35 ideas
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] |
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] |
3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
13010 | In order to select the logic justified by experience, we would need to use a lot of logic [Boghossian on Quine] |
9002 | Elementary logic requires truth-functions, quantifiers (and variables), identity, and also sets of variables [Quine] |
13681 | Logical consequence is marked by being preserved under all nonlogical substitutions [Quine, by Sider] |
13829 | If logical truths essentially depend on logical constants, we had better define the latter [Hacking on Quine] |
9003 | Set theory was struggling with higher infinities, when new paradoxes made it baffling [Quine] |
9004 | If set theory is not actually a branch of logic, then Frege's derivation of arithmetic would not be from logic [Quine] |
9006 | Commitment to universals is as arbitrary or pragmatic as the adoption of a new system of bookkeeping [Quine] |
15642 | If kinds depend only on what can be observed, many underlying essences might produce the same kind [Eagle] |
15645 | Nominal essence are the observable properties of things [Eagle] |
15643 | Nominal essence mistakenly gives equal weight to all underlying properties that produce appearances [Eagle] |
9001 | Frege moved Kant's question about a priori synthetic to 'how is logical certainty possible?' [Quine] |
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] |
9005 | Examination of convention in the a priori begins to blur the distinction with empirical knowledge [Quine] |
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] |
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] |
3614 | A machine could speak in response to physical stimulus, but not hold a conversation [Descartes] |
1581 | Greeks elevate virtues enormously, but never explain them [Descartes] |
15641 | Kinds are fixed by the essential properties of things - the properties that make it that kind of thing [Eagle] |
16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |