48 ideas
12154 | Are 'word token' and 'word type' different sorts of countable objects, or two ways of counting? [Geach, by Perry] |
10735 | Abstraction from objects won't reveal an operation's being performed 'so many times' [Geach] |
16050 | The goodness of a picture supervenes on the picture; duplicates must be equally good [Hare] |
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] |
20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
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] |
2705 | How can intuitionists distinguish universal convictions from local cultural ones? [Hare] |
2712 | You can't use intuitions to decide which intuitions you should cultivate [Hare] |
2706 | Emotivists mistakenly think all disagreements are about facts, and so there are no moral reasons [Hare] |
2709 | Prescriptivism sees 'ought' statements as imperatives which are universalisable [Hare] |
2704 | If morality is just a natural or intuitive description, that leads to relativism [Hare] |
2855 | In primary evaluative words like 'ought' prescription is constant but description can vary [Hare, by Hooker,B] |
22331 | Moral statements are imperatives rather than the avowals of emotion - but universalisable [Hare, by Glock] |
22484 | Universalised prescriptivism could be seen as implying utilitarianism [Hare, by Foot] |
4125 | Hare says I acquire an agglomeration of preferences by role-reversal, leading to utilitarianism [Hare, by Williams,B] |
4126 | If we have to want the preferences of the many, we have to abandon our own deeply-held views [Williams,B on Hare] |
4127 | If morality is to be built on identification with the preferences of others, I must agree with their errors [Williams,B on Hare] |
22483 | A judgement is presciptive if we expect it to be acted on [Hare] |
2703 | Descriptivism say ethical meaning is just truth-conditions; prescriptivism adds an evaluation [Hare] |
2707 | If there can be contradictory prescriptions, then reasoning must be involved [Hare] |
2708 | An 'ought' statement implies universal application [Hare] |
2711 | Prescriptivism implies a commitment, but descriptivism doesn't [Hare] |
22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
4360 | By far the easiest way of seeming upright is to be upright [Hare] |
2710 | Moral judgements must invoke some sort of principle [Hare] |
6449 | The categorical imperative leads to utilitarianism [Hare, by Nagel] |