Introduction
(pg. 12) Socrates of Plato’s dialogues, did not pride himself on how much he knew. On the contrary, he prided himself on being the only one who knew how little he knew (reflection, again). What he was good at—supposedly, for estimates of his success differ—was exposing the weaknesses of other peoples’ claims to know.
Socrates was humble about his knowledge, yet strong enough in what he did know to be able to challenge others about their claim to knowledge. Confidence without arrogance.
Chapter 2 - Mind
(pg. 53) Strictly speaking if I say, ‘I’ thought of the Queen and I saluted,’ there is a kind of ambiguity: the ‘I’ that is the subject of the thought is not the ‘I’, the body, that salutes.
(pg. 54) One could hold that mental and physical properties are very different but that the one organized body has them both—after all, mass and velocity are two very different kinds of property, but projectiles have them both. People who hold that there are two kinds of property (mental and physical) but that they can belong to the one kind of stuff (whatever large animals are made of) are called property dualists.
Is this the case if we are all body? Does the statement assume the split and so provide the split in a circular fashion? I usually means the mind. We distinguish “I” think from comments about our body
Chapter 6 - Reasoning
(pg. 211) Getting this answer wrong is called the fallacy of ignoring the base rate.
A probability question requiring some maths. The logical progression of thinking about our chances of disease, for example, can ignore dependencies and false positives.
Chapter 7 - The World
(p. 253) original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. There are also such qualities, which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes, etc. These I call secondary qualities.
Different ways of specifying Assessments and Assertions (primary qualities).