28 ideas
13966 | Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames] |
13974 | If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames] |
15163 | The interest of quantified modal logic is its metaphysical necessity and essentialism [Soames] |
15158 | Indefinite descriptions are quantificational in subject position, but not in predicate position [Soames] |
15157 | Recognising the definite description 'the man' as a quantifier phrase, not a singular term, is a real insight [Soames] |
15156 | The universal and existential quantifiers were chosen to suit mathematics [Soames] |
8439 | Maybe each event has only one possible causal history [Bennett] |
8440 | Maybe an event's time of occurrence is essential to it [Bennett] |
8978 | Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett] |
13969 | Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames] |
15162 | We understand metaphysical necessity intuitively, from ordinary life [Soames] |
15161 | There are more metaphysically than logically necessary truths [Soames] |
13973 | A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames] |
13968 | Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames] |
16861 | A false theory could hardly rival the explanatory power of natural selection [Darwin] |
15152 | To study meaning, study truth conditions, on the basis of syntax, and representation by the parts [Soames] |
15153 | Tarski's account of truth-conditions is too weak to determine meanings [Soames] |
13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
13972 | Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames] |
15154 | We should use cognitive states to explain representational propositions, not vice versa [Soames] |
8441 | Delaying a fire doesn't cause it, but hastening it might [Bennett] |
8436 | Either cause and effect are subsumed under a conditional because of properties, or it is counterfactual [Bennett] |
8435 | Causes are between events ('the explosion') or between facts/states of affairs ('a bomb dropped') [Bennett] |
10364 | Facts are about the world, not in it, so they can't cause anything [Bennett] |
8437 | The full counterfactual story asserts a series of events, because counterfactuals are not transitive [Bennett] |
8438 | A counterfactual about an event implies something about the event's essence [Bennett] |
8592 | Empty space is measurable in ways in which empty time necessarily is not [Bennett, by Shoemaker] |