85 ideas
| 1502 | Parmenides was much more cautious about accepting ideas than his predecessors [Simplicius on Parmenides] |
| 9161 | Maybe reasonableness requires circular justifications - that is one coherentist view [Field,H] |
| 10825 | The notion of truth is to help us make use of the utterances of others [Field,H] |
| 10820 | In the early 1930s many philosophers thought truth was not scientific [Field,H] |
| 13499 | Tarski reduced truth to reference or denotation [Field,H, by Hart,WD] |
| 10818 | Tarski really explained truth in terms of denoting, predicating and satisfied functions [Field,H] |
| 10817 | Tarski just reduced truth to some other undefined semantic notions [Field,H] |
| 9570 | In Field's Platonist view, set theory is false because it asserts existence for non-existent things [Field,H, by Chihara] |
| 10260 | Logical consequence is defined by the impossibility of P and ¬q [Field,H, by Shapiro] |
| 13134 | We negate predicates but do not negate names [Westerhoff] |
| 10819 | Tarski gives us the account of truth needed to build a group of true sentences in a model [Field,H] |
| 10827 | Model theory is unusual in restricting the range of the quantifiers [Field,H] |
| 9226 | If mathematical theories conflict, it may just be that they have different subject matter [Field,H] |
| 8958 | In Field's version of science, space-time points replace real numbers [Field,H, by Szabó] |
| 18221 | 'Metric' axioms uses functions, points and numbers; 'synthetic' axioms give facts about space [Field,H] |
| 8757 | The Indispensability Argument is the only serious ground for the existence of mathematical entities [Field,H] |
| 18212 | Nominalists try to only refer to physical objects, or language, or mental constructions [Field,H] |
| 10261 | The application of mathematics only needs its possibility, not its truth [Field,H, by Shapiro] |
| 18218 | Hilbert explains geometry, by non-numerical facts about space [Field,H] |
| 9623 | Field needs a semantical notion of second-order consequence, and that needs sets [Brown,JR on Field,H] |
| 18215 | It seems impossible to explain the idea that the conclusion is contained in the premises [Field,H] |
| 18214 | Mathematics is only empirical as regards which theory is useful [Field,H] |
| 18216 | Abstractions can form useful counterparts to concrete statements [Field,H] |
| 8714 | Fictionalists say 2+2=4 is true in the way that 'Oliver Twist lived in London' is true [Field,H] |
| 18210 | Why regard standard mathematics as truths, rather than as interesting fictions? [Field,H] |
| 449 | Being is not divisible, since it is all alike [Parmenides] |
| 448 | No necessity could produce Being either later or earlier, so it must exist absolutely or not at all [Parmenides] |
| 447 | Being must be eternal and uncreated, and hence it is timeless [Parmenides] |
| 445 | The realm of necessary non-existence cannot be explored, because it is unknowable [Parmenides] |
| 1503 | There is no such thing as nothing [Parmenides] |
| 21820 | Parmenides at least saw Being as the same as Nous, and separate from the sensed realm [Parmenides, by Plotinus] |
| 452 | All our concepts of change and permanence are just names, not the truth [Parmenides] |
| 18211 | You can reduce ontological commitment by expanding the logic [Field,H] |
| 13117 | How far down before we are too specialised to have a category? [Westerhoff] |
| 13116 | Maybe objects in the same category have the same criteria of identity [Westerhoff] |
| 13118 | Categories are base-sets which are used to construct states of affairs [Westerhoff] |
| 13125 | Categories are held to explain why some substitutions give falsehood, and others meaninglessness [Westerhoff] |
| 13126 | Categories systematize our intuitions about generality, substitutability, and identity [Westerhoff] |
| 13130 | Categories as generalities don't give a criterion for a low-level cut-off point [Westerhoff] |
| 13124 | Categories can be ordered by both containment and generality [Westerhoff] |
| 13131 | The aim is that everything should belong in some ontological category or other [Westerhoff] |
| 13123 | All systems have properties and relations, and most have individuals, abstracta, sets and events [Westerhoff] |
| 13115 | Ontological categories are like formal axioms, not unique and with necessary membership [Westerhoff] |
| 13119 | Categories merely systematise, and are not intrinsic to objects [Westerhoff] |
| 13135 | A thing's ontological category depends on what else exists, so it is contingent [Westerhoff] |
| 8959 | Field presumes properties can be eliminated from science [Field,H, by Szabó] |
| 18213 | Abstract objects are only applicable to the world if they are impure, and connect to the physical [Field,H] |
| 13129 | Essential kinds may be too specific to provide ontological categories [Westerhoff] |
| 1504 | Something must be unchanging to make recognition and knowledge possible [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| 444 | The first way of enquiry involves necessary existence [Parmenides] |
| 450 | Necessity sets limits on being, in order to give it identity [Parmenides] |
| 451 | Thinking implies existence, because thinking depends on it [Parmenides] |
| 9160 | Lots of propositions are default reasonable, but the a priori ones are empirically indefeasible [Field,H] |
| 9164 | We treat basic rules as if they were indefeasible and a priori, with no interest in counter-evidence [Field,H] |
| 1506 | Parmenides treats perception and intellectual activity as the same [Theophrastus on Parmenides] |
| 3058 | Only reason can prove the truth of facts [Parmenides] |
| 9165 | Reliability only makes a rule reasonable if we place a value on the truth produced by reliable processes [Field,H] |
| 9162 | Believing nothing, or only logical truths, is very reliable, but we want a lot more than that [Field,H] |
| 9166 | People vary in their epistemological standards, and none of them is 'correct' [Field,H] |
| 9163 | If we only use induction to assess induction, it is empirically indefeasible, and hence a priori [Field,H] |
| 18222 | Beneath every extrinsic explanation there is an intrinsic explanation [Field,H] |
| 10826 | 'Valence' and 'gene' had to be reduced to show their compatibility with physicalism [Field,H] |
| 9917 | 'Abstract' is unclear, but numbers, functions and sets are clearly abstract [Field,H] |
| 22244 | 'Partial reference' is when the subject thinks two objects are one object [Field,H, by Recanati] |
| 7615 | Field says reference is a causal physical relation between mental states and objects [Field,H, by Putnam] |
| 555 | People who say that the cosmos is one forget that they must explain movement [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| 226 | The one is without any kind of motion [Parmenides] |
| 5081 | There could be movement within one thing, as there is within water [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| 1509 | The one can't be divisible, because if it was it could be infinitely divided down to nothing [Parmenides, by Simplicius] |
| 20900 | Defenders of the One say motion needs the void - but that is not part of Being [Parmenides, by Aristotle] |
| 1505 | Reason sees reality as one, the senses see it as many [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| 453 | Reality is symmetrical and balanced, like a sphere, with no reason to be greater one way rather than another [Parmenides] |
| 1792 | He taught that there are two elements, fire the maker, and earth the matter [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 8404 | Explain single events by general rules, or vice versa, or probability explains both, or they are unconnected [Field,H] |
| 8401 | Physical laws are largely time-symmetric, so they make a poor basis for directional causation [Field,H] |
| 8400 | Identifying cause and effect is not just conventional; we explain later events by earlier ones [Field,H] |
| 8402 | The only reason for adding the notion of 'cause' to fundamental physics is directionality [Field,H] |
| 5115 | It is feeble-minded to look for explanations of everything being at rest [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| 18223 | In theories of fields, space-time points or regions are causal agents [Field,H] |
| 13217 | The void can't exist, and without the void there can't be movement or separation [Parmenides, by Aristotle] |
| 18220 | Both philosophy and physics now make substantivalism more attractive [Field,H] |
| 18219 | Relational space is problematic if you take the idea of a field seriously [Field,H] |
| 22918 | What could have triggered the beginning [of time and being]? [Parmenides] |
| 1794 | He was the first to discover the identity of the Morning and Evening Stars [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1791 | He was the first person to say the earth is spherical [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |