20 ideas
| 12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
| 12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
| 12112 | Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena [Comte] |
| 12111 | Positivism is the final state of human intelligence [Comte] |
| 12106 | Positivism gives up absolute truth, and seeks phenomenal laws, by reason and observation [Comte] |
| 12114 | Science can drown in detail, so we need broad scientists (to keep out the metaphysicians) [Comte] |
| 12116 | Only positivist philosophy can terminate modern social crises [Comte] |
| 12108 | All real knowledge rests on observed facts [Comte] |
| 12109 | We must observe in order to form theories, but connected observations need prior theories [Comte] |
| 12107 | Positivism explains facts by connecting particular phenomena with general facts [Comte] |
| 12115 | Introspection is pure illusion; we can obviously observe everything except ourselves [Comte] |
| 8353 | Freedom involves acting according to an idea [Anscombe] |
| 8352 | To believe in determinism, one must believe in a system which determines events [Anscombe] |
| 19216 | Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson] |
| 8351 | With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects [Anscombe] |
| 4777 | The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe] |
| 12113 | The search for first or final causes is futile [Comte] |
| 10363 | Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata [Anscombe, by Schaffer,J] |
| 8350 | Since Mill causation has usually been explained by necessary and sufficient conditions [Anscombe] |
| 12110 | We can never know origins, purposes or inner natures [Comte] |