74 ideas
| 14650 | Maybe proper names involve essentialism [Plantinga] |
| 14648 | Could I name all of the real numbers in one fell swoop? Call them all 'Charley'? [Plantinga] |
| 14664 | Necessary beings (numbers, properties, sets, propositions, states of affairs, God) exist in all possible worlds [Plantinga] |
| 16435 | Plantinga proposes necessary existent essences as surrogates for the nonexistent things [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
| 14655 | The 'identity criteria' of a name are a group of essential and established facts [Plantinga] |
| 14647 | Surely self-identity is essential to Socrates? [Plantinga] |
| 14658 | 'Being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterise Socrates, so they are among his properties [Plantinga] |
| 13132 | A snowball's haecceity is the property of being identical with itself [Plantinga, by Westerhoff] |
| 14666 | Socrates is a contingent being, but his essence is not; without Socrates, his essence is unexemplified [Plantinga] |
| 14656 | Does Socrates have essential properties, plus a unique essence (or 'haecceity') which entails them? [Plantinga] |
| 14646 | An object has a property essentially if it couldn't conceivably have lacked it [Plantinga] |
| 14654 | Properties are 'trivially essential' if they are instantiated by every object in every possible world [Plantinga] |
| 14653 | X is essentially P if it is P in every world, or in every X-world, or in the actual world (and not ¬P elsewhere) [Plantinga] |
| 14660 | If a property is ever essential, can it only ever be an essential property? [Plantinga] |
| 14661 | Essences are instantiated, and are what entails a thing's properties and lack of properties [Plantinga] |
| 14657 | Does 'being identical with Socrates' name a property? I can think of no objections to it [Plantinga] |
| 14642 | Expressing modality about a statement is 'de dicto'; expressing it of property-possession is 'de re' [Plantinga] |
| 14643 | 'De dicto' true and 'de re' false is possible, and so is 'de dicto' false and 'de re' true [Plantinga] |
| 14649 | Can we find an appropriate 'de dicto' paraphrase for any 'de re' proposition? [Plantinga] |
| 14652 | 'De re' modality is as clear as 'de dicto' modality, because they are logically equivalent [Plantinga] |
| 14659 | We can imagine being beetles or alligators, so it is possible we might have such bodies [Plantinga] |
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| 14662 | Possible worlds clarify possibility, propositions, properties, sets, counterfacts, time, determinism etc. [Plantinga] |
| 18383 | Plantinga says there is just this world, with possibilities expressed in propositions [Plantinga, by Armstrong] |
| 16472 | Plantinga's actualism is nominal, because he fills actuality with possibilia [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| 14651 | What Socrates could have been, and could have become, are different? [Plantinga] |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| 11891 | Possibilities for an individual can only refer to that individual, in some possible world [Plantinga, by Mackie,P] |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 6356 | Maybe a reliable justification must come from a process working with its 'proper function' [Plantinga, by Pollock/Cruz] |
| 13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| 13055 | Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon] |
| 13046 | Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon] |
| 13058 | Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon] |
| 14366 | An explanation is a table of statistical information [Salmon, by Strevens] |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| 13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
| 13049 | We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon] |
| 13051 | Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon] |
| 13053 | A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon] |
| 13061 | Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon] |
| 17093 | Causation produces productive mechanisms; to understand the world, understand these mechanisms [Salmon] |
| 17492 | Salmon's interaction mechanisms needn't be regular, or involving any systems [Glennan on Salmon] |
| 13045 | Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon] |
| 13062 | Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon] |
| 13063 | Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon] |
| 16557 | Salmon's mechanisms are processes and interactions, involving marks, or conserved quantities [Salmon, by Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
| 13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
| 13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
| 9086 | The idea of abstract objects is not ontological; it comes from the epistemological idea of abstraction [Plantinga] |
| 9087 | Theists may see abstract objects as really divine thoughts [Plantinga] |
| 16469 | Plantinga has domains of sets of essences, variables denoting essences, and predicates as functions [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
| 16470 | Plantinga's essences have their own properties - so will have essences, giving a hierarchy [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
| 14663 | Are propositions and states of affairs two separate things, or only one? I incline to say one [Plantinga] |
| 9085 | If propositions are concrete they don't have to exist, and so they can't be necessary truths [Plantinga] |
| 9084 | Propositions can't just be in brains, because 'there are no human beings' might be true [Plantinga] |
| 8412 | A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon] |
| 8413 | Cause must come first in propagations of causal interactions, but interactions are simultaneous [Salmon] |
| 8411 | Instead of localised events, I take enduring and extended processes as basic to causation [Salmon] |
| 4784 | Salmon says processes rather than events should be basic in a theory of physical causation [Salmon, by Psillos] |
| 8409 | Probabilistic causal concepts are widely used in everyday life and in science [Salmon] |
| 20704 | A possible world contains a being of maximal greatness - which is existence in all worlds [Plantinga, by Davies,B] |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| 1474 | Moral evil may be acceptable to God because it allows free will (even though we don't see why this is necessary) [Plantinga, by PG] |
| 1475 | It is logically possible that natural evil like earthquakes is caused by Satan [Plantinga, by PG] |