52 ideas
| 4697 | There has been a distinct 'Social Turn' in recent philosophy, like the earlier 'Linguistic Turn' [O'Grady] |
| 1642 | We must fight fiercely for knowledge, understanding and intelligence [Plato] |
| 1645 | The desire to split everything into its parts is unpleasant and unphilosophical [Plato] |
| 4731 | Good reasoning will avoid contradiction, enhance coherence, not ignore evidence, and maximise evidence [O'Grady] |
| 1644 | Dialectic should only be taught to those who already philosophise well [Plato] |
| 287 | Good analysis involves dividing things into appropriate forms without confusion [Plato] |
| 20478 | In discussion a person's opinions are shown to be in conflict, leading to calm self-criticism [Plato] |
| 4735 | Just as maps must simplify their subject matter, so thought has to be reductionist about 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] |
| 4703 | The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of reality' [O'Grady] |
| 15557 | Verisimilitude has proved hard to analyse, and seems to have several components [Lewis] |
| 4705 | Logical relativism appears if we allow more than one legitimate logical system [O'Grady] |
| 4700 | A third value for truth might be "indeterminate", or a point on a scale between 'true' and 'false' [O'Grady] |
| 4704 | Wittgenstein reduced Russell's five primitive logical symbols to a mere one [O'Grady] |
| 11278 | What does 'that which is not' refer to? [Plato] |
| 1643 | If statements about non-existence are logically puzzling, so are statements about existence [Plato] |
| 7022 | To be is to have a capacity, to act on other things, or to receive actions [Plato] |
| 4711 | Anti-realists say our theories (such as wave-particle duality) give reality incompatible properties [O'Grady] |
| 1641 | Some alarming thinkers think that only things which you can touch exist [Plato] |
| 4698 | What counts as a fact partly depends on the availability of human concepts to describe them [O'Grady] |
| 10784 | Whenever there's speech it has to be about something [Plato] |
| 15554 | A disposition needs a causal basis, a property in a certain causal role. Could the disposition be the property? [Lewis] |
| 16122 | Good thinkers spot forms spread through things, or included within some larger form [Plato] |
| 10422 | The not-beautiful is part of the beautiful, though opposed to it, and is just as real [Plato] |
| 4715 | We may say that objects have intrinsic identity conditions, but still allow multiple accounts of them [O'Grady] |
| 15855 | If we see everything as separate, we can then give no account of it [Plato] |
| 15560 | We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis] |
| 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] |
| 1637 | A soul without understanding is ugly [Plato] |
| 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] |
| 15559 | Does a good explanation produce understanding? That claim is just empty [Lewis] |
| 15556 | Science may well pursue generalised explanation, rather than laws [Lewis] |
| 15558 | A good explanation is supposed to show that the event had to happen [Lewis] |
| 4809 | Lewis endorses the thesis that all explanation of singular events is causal explanation [Lewis, by Psillos] |
| 14321 | To explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history [Lewis] |
| 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] |
| 1636 | Wickedness is an illness of the soul [Plato] |
| 1638 | Didactic education is hard work and achieves little [Plato] |
| 15555 | Explaining match lighting in general is like explaining one lighting of a match [Lewis] |
| 15552 | We only pick 'the' cause for the purposes of some particular enquiry. [Lewis] |
| 15551 | Ways of carving causes may be natural, but never 'right' [Lewis] |
| 15553 | Causal dependence is counterfactual dependence between events [Lewis] |
| 4727 | The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas [O'Grady] |