38 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] |
| 13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13969 | Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames] |
| 13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 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] |
| 13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 22189 | Why abandon a theory if you don't have a better one? [Gorham] |
| 22190 | If a theory is more informative it is less probable [Gorham] |
| 22192 | Is Newton simpler with universal simultaneity, or Einstein simpler without absolute time? [Gorham] |
| 22194 | Structural Realism says mathematical structures persist after theory rejection [Gorham] |
| 22195 | Structural Realists must show the mathematics is both crucial and separate [Gorham] |
| 22197 | Theories aren't just for organising present experience if they concern the past or future [Gorham] |
| 22196 | For most scientists their concepts are not just useful, but are meant to be true and accurate [Gorham] |
| 13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 22193 | Consilience makes the component sciences more likely [Gorham] |
| 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] |
| 22198 | Aristotelian physics has circular celestial motion and linear earthly motion [Gorham] |