45 ideas
15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
12249 | 'Animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference [Oderberg] |
12242 | Definition distinguishes one kind from another, and individuation picks out members of the kind [Oderberg] |
15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
12238 | The Aristotelian view is that numbers depend on (and are abstracted from) other things [Oderberg] |
12254 | Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg] |
12253 | If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? [Oderberg] |
12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
12252 | Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle [Oderberg] |
12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
12240 | Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg] |
15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
12247 | Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg] |
15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
12258 | Properties are not part of an essence, but they flow from it [Oderberg] |
12257 | Could we replace essence with collections of powers? [Oderberg] |
15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
12236 | Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth [Oderberg] |
15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
12250 | Bodies have act and potency, the latter explaining new kinds of existence [Oderberg] |
15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
12234 | Realism about possible worlds is circular, since it needs a criterion of 'possible' [Oderberg] |
12235 | Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg] |
15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
12237 | Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg] |
15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
12245 | Essence is the source of a thing's characteristic behaviour [Oderberg] |
12246 | What makes Parmenidean reality a One rather than a Many? [Oderberg] |
12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
12243 | The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken [Oderberg] |
15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |