused with metaphyics [Heil] |
| 18535 | Without abstraction we couldn't think systematically [Heil] |
| 3603 | Methodical thinking is cautious, analytical, systematic, and panoramic [Descartes, by PG] |
| 3612 | Clear and distinct conceptions are true because a perfect God exists [Descartes] |
| 18534 | Truth relates truthbearers to truthmakers [Heil] |
| 3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
| 18531 | Philosophers of the past took the truthmaking idea for granted [Heil] |
| 18509 | Not all truths need truthmakers - mathematics and logic seem to be just true [Heil] |
| 18518 | Infinite numbers are qualitatively different - they are not just very large numbers [Heil] |
| 18500 | How could structures be mathematical truthmakers? Maths is just true, without truthmakers [Heil] |
| 18539 | Our categories lack the neat arrangement needed for reduction [Heil] |
| 18505 | Fundamental ontology aims at the preconditions for any true theory [Heil] |
| 18499 | Our quantifications only reveal the truths we accept; the ontology and truthmakers are another matter [Heil] |
| 18512 | Ontology aims to give the fundamental categories of being [Heil] |
| 18508 | Most philosophers now (absurdly) believe that relations fully exist [Heil] |
| 18532 | If causal relations are power manifestations, that makes them internal relations [Heil] |
| 18510 | We need properties to explain how the world works [Heil] |
| 18522 | Categorical properties were introduced by philosophers as actual properties, not if-then properties [Heil] |
| 18513 | Emergent properties will need emergent substances to bear them [Heil] |
| 18540 | Predicates only match properties at the level of fundamentals [Heil] |
| 18533 | In Fa, F may not be a property of a, but a determinable, satisfied by some determinate [Heil] |
| 18511 | Properties have causal roles which sets can't possibly have [Heil] |
| 18523 | Are all properties powers, or are there also qualities, or do qualities have the powers? [Heil] |
| 18524 | Properties are both qualitative and dispositional - they are powerful qualities [Heil] |
| 18498 | Abstract objects wouldn't be very popular without the implicit idea of truthmakers [Heil] |
| 18507 | Substances bear properties, so must be simple, and not consist of further substances [Heil] |
| 18515 | Spatial parts are just regions, but objects depend on and are made up of substantial parts [Heil] |
| 18516 | A 'gunky' universe would literally have no parts at all [Heil] |
| 18514 | Many wholes can survive replacement of their parts [Heil] |
| 18517 | Dunes depend on sand grains, but line segments depend on the whole line [Heil] |
| 18502 | If basic physics has natures, then why not reality itself? That would then found the deepest necessities [Heil] |
| 18496 | If possible worlds are just fictions, they can't be truthmakers for modal judgements [Heil] |
| 3605 | We can believe a thing without knowing we believe it [Descartes] |
| 1583 | In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes] |
| 3607 | In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes] |
| 3617 | I aim to find the principles and causes of everything, using the seeds within my mind [Descartes] |
| 3611 | Understanding, rather than imagination or senses, gives knowledge [Descartes] |
| 3606 | I was searching for reliable rock under the shifting sand [Descartes] |
| 3604 | When rebuilding a house, one needs alternative lodgings [Descartes] |
| 3618 | Only experiments can settle disagreements between rival explanations [Descartes] |
| 3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
| 18525 | Mental abstraction does not make what is abstracted mind-dependent [Heil] |
| 18504 | Only particulars exist, and generality is our mode of presentation [Heil] |
| 3609 | I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support [Descartes] |
| 3608 | I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes] |
| 3613 | Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes] |
| 3616 | The soul must unite with the body to have appetites and sensations [Descartes] |
| 18503 | You can think of tomatoes without grasping what they are [Heil] |
| 18538 | Non-conscious thought may be unlike conscious thought [Heil] |
| 18537 | Linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought [Heil] |
| 3614 | A machine could speak in response to physical stimulus, but not hold a conversation [Descartes] |
| 18536 | The subject-predicate form reflects reality [Heil] |
| 18497 | Many reject 'moral realism' because they can't see any truthmakers for normative judgements [Heil] |
| 1581 | Greeks elevate virtues enormously, but never explain them [Descartes] |
| 18519 | If there were infinite electrons, they could vanish without affecting total mass-energy [Heil] |
| 18526 | We should focus on actual causings, rather than on laws and causal sequences [Heil] |
| 18527 | Probabilistic causation is not a weak type of cause; it is just a probability of there being a cause [Heil] |
| 16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
| 18520 | Electrons are treated as particles, but they lose their individuality in relations [Heil] |
| 18501 | Maybe the universe is fine-tuned because it had to be, despite plans by God or Nature? [Heil] |
| 3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |