Sublime

he is really distinguishing between the kinship answer and the bodily answer.

The criteria for a convincing argument are always the same, regardless of who the author is or the status of the publisher: They have to be coherent and based on facts. Truth does not belong to anyone; it is the outcome

pessimism also has its own ontological argument: existence is that beyond which nothing worse can be conceived.

clarity of purpose so consistently predicts how people do their jobs.

that people—or, if you like, automata, algorithms—can and do act in situations that are not well defined.

all these are “theoretical entities” that cannot be perceived directly by the senses but are postulated by science to account for the complexity of phenomena in a coherent way.

“The mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of degrees of each.” “Abstract ideas are in themselves individual, however they may become general in their representation.” This theory, which is a modern form of nominalism, has two defects, one logical, the other psychological.

Philosophers have sought exhaustive knowledge in one of two ways: either by mastering the general nature of the universe (such as Parmenides, Plotinus, Spinoza, Hegel) or by isolating its smallest constituents (Democritus, Epicurus, Leibniz, Wittgenstein [early]). The former group are monists, the latter group pluralists.