15 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 20349 | Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson] |
| 20351 | Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson] |
| 20350 | Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson] |
| 10993 | Ramsey's Test: believe the consequent if you believe the antecedent [Ramsey, by Read] |
| 14279 | Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 6894 | Mental terms can be replaced in a sentence by a variable and an existential quantifier [Ramsey] |
| 20356 | Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 20366 | A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson] |
| 9418 | All knowledge needs systematizing, and the axioms would be the laws of nature [Ramsey] |
| 9420 | Causal laws result from the simplest axioms of a complete deductive system [Ramsey] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |