36 ideas
4697 | There has been a distinct 'Social Turn' in recent philosophy, like the earlier 'Linguistic Turn' [O'Grady] |
12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
4731 | Good reasoning will avoid contradiction, enhance coherence, not ignore evidence, and maximise evidence [O'Grady] |
12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
4735 | Just as maps must simplify their subject matter, so thought has to be reductionist about reality [O'Grady] |
4703 | The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of 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] |
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] |
4711 | Anti-realists say our theories (such as wave-particle duality) give reality incompatible properties [O'Grady] |
4698 | What counts as a fact partly depends on the availability of human concepts to describe them [O'Grady] |
4715 | We may say that objects have intrinsic identity conditions, but still allow multiple accounts of them [O'Grady] |
14919 | Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen] |
4719 | Maybe developments in logic and geometry have shown that the a priori may be relative [O'Grady] |
6783 | To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate [Fraassen, by Bird] |
4720 | Sense-data are only safe from scepticism if they are primitive and unconceptualised [O'Grady] |
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] |
3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
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] |
14917 | To accept a scientific theory, we only need to believe that it is empirically adequate [Fraassen] |
4732 | One may understand a realm of ideas, but be unable to judge their rationality or truth [O'Grady] |
6784 | Why should the true explanation be one of the few we have actually thought of? [Fraassen, by Bird] |
12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
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] |
4727 | The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas [O'Grady] |