93 ideas
| 13310 | Wisdom does not lie in books, and unread people can also become wise [Seneca] |
| 13295 | Wise people escape necessity by willing it [Seneca] |
| 13317 | Philosophy aims at happiness [Seneca] |
| 13293 | What philosophy offers humanity is guidance [Seneca] |
| 3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
| 13309 | That something is a necessary condition of something else doesn't mean it caused it [Seneca] |
| 13313 | Even philosophers have got bogged down in analysing tiny bits of language [Seneca] |
| 3312 | There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier) [Benardete,JA] |
| 3352 | Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA] |
| 3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3326 | Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics [Benardete,JA] |
| 3327 | The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it [Benardete,JA] |
| 3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
| 3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 3330 | Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations [Benardete,JA] |
| 3337 | Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory) [Benardete,JA] |
| 3942 | I do not believe in the existence of anything, if I see no reason to believe it [Berkeley] |
| 3952 | I know that nothing inconsistent can exist [Berkeley] |
| 3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
| 12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
| 3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3959 | There is no other substance, in a strict sense, than spirit [Berkeley] |
| 3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3350 | Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3309 | If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3351 | One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water [Benardete,JA] |
| 3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
| 3946 | A thing is shown to be impossible if a contradiction is demonstrated within its definition [Berkeley] |
| 3958 | Since our ideas vary when the real things are said to be unchanged, they cannot be true copies [Berkeley] |
| 3943 | If existence is perceived directly, by which sense; if indirectly, how is it inferred from direct perception? [Berkeley] |
| 3931 | Sensible objects are just sets of sensible qualities [Berkeley] |
| 5192 | Berkeley did not deny material things; he merely said they must be defined through sensations [Berkeley, by Ayer] |
| 5174 | Berkeley needed a phenomenalist account of the self, as well as of material things [Ayer on Berkeley] |
| 1103 | 'To be is to be perceived' is a simple confusion of experience with its objects [Russell on Berkeley] |
| 6403 | For Berkelely, reality is ideas and a community of minds, including God's [Berkeley, by Grayling] |
| 3936 | Time is measured by the succession of ideas in our minds [Berkeley] |
| 3930 | There is no such thing as 'material substance' [Berkeley] |
| 3939 | I conceive a tree in my mind, but I cannot prove that its existence can be conceived outside a mind [Berkeley] |
| 3945 | There is nothing in nature which needs the concept of matter to explain it [Berkeley] |
| 3947 | Perceptions are ideas, and ideas exist in the mind, so objects only exist in the mind [Berkeley] |
| 3306 | The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction [Benardete,JA] |
| 3349 | If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects [Benardete,JA] |
| 3341 | Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori' [Benardete,JA] |
| 3344 | Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 3345 | Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge [Benardete,JA] |
| 3933 | Primary qualities (such as shape, solidity, mass) are held to really exist, unlike secondary qualities [Berkeley] |
| 3934 | A mite would see its own foot as large, though we would see it as tiny [Berkeley] |
| 3935 | The apparent size of an object varies with its distance away, so that can't be a property of the object [Berkeley] |
| 3937 | 'Solidity' is either not a sensible quality at all, or it is clearly relative to our senses [Berkeley] |
| 3940 | Distance is not directly perceived by sight [Berkeley] |
| 3957 | Immediate objects of perception, which some treat as appearances, I treat as the real things themselves [Berkeley] |
| 3953 | Real things and imaginary or dreamed things differ because the latter are much fainter [Berkeley] |
| 3938 | Geometry is originally perceived by senses, and so is not purely intellectual [Berkeley] |
| 3944 | It is possible that we could perceive everything as we do now, but nothing actually existed. [Berkeley] |
| 3932 | A hot hand and a cold hand will have different experiences in the same tepid water [Berkeley] |
| 13297 | To the four causes Plato adds a fifth, the idea which guided the event [Seneca] |
| 3948 | Experience tells me that other minds exist independently from my own [Berkeley] |
| 13307 | If everything can be measured, try measuring the size of a man's soul [Seneca] |
| 3941 | How can that which is unthinking be a cause of thought? [Berkeley] |
| 5374 | Berkeley probably used 'idea' to mean both the act of apprehension and the thing apprehended [Russell on Berkeley] |
| 21399 | Referring to a person, and speaking about him, are very different [Seneca] |
| 3954 | Immorality is not in the action, but in the deviation of the will from moral law [Berkeley] |
| 13325 | Trouble in life comes from copying other people, which is following convention instead of reason [Seneca] |
| 22239 | Humans acquired the concept of virtue from an analogy with bodily health and strength [Seneca, by Allen] |
| 13294 | We know death, which is like before birth; ceasing to be and never beginning are the same [Seneca] |
| 13299 | Living is nothing wonderful; what matters is to die well [Seneca] |
| 13300 | It is as silly to lament ceasing to be as to lament not having lived in the remote past [Seneca] |
| 13321 | Is anything sweeter than valuing yourself more when you find you are loved? [Seneca] |
| 13292 | Selfishness does not produce happiness; to live for yourself, live for others [Seneca] |
| 13303 | A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is [Seneca] |
| 13302 | Life is like a play - it is the quality that matters, not the length [Seneca] |
| 13301 | We are scared of death - except when we are immersed in pleasure! [Seneca] |
| 13323 | The whole point of pleasure-seeking is novelty, and abandoning established ways [Seneca] |
| 13318 | Nature doesn't give us virtue; we must unremittingly pursue it, as a training and an art [Seneca] |
| 13324 | Living contrary to nature is like rowing against the stream [Seneca] |
| 13305 | Character is ruined by not looking back over our pasts, since the future rests on the past [Seneca] |
| 13308 | It's no good winning lots of fights, if you are then conquered by your own temper [Seneca] |
| 13312 | Excessive curiosity is a form of intemperance [Seneca] |
| 13315 | To govern used to mean to serve, not to rule; rulers did not test their powers over those who bestowed it [Seneca] |
| 13290 | One joy of learning is making teaching possible [Seneca] |
| 13322 | Both teachers and pupils should aim at one thing - the improvement of the pupil [Seneca] |
| 13298 | Suicide may be appropriate even when it is not urgent, if there are few reasons against it [Seneca] |
| 13319 | If we control our own death, no one has power over us [Seneca] |
| 13320 | Sometimes we have a duty not to commit suicide, for those we love [Seneca] |
| 3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
| 13311 | Does time exist on its own? Did anything precede it? Did it pre-exist the cosmos? [Seneca] |
| 3950 | There must be a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him [Berkeley] |
| 3951 | There must be a God, because I and my ideas are not independent [Berkeley] |
| 3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |
| 3949 | It has been proved that creation is the workmanship of God, from its beauty and usefulness [Berkeley] |
| 3956 | People are responsible because they have limited power, though this ultimately derives from God [Berkeley] |
| 3955 | If sin is not just physical, we don't consider God the origin of sin because he causes physical events [Berkeley] |