99 ideas
| 22733 | Epicurus accepted God in his popular works, but not in his writings on nature [Epicurus, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| 13291 | Slavery to philosophy brings true freedom [Epicurus] |
| 22758 | Philosophy aims at a happy life, through argument and discussion [Epicurus] |
| 14523 | We should come to philosophy free from any taint of culture [Epicurus] |
| 22240 | The aim of medicine is removal of sickness, and philosophy similarly removes our affections [Epicurus] |
| 1484 | We should say nothing of the whole if our contact is with the parts [Epicurus, by Plutarch] |
| 3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
| 3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
| 3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
| 3855 | Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith] |
| 3854 | Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith] |
| 2670 | Epicurus despises and laughs at the whole of dialectic [Epicurus, by Cicero] |
| 23000 | Vicious regresses force you to another level; non-vicious imply another level [Baron/Miller] |
| 3869 | More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith] |
| 3861 | Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith] |
| 21668 | Epicurus rejected excluded middle, because accepting it for events is fatalistic [Epicurus, by Cicero] |
| 21676 | Epicureans say disjunctions can be true whiile the disjuncts are not true [Epicurus, by Cicero] |
| 23024 | A traveller takes a copy of a picture into the past, gives it the artist, who then creates the original! [Baron/Miller] |
| 23008 | Grounding is intended as a relation that fits dependences between things [Baron/Miller] |
| 23018 | How does a changing object retain identity or have incompatible properties over time? [Baron/Miller] |
| 3867 | De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith] |
| 3872 | We must assess the truth of beliefs in identifying them [Newton-Smith] |
| 1823 | We can't seek for things if we have no idea of them [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1824 | To name something, you must already have an idea of what it is [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 5949 | Epicurus says colours are relative to the eye, not intrinsic to bodies [Epicurus, by Plutarch] |
| 1821 | Sensations cannot be judged, because similar sensations have equal value, and different ones have nothing in common [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1820 | The criteria of truth are senses, preconceptions and passions [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1822 | Reason can't judge senses, as it is based on them [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 4549 | Epicurus denied knowledge in order to retain morality or hedonism as the highest values [Nietzsche on Epicurus] |
| 2668 | Epicurus says if one of a man's senses ever lies, none of his senses should ever be believed [Epicurus, by Cicero] |
| 1487 | When entering a dark room it is colourless, but colour gradually appears [Epicurus] |
| 1482 | If two people disagree over taste, who is right? [Epicurus, by Plutarch] |
| 1483 | Bath water is too hot for some, too cold for others [Epicurus, by Plutarch] |
| 3857 | Defeat relativism by emphasising truth and reference, not meaning [Newton-Smith] |
| 3858 | A full understanding of 'yellow' involves some theory [Newton-Smith] |
| 3862 | All theories contain anomalies, and so are falsified! [Newton-Smith] |
| 3863 | The anomaly of Uranus didn't destroy Newton's mechanics - it led to Neptune's discovery [Newton-Smith] |
| 3864 | Anomalies are judged against rival theories, and support for the current theory [Newton-Smith] |
| 3865 | Why should it matter whether or not a theory is scientific? [Newton-Smith] |
| 3866 | If theories are really incommensurable, we could believe them all [Newton-Smith] |
| 14526 | The rational soul is in the chest, and the non-rational soul is spread through the body [Epicurus] |
| 6035 | Soul is made of four stuffs, giving warmth, rest, motion and perception [Epicurus, by Aetius] |
| 6018 | Epicurus was the first to see the free will problem, and he was a libertarian [Epicurus, by Long/Sedley] |
| 20922 | Epicurus showed that the swerve can give free motion in the atoms [Epicurus, by Diogenes of Oen.] |
| 14516 | There is no necessity to live with necessity [Epicurus] |
| 1909 | How can pleasure or judgement occur in a heap of atoms? [Sext.Empiricus on Epicurus] |
| 3871 | Explaining an action is showing that it is rational [Newton-Smith] |
| 7814 | It was Epicurus who made the question of the will's freedom central to ethics [Epicurus, by Grayling] |
| 3562 | Fine things are worthless if they give no pleasure [Epicurus] |
| 1840 | Pleasure is the chief good because it is the most natural, especially for animals [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1839 | Pains of the soul are worse than pains of the body, because it feels the past and future [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1842 | Pleasures only differ in their duration and the part of the body affected [Epicurus] |
| 3557 | The end for Epicurus is static pleasure [Epicurus, by Annas] |
| 1845 | Justice has no independent existence, but arises entirely from keeping contracts [Epicurus] |
| 1841 | We choose virtue because of pleasure, not for its own sake [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1829 | A wise man would be happy even under torture [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1843 | Friendship is by far the most important ingredient of a complete and happy life [Epicurus] |
| 1831 | Wise men should partake of life even if they go blind [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 12044 | Only Epicurus denied purpose in nature, for the whole world, or for its parts [Epicurus, by Annas] |
| 20907 | Democritus says atoms have size and shape, and Epicurus added weight [Epicurus, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| 21669 | Atoms don't swerve by being struck, because they move in parallel, so the swerve is uncaused [Cicero on Epicurus] |
| 21680 | What causes atomic swerves? Do they draw lots? What decides the size or number of swerves? [Cicero on Epicurus] |
| 23011 | Modern accounts of causation involve either processes or counterfactuals [Baron/Miller] |
| 23013 | The main process theory of causation says it is transference of mass, energy, momentum or charge [Baron/Miller] |
| 23014 | If causes are processes, what is causation by omission? (Distinguish legal from scientific causes?) [Baron/Miller] |
| 23015 | The counterfactual theory of causation handles the problem no matter what causes actually are [Baron/Miller] |
| 23016 | Counterfactual theories struggle with pre-emption by a causal back-up system [Baron/Miller] |
| 23009 | There is no second 'law' of thermodynamics; it just reflects probabilities of certain microstates [Baron/Miller] |
| 23002 | In relativity space and time depend on one's motion, but spacetime gives an invariant metric [Baron/Miller] |
| 14525 | Stoics say time is incorporeal and self-sufficient; Epicurus says it is a property of properties of things [Epicurus] |
| 22988 | The block universe theory says entities of all times exist, and time is the B-series [Baron/Miller] |
| 22991 | How can we know this is the present moment, if other times are real? [Baron/Miller] |
| 22992 | If we are actually in the past then we shouldn't experience time passing [Baron/Miller] |
| 22994 | Erzatz Presentism allows the existence of other times, with only the present 'actualised' [Baron/Miller] |
| 22998 | How do presentists explain relations between things existing at different times? [Baron/Miller] |
| 23017 | Presentism needs endurantism, because other theories imply most of the object doesn't exist [Baron/Miller] |
| 23023 | How can presentists move to the next future moment, if that doesn't exist? [Baron/Miller] |
| 22995 | Most of the sciences depend on the concept of time [Baron/Miller] |
| 22993 | For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller] |
| 23001 | The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller] |
| 22999 | It is meaningless to measure the rate of time using time itself, and without a rate there is no flow [Baron/Miller] |
| 22986 | The C-series rejects A and B, and just sees times as order by betweenness, without direction [Baron/Miller] |
| 22996 | The A-series has to treat being past, present or future as properties [Baron/Miller] |
| 23007 | The B-series can have a direction, as long as it does not arise from temporal flow [Baron/Miller] |
| 23003 | Static theories cannot account for time's obvious asymmetry, so time must be dynamic [Baron/Miller] |
| 23004 | The direction of time is either primitive, or reducible to something else [Baron/Miller] |
| 23005 | The kaon does not seem to be time-reversal invariant, unlike the rest of nature [Baron/Miller] |
| 23006 | Maybe the past is just the direction of decreasing entropy [Baron/Miller] |
| 23010 | We could explain time's direction by causation: past is the direction of causes, future of effects [Baron/Miller] |
| 22989 | Static time theory presents change as one property at t1, and a different property at t2 [Baron/Miller] |
| 23020 | If a time traveller kills his youthful grandfather, he both exists and fails to exist [Baron/Miller] |
| 23022 | Presentism means there no existing past for a time traveller to visit [Baron/Miller] |
| 22987 | The past (unlike the future) is fixed, along with truths about it, by the existence of past objects [Baron/Miller] |
| 22990 | The moving spotlight says entities can have properties of being present, past or future [Baron/Miller] |
| 22997 | The present moment is a matter of existence, not of acquiring a property [Baron/Miller] |
| 2637 | For Epicureans gods are made of atoms, and are not eternal [Epicurus, by Cicero] |
| 2633 | Epicurus saw that gods must exist, because nature has imprinted them on human minds [Epicurus, by Cicero] |
| 2639 | Some say Epicurus only pretended to believe in the gods, so as not to offend Athenians [Epicurus, by Cicero] |
| 14527 | If god answered prayers we would be destroyed, because we pray for others to suffer [Epicurus] |