78 ideas
| 19608 | Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [Cioran] |
| 19624 | Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran] |
| 19599 | Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran] |
| 19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
| 19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
| 19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
| 4697 | There has been a distinct 'Social Turn' in recent philosophy, like the earlier 'Linguistic Turn' [O'Grady] |
| 19618 | I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human weakness [Cioran] |
| 19621 | Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran] |
| 19607 | The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their significance [Cioran] |
| 19638 | Metaphysics is a universalisation of physical anguish [Cioran] |
| 19620 | Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran] |
| 4731 | Good reasoning will avoid contradiction, enhance coherence, not ignore evidence, and maximise evidence [O'Grady] |
| 19630 | No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran] |
| 4735 | Just as maps must simplify their subject matter, so thought has to be reductionist about reality [O'Grady] |
| 4703 | The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of reality' [O'Grady] |
| 4701 | To say a relative truth is inexpressible in other frameworks is 'weak', while saying it is false is 'strong' [O'Grady] |
| 19636 | Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran] |
| 19642 | Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran] |
| 14187 | If logic is topic-neutral that means it delves into all subjects, rather than having a pure subject matter [Read] |
| 4705 | Logical relativism appears if we allow more than one legitimate logical system [O'Grady] |
| 14188 | Not all arguments are valid because of form; validity is just true premises and false conclusion being impossible [Read] |
| 14182 | If the logic of 'taller of' rests just on meaning, then logic may be the study of merely formal consequence [Read] |
| 14183 | Maybe arguments are only valid when suppressed premises are all stated - but why? [Read] |
| 14184 | In modus ponens the 'if-then' premise contributes nothing if the conclusion follows anyway [Read] |
| 4700 | A third value for truth might be "indeterminate", or a point on a scale between 'true' and 'false' [O'Grady] |
| 14186 | Logical connectives contain no information, but just record combination relations between facts [Read] |
| 4704 | Wittgenstein reduced Russell's five primitive logical symbols to a mere one [O'Grady] |
| 19632 | An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran] |
| 4711 | Anti-realists say our theories (such as wave-particle duality) give reality incompatible properties [O'Grady] |
| 4698 | What counts as a fact partly depends on the availability of human concepts to describe them [O'Grady] |
| 4715 | We may say that objects have intrinsic identity conditions, but still allow multiple accounts of them [O'Grady] |
| 14185 | Conditionals are just a shorthand for some proof, leaving out the details [Read] |
| 4719 | Maybe developments in logic and geometry have shown that the a priori may be relative [O'Grady] |
| 4720 | Sense-data are only safe from scepticism if they are primitive and unconceptualised [O'Grady] |
| 4722 | Modern epistemology centres on debates about foundations, and about external justification [O'Grady] |
| 4724 | Internalists say the reasons for belief must be available to the subject, and externalists deny this [O'Grady] |
| 4723 | Coherence involves support from explanation and evidence, and also probability and confirmation [O'Grady] |
| 4709 | Ontological relativists are anti-realists, who deny that our theories carve nature at the joints [O'Grady] |
| 4725 | Contextualism says that knowledge is relative to its context; 'empty' depends on your interests [O'Grady] |
| 4732 | One may understand a realm of ideas, but be unable to judge their rationality or truth [O'Grady] |
| 19626 | Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran] |
| 19633 | We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran] |
| 4710 | Verificationism was attacked by the deniers of the analytic-synthetic distinction, needed for 'facts' [O'Grady] |
| 4717 | If we abandon the analytic-synthetic distinction, scepticism about meaning may be inevitable [O'Grady] |
| 4706 | Early Quine says all beliefs could be otherwise, but later he said we would assume mistranslation [O'Grady] |
| 4734 | Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it [O'Grady] |
| 19615 | I want to suppress in myself the normal reasons people have for action [Cioran] |
| 19628 | At a civilisation's peak values are all that matters, and people unconsciously live by them [Cioran] |
| 19646 | Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran] |
| 19614 | Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran] |
| 19634 | Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran] |
| 19619 | To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran] |
| 19622 | The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran] |
| 19617 | Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran] |
| 19612 | The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran] |
| 19604 | Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran] |
| 19606 | We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran] |
| 19601 | Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran] |
| 19640 | No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran] |
| 19602 | You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran] |
| 19644 | History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran] |
| 19641 | If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran] |
| 19613 | It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran] |
| 19627 | Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran] |
| 19625 | The ideal is to impose a religion by force, and then live in doubt about its beliefs [Cioran] |
| 19605 | Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran] |
| 19637 | History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran] |
| 19610 | Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran] |
| 19611 | No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran] |
| 19609 | If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran] |
| 19639 | We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran] |
| 19603 | Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran] |
| 19616 | As the perfect wisdom of detachment, philosophy offers no rivals to Taoism [Cioran] |
| 19600 | When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran] |
| 19643 | A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran] |
| 4727 | The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas [O'Grady] |
| 19623 | Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran] |