52 ideas
| 15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
| 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] |
| 15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
| 18851 | Pairing (with Extensionality) guarantees an infinity of sets, just from a single element [Rosen] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
| 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] |
| 15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
| 15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
| 15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
| 15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
| 15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
| 15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
| 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] |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| 15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
| 15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
| 15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
| 15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
| 15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
| 18853 | A proposition is 'correctly' conceivable if an ominiscient being could conceive it [Rosen] |
| 15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
| 15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
| 15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
| 15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| 15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
| 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] |
| 15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
| 15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| 18854 | The MRL view says laws are the theorems of the simplest and strongest account of the world [Rosen] |
| 15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |