101 ideas
15787 | Maybe Ockham's Razor is a purely aesthetic principle [Lycan] |
15784 | The Razor seems irrelevant for Meinongians, who allow absolutely everything to exist [Lycan] |
14713 | Truth in a scenario is the negation in that scenario being a priori incoherent [Chalmers] |
6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
7755 | Singular terms refer, using proper names, definite descriptions, singular personal pronouns, demonstratives, etc. [Lycan] |
6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
5500 | Biologists see many organic levels, 'abstract' if seen from below, 'structural' if seen from above [Lycan] |
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] |
16048 | Physicalism says in any two physically indiscernible worlds the positive facts are the same [Chalmers, by Bennett,K] |
6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
2401 | All facts are either physical, experiential, laws of nature, second-order final facts, or indexical facts about me [Chalmers] |
15792 | Maybe non-existent objects are sets of properties [Lycan] |
5494 | 'Lightning is electric discharge' and 'Phosphorus is Venus' are synthetic a posteriori identities [Lycan] |
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] |
15795 | Treating possible worlds as mental needs more actual mental events [Lycan] |
15796 | Possible worlds must be made of intensional objects like propositions or properties [Lycan] |
15794 | If 'worlds' are sentences, and possibility their consistency, consistency may rely on possibility [Lycan] |
2390 | We attribute beliefs to people in order to explain their behaviour [Chalmers] |
6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
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] |
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] |
6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
2400 | Is intentionality just causal connections? [Chalmers] |
6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
2419 | Why should qualia fade during silicon replacement? [Chalmers] |
2389 | Sometimes we don't notice our pains [Chalmers] |
6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
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] |
6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
5496 | Functionalism has three linked levels: physical, functional, and mental [Lycan] |
2417 | Does consciousness arise from fine-grained non-reductive functional organisation? [Chalmers] |
6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
5499 | A mental state is a functional realisation of a brain state when it serves the purpose of the organism [Lycan] |
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] |
6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
2429 | Temperature (etc.) is agreed to be reducible, but it is multiply realisable [Chalmers] |
18403 | Indexicals may not be objective, but they are a fact about the world as I see it [Chalmers] |
7768 | The truth conditions theory sees meaning as representation [Lycan] |
7766 | Meaning must be known before we can consider verification [Lycan] |
7764 | Could I successfully use an expression, without actually understanding it? [Lycan] |
7763 | It is hard to state a rule of use for a proper name [Lycan] |
7770 | Truth conditions will come out the same for sentences with 'renate' or 'cordate' [Lycan] |
7773 | A sentence's truth conditions is the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true [Lycan] |
7774 | Possible worlds explain aspects of meaning neatly - entailment, for example, is the subset relation [Lycan] |
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] |
20992 | Right and wrong concerns what other people cannot reasonably reject [Scanlon] |
6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
5501 | People are trying to explain biological teleology in naturalistic causal terms [Lycan] |
6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |
16427 | Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible [Chalmers] |