42 ideas
| 9254 | In philosophy the truth can only be reached via the ruins of the false [Prichard] |
| 10245 | One geometry cannot be more true than another [Poincaré] |
| 12154 | Are 'word token' and 'word type' different sorts of countable objects, or two ways of counting? [Geach, by Perry] |
| 15923 | Poincaré rejected the actual infinite, claiming definitions gave apparent infinity to finite objects [Poincaré, by Lavine] |
| 10180 | Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects [Poincaré] |
| 10735 | Abstraction from objects won't reveal an operation's being performed 'so many times' [Geach] |
| 9916 | Convention, yes! Arbitrary, no! [Poincaré, by Putnam] |
| 18203 | Avoid non-predicative classifications and definitions [Poincaré] |
| 8780 | Attributes are functions, not objects; this distinguishes 'square of 2' from 'double of 2' [Geach] |
| 8969 | We should abandon absolute identity, confining it to within some category [Geach, by Hawthorne] |
| 16075 | Denial of absolute identity has drastic implications for logic, semantics and set theory [Wasserman on Geach] |
| 12152 | Identity is relative. One must not say things are 'the same', but 'the same A as' [Geach] |
| 16073 | Leibniz's Law is incomplete, since it includes a non-relativized identity predicate [Geach, by Wasserman] |
| 11910 | Being 'the same' is meaningless, unless we specify 'the same X' [Geach] |
| 8775 | A big flea is a small animal, so 'big' and 'small' cannot be acquired by abstraction [Geach] |
| 8776 | We cannot learn relations by abstraction, because their converse must be learned too [Geach] |
| 10732 | If concepts are just recognitional, then general judgements would be impossible [Geach] |
| 2567 | You can't define real mental states in terms of behaviour that never happens [Geach] |
| 2568 | Beliefs aren't tied to particular behaviours [Geach] |
| 8781 | The mind does not lift concepts from experience; it creates them, and then applies them [Geach] |
| 10731 | For abstractionists, concepts are capacities to recognise recurrent features of the world [Geach] |
| 8769 | If someone has aphasia but can still play chess, they clearly have concepts [Geach] |
| 8770 | 'Abstractionism' is acquiring a concept by picking out one experience amongst a group [Geach] |
| 8771 | 'Or' and 'not' are not to be found in the sensible world, or even in the world of inner experience [Geach] |
| 8772 | We can't acquire number-concepts by extracting the number from the things being counted [Geach] |
| 8773 | Abstractionists can't explain counting, because it must precede experience of objects [Geach] |
| 8774 | The numbers don't exist in nature, so they cannot have been abstracted from there into our languages [Geach] |
| 8778 | Blind people can use colour words like 'red' perfectly intelligently [Geach] |
| 8777 | If 'black' and 'cat' can be used in the absence of such objects, how can such usage be abstracted? [Geach] |
| 8779 | We can form two different abstract concepts that apply to a single unified experience [Geach] |
| 10733 | The abstractionist cannot explain 'some' and 'not' [Geach] |
| 10734 | Only a judgement can distinguish 'striking' from 'being struck' [Geach] |
| 9261 | The 'Ethics' is disappointing, because it fails to try to justify our duties [Prichard] |
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| 9262 | The mistake is to think we can prove what can only be seen directly in moral thinking [Prichard] |
| 9256 | I see the need to pay a debt in a particular instance, and any instance will do [Prichard] |
| 9257 | The complexities of life make it almost impossible to assess morality from a universal viewpoint [Prichard] |
| 9260 | Virtues won't generate an obligation, so it isn't a basis for morality [Prichard] |
| 9259 | We feel obligations to overcome our own failings, and these are not relations to other people [Prichard] |
| 9255 | Seeing the goodness of an effect creates the duty to produce it, not the desire [Prichard] |
| 9258 | If pain were instrinsically wrong, it would be immoral to inflict it on ourselves [Prichard] |
| 15877 | The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré] |