53 ideas
| 19695 | The devil was wise as an angel, and lost no knowledge when he rebelled [Whitcomb] |
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| 3750 | "It is true that x" means no more than x [Ramsey] |
| 18851 | Pairing (with Extensionality) guarantees an infinity of sets, just from a single element [Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| 13334 | Contradictions are either purely logical or mathematical, or they involved thought and language [Ramsey] |
| 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] |
| 14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
| 14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
| 14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 8915 | How we refer to abstractions is much less clear than how we refer to other things [Rosen] |
| 18852 | A Meinongian principle might say that there is an object for any modest class of properties [Rosen] |
| 18849 | Metaphysical necessity is absolute and universal; metaphysical possibility is very tolerant [Rosen] |
| 18850 | 'Metaphysical' modality is the one that makes the necessity or contingency of laws of nature interesting [Rosen] |
| 18858 | Sets, universals and aggregates may be metaphysically necessary in one sense, but not another [Rosen] |
| 14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
| 18857 | Standard Metaphysical Necessity: P holds wherever the actual form of the world holds [Rosen] |
| 18856 | Non-Standard Metaphysical Necessity: when ¬P is incompatible with the nature of things [Rosen] |
| 18848 | Something may be necessary because of logic, but is that therefore a special sort of necessity? [Rosen] |
| 18855 | Combinatorial theories of possibility assume the principles of combination don't change across worlds [Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| 18853 | A proposition is 'correctly' conceivable if an ominiscient being could conceive it [Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 8917 | The Way of Abstraction used to say an abstraction is an idea that was formed by abstracting [Rosen] |
| 8912 | Nowadays abstractions are defined as non-spatial, causally inert things [Rosen] |
| 8913 | Chess may be abstract, but it has existed in specific space and time [Rosen] |
| 8914 | Sets are said to be abstract and non-spatial, but a set of books can be on a shelf [Rosen] |
| 8916 | Conflating abstractions with either sets or universals is a big claim, needing a big defence [Rosen] |
| 8918 | Functional terms can pick out abstractions by asserting an equivalence relation [Rosen] |
| 8919 | Abstraction by equivalence relationships might prove that a train is an abstract entity [Rosen] |
| 18818 | Sentence meaning is given by the actions to which it would lead [Ramsey] |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 18854 | The MRL view says laws are the theorems of the simplest and strongest account of the world [Rosen] |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |