112 ideas
| 16604 | Philosophy consists of choosing between Plato, Aristotle and Democritus [Pasnau] |
| 16606 | Original philosophers invariably seek inspiration from past thinkers [Pasnau] |
| 16586 | The commentaries of Averroes were the leading guide to Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| 16568 | Modernity begins in the late 12th century, with Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| 16653 | Once accidents were seen as real, 'Categories' became the major text for ontology [Pasnau] |
| 16704 | In 1347, the Church effectively stopped philosophy for the next 300 years [Pasnau] |
| 16605 | After c.1450 all of Plato was available. Before that, only the first half of 'Timaeus' was known [Pasnau] |
| 16607 | Renaissance Platonism is peripheral [Pasnau] |
| 16715 | Plato only made an impact locally in 15th century Italy [Pasnau] |
| 16610 | Philosophy could easily have died in 17th century, if it weren't for Descartes [Pasnau] |
| 16781 | The 17th century is a metaphysical train wreck [Pasnau] |
| 16677 | Anti-Razor: if you can't account for a truth, keep positing things until you can [Pasnau] |
| 14713 | Truth in a scenario is the negation in that scenario being a priori incoherent [Chalmers] |
| 6627 | Radical pragmatists abandon the notion of truth [Stich, by Lowe] |
| 16598 | Priority was a major topic of dispute for scholastics [Pasnau] |
| 2392 | Properties supervene if you can't have one without the other [Chalmers] |
| 2393 | Logical supervenience is when one set of properties must be accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| 2394 | Natural supervenience is when one set of properties is always accompanied by another set [Chalmers] |
| 2398 | Reduction requires logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| 16727 | In mixtures, the four elements ceased to exist, replaced by a mixed body with a form [Pasnau] |
| 16048 | Physicalism says in any two physically indiscernible worlds the positive facts are the same [Chalmers, by Bennett,K] |
| 2401 | All facts are either physical, experiential, laws of nature, second-order final facts, or indexical facts about me [Chalmers] |
| 16732 | 17th C qualities are either microphysical, or phenomenal, or powers [Pasnau] |
| 16733 | 17th century authors only recognised categorical properties, never dispositions [Pasnau] |
| 16662 | The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau] |
| 16767 | There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau] |
| 16788 | Instead of adding Aristotelian forms to physical stuff, one could add dispositions [Pasnau] |
| 16738 | Scholastics reject dispositions, because they are not actual, as forms require [Pasnau] |
| 16649 | Scholastics say there is a genuine thing if it is 'separable' [Pasnau] |
| 16785 | If you reject essences, questions of individuation become extremely difficult [Pasnau] |
| 16680 | Scholastics thought Quantity could be the principle of individuation [Pasnau] |
| 16628 | Corpuscularianism promised a decent account of substance [Pasnau] |
| 16617 | Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism say only substances exist [Pasnau] |
| 16741 | Scholastics wanted to treat Aristotelianism as physics, rather than as metaphysics [Pasnau] |
| 16777 | If crowds are things at all, they seem to be Substances, since they bear properties [Pasnau] |
| 16615 | Scholastics use 'substantia' for thick concrete entities, and for thin metaphysical ones [Pasnau] |
| 16775 | For corpuscularians, a substance is just its integral parts [Pasnau] |
| 16769 | If clay survives destruction of the statue, the statue wasn't a substance, but a mere accident [Pasnau] |
| 16602 | Corpuscularianism rejected not only form, but also the dependence of matter on form [Pasnau] |
| 16612 | Hylomorphism may not be a rival to science, but an abstract account of unity and endurance [Pasnau] |
| 16613 | Hylomorphism declined because scholastics made it into a testable physical theory [Pasnau] |
| 16747 | Scholastics made forms substantial, in a way unintended by Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| 16759 | Scholastics began to see substantial form more as Aristotle's 'efficient' cause [Pasnau] |
| 16748 | Aquinas says a substance has one form; Scotists say it has many forms [Pasnau] |
| 16671 | Scholastic Quantity either gives a body parts, or spreads them out in a unified way [Pasnau] |
| 16579 | There may be different types of substrate, or temporary substrates [Pasnau] |
| 16596 | A substratum can't be 'bare', because it has a job to do [Pasnau] |
| 16584 | If a substrate gives causal support for change, quite a lot of the ingredients must endure [Pasnau] |
| 16580 | A substrate may be 'prime matter', which endures through every change [Pasnau] |
| 16749 | Aristotelians deny that all necessary properties are essential [Pasnau] |
| 16694 | Typical successive things are time and motion [Pasnau] |
| 16583 | Weak ex nihilo says it all comes from something; strong version says the old must partly endure [Pasnau] |
| 16424 | Strong metaphysical necessity allows fewer possible worlds than logical necessity [Chalmers] |
| 16425 | Metaphysical necessity is a bizarre, brute and inexplicable constraint on possibilities [Chalmers] |
| 16426 | How can we know the metaphysical impossibilities; the a posteriori only concerns this world [Chalmers] |
| 13956 | Kripke is often taken to be challenging a priori insights into necessity [Chalmers] |
| 13963 | Maybe logical possibility does imply conceivability - by an ideal mind [Chalmers] |
| 16473 | Modal Rationalism: conceivability gives a priori access to modal truths [Chalmers, by Stalnaker] |
| 19258 | Evaluate primary possibility from some world, and secondary possibility from this world [Chalmers, by Vaidya] |
| 2407 | One can wrongly imagine two things being non-identical even though they are the same (morning/evening star) [Chalmers] |
| 2390 | We attribute beliefs to people in order to explain their behaviour [Chalmers] |
| 14712 | A sentence is a priori if no possible way the world might actually be could make it false [Chalmers] |
| 2397 | 'Perception' means either an action or a mental state [Chalmers] |
| 2422 | The structure of the retina has already simplified the colour information which hits it [Chalmers] |
| 2396 | Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation [Chalmers] |
| 16783 | Essences must explain, so we can infer them causally from the accidents [Pasnau] |
| 2426 | Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained? [Chalmers] |
| 2391 | Can we be aware but not conscious? [Chalmers] |
| 2412 | Can we explain behaviour without consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| 2386 | Hard Problem: why brains experience things [Chalmers] |
| 2416 | What turns awareness into consciousness? [Chalmers] |
| 2423 | Going down the scale, where would consciousness vanish? [Chalmers] |
| 2403 | Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness [Chalmers] |
| 2400 | Is intentionality just causal connections? [Chalmers] |
| 2389 | Sometimes we don't notice our pains [Chalmers] |
| 2419 | Why should qualia fade during silicon replacement? [Chalmers] |
| 2402 | It seems possible to invert qualia [Chalmers] |
| 2415 | In blindsight both qualia and intentionality are missing [Chalmers] |
| 2414 | When distracted we can totally misjudge our own experiences [Chalmers] |
| 2409 | Maybe dualist interaction is possible at the quantum level? [Chalmers] |
| 2411 | Supervenience makes interaction laws possible [Chalmers] |
| 2424 | It is odd if experience is a very recent development [Chalmers] |
| 2413 | If I can have a zombie twin, my own behaviour doesn't need consciousness [Chalmers] |
| 2417 | Does consciousness arise from fine-grained non-reductive functional organisation? [Chalmers] |
| 2428 | Maybe the whole Chinese Room understands Chinese, though the person doesn't [Chalmers] |
| 2418 | The Chinese Mind doesn't seem conscious, but then nor do brains from outside [Chalmers] |
| 2406 | H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about that [Chalmers] |
| 2405 | Perhaps consciousness is physically based, but not logically required by that base [Chalmers] |
| 2395 | Zombies imply natural but not logical supervenience [Chalmers] |
| 9318 | Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Chalmers, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| 2404 | Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious [Chalmers] |
| 2429 | Temperature (etc.) is agreed to be reducible, but it is multiply realisable [Chalmers] |
| 4765 | Stich accepts eliminativism (labelled 'pragmatism') about rationality and normativity [Stich, by Engel] |
| 18403 | Indexicals may not be objective, but they are a fact about the world as I see it [Chalmers] |
| 14708 | Rationalist 2D semantics posits necessary relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility [Chalmers, by Schroeter] |
| 13958 | The 'primary intension' is non-empirical, and fixes extensions based on the actual-world reference [Chalmers] |
| 2399 | Meaning has split into primary ("watery stuff"), and secondary counterfactual meaning ("H2O") [Chalmers] |
| 13959 | The 'secondary intension' is determined by rigidifying (as H2O) the 'water' picked out in the actual world [Chalmers] |
| 13957 | Primary and secondary intensions are the a priori (actual) and a posteriori (counterfactual) aspects of meaning [Chalmers] |
| 13961 | We have 'primary' truth-conditions for the actual world, and derived 'secondary' ones for counterfactual worlds [Chalmers] |
| 14739 | 'Water' is two-dimensionally inconstant, with different intensions in different worlds [Chalmers, by Sider] |
| 13962 | Two-dimensional semantics gives a 'primary' and 'secondary' proposition for each statement [Chalmers] |
| 13960 | In two-dimensional semantics we have two aspects to truth in virtue of meaning [Chalmers] |
| 16609 | Atomists say causation is mechanical collisions, and all true qualities are microscopic [Pasnau] |
| 16603 | In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau] |
| 16592 | Atomism is the commonest version of corpuscularianism, but isn't required by it [Pasnau] |
| 16750 | If there are just arrangements of corpuscles, where are the boundaries between substances? [Pasnau] |
| 16722 | Scholastic causation is by changes in the primary qualities of hot, cold, wet, dry [Pasnau] |
| 16760 | Substantial forms were a step towards scientific essentialism [Pasnau] |
| 16581 | Scholastic authors agree that matter was created by God, out of nothing [Pasnau] |
| 16427 | Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible [Chalmers] |
| 16642 | Transubstantion says accidents of bread and wine don't inhere in the substance [Pasnau] |