72 ideas
| 14001 | People who use science to make philosophical points don't realise how philosophical science is [Markosian] |
| 23000 | Vicious regresses force you to another level; non-vicious imply another level [Baron/Miller] |
| 13991 | Presentism has the problem that if Socrates ceases to exist, so do propositions about him [Markosian] |
| 3750 | "It is true that x" means no more than x [Ramsey] |
| 13430 | Infinity: there is an infinity of distinguishable individuals [Ramsey] |
| 13428 | Reducibility: to every non-elementary function there is an equivalent elementary function [Ramsey] |
| 13427 | Either 'a = b' vacuously names the same thing, or absurdly names different things [Ramsey] |
| 13334 | Contradictions are either purely logical or mathematical, or they involved thought and language [Ramsey] |
| 23024 | A traveller takes a copy of a picture into the past, gives it the artist, who then creates the original! [Baron/Miller] |
| 6409 | The 'simple theory of types' distinguishes levels among properties [Ramsey, by Grayling] |
| 13426 | Formalists neglect content, but the logicists have focused on generalizations, and neglected form [Ramsey] |
| 13425 | Formalism is hopeless, because it focuses on propositions and ignores concepts [Ramsey] |
| 23008 | Grounding is intended as a relation that fits dependences between things [Baron/Miller] |
| 8495 | The distinction between particulars and universals is a mistake made because of language [Ramsey] |
| 8493 | We could make universals collections of particulars, or particulars collections of their qualities [Ramsey] |
| 8494 | Obviously 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates has wisdom' express the same fact [Ramsey] |
| 23018 | How does a changing object retain identity or have incompatible properties over time? [Baron/Miller] |
| 13766 | 'If' is the same as 'given that', so the degrees of belief should conform to probability theory [Ramsey, by Ramsey] |
| 10993 | Ramsey's Test: believe the consequent if you believe the antecedent [Ramsey, by Read] |
| 14279 | Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey] |
| 14002 | Possible worlds must be abstract, because two qualitatively identical worlds are just one world [Markosian] |
| 3212 | Beliefs are maps by which we steer [Ramsey] |
| 22328 | I just confront the evidence, and let it act on me [Ramsey] |
| 22325 | A belief is knowledge if it is true, certain and obtained by a reliable process [Ramsey] |
| 19724 | Belief is knowledge if it is true, certain, and obtained by a reliable process [Ramsey] |
| 6894 | Mental terms can be replaced in a sentence by a variable and an existential quantifier [Ramsey] |
| 19143 | Ramsey gave axioms for an uncertain agent to decide their preferences [Ramsey, by Davidson] |
| 14000 | 'Grabby' truth conditions first select their object, unlike 'searchy' truth conditions [Markosian] |
| 18818 | Sentence meaning is given by the actions to which it would lead [Ramsey] |
| 23011 | Modern accounts of causation involve either processes or counterfactuals [Baron/Miller] |
| 23013 | The main process theory of causation says it is transference of mass, energy, momentum or charge [Baron/Miller] |
| 23014 | If causes are processes, what is causation by omission? (Distinguish legal from scientific causes?) [Baron/Miller] |
| 23015 | The counterfactual theory of causation handles the problem no matter what causes actually are [Baron/Miller] |
| 23016 | Counterfactual theories struggle with pre-emption by a causal back-up system [Baron/Miller] |
| 9418 | All knowledge needs systematizing, and the axioms would be the laws of nature [Ramsey] |
| 9420 | Causal laws result from the simplest axioms of a complete deductive system [Ramsey] |
| 23009 | There is no second 'law' of thermodynamics; it just reflects probabilities of certain microstates [Baron/Miller] |
| 23002 | In relativity space and time depend on one's motion, but spacetime gives an invariant metric [Baron/Miller] |
| 22988 | The block universe theory says entities of all times exist, and time is the B-series [Baron/Miller] |
| 22991 | How can we know this is the present moment, if other times are real? [Baron/Miller] |
| 22992 | If we are actually in the past then we shouldn't experience time passing [Baron/Miller] |
| 13990 | Presentism is the view that only present objects exist [Markosian] |
| 13992 | Presentism says if objects don't exist now, we can't have attitudes to them or relations with them [Markosian] |
| 13994 | Presentism seems to entail that we cannot talk about other times [Markosian] |
| 13995 | Serious Presentism says things must exist to have relations and properties; Unrestricted version denies this [Markosian] |
| 13996 | Maybe Presentists can refer to the haecceity of a thing, after the thing itself disappears [Markosian] |
| 13997 | Maybe Presentists can paraphrase singular propositions about the past [Markosian] |
| 13993 | Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs [Markosian] |
| 22994 | Erzatz Presentism allows the existence of other times, with only the present 'actualised' [Baron/Miller] |
| 22998 | How do presentists explain relations between things existing at different times? [Baron/Miller] |
| 23017 | Presentism needs endurantism, because other theories imply most of the object doesn't exist [Baron/Miller] |
| 23023 | How can presentists move to the next future moment, if that doesn't exist? [Baron/Miller] |
| 22995 | Most of the sciences depend on the concept of time [Baron/Miller] |
| 22993 | For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller] |
| 23001 | The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller] |
| 22999 | It is meaningless to measure the rate of time using time itself, and without a rate there is no flow [Baron/Miller] |
| 22986 | The C-series rejects A and B, and just sees times as order by betweenness, without direction [Baron/Miller] |
| 22996 | The A-series has to treat being past, present or future as properties [Baron/Miller] |
| 23007 | The B-series can have a direction, as long as it does not arise from temporal flow [Baron/Miller] |
| 23003 | Static theories cannot account for time's obvious asymmetry, so time must be dynamic [Baron/Miller] |
| 23004 | The direction of time is either primitive, or reducible to something else [Baron/Miller] |
| 23005 | The kaon does not seem to be time-reversal invariant, unlike the rest of nature [Baron/Miller] |
| 23006 | Maybe the past is just the direction of decreasing entropy [Baron/Miller] |
| 23010 | We could explain time's direction by causation: past is the direction of causes, future of effects [Baron/Miller] |
| 22989 | Static time theory presents change as one property at t1, and a different property at t2 [Baron/Miller] |
| 23020 | If a time traveller kills his youthful grandfather, he both exists and fails to exist [Baron/Miller] |
| 23022 | Presentism means there no existing past for a time traveller to visit [Baron/Miller] |
| 13998 | Objects in the past, like Socrates, are more like imaginary objects than like remote spatial objects [Markosian] |
| 13999 | People are mistaken when they think 'Socrates was a philosopher' says something [Markosian] |
| 22987 | The past (unlike the future) is fixed, along with truths about it, by the existence of past objects [Baron/Miller] |
| 22990 | The moving spotlight says entities can have properties of being present, past or future [Baron/Miller] |
| 22997 | The present moment is a matter of existence, not of acquiring a property [Baron/Miller] |