57 ideas
| 14611 | Metaphysics should avoid talk of past, present or future [Smart] |
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| 17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
| 17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| 14239 | The empty set is usually derived from Separation, but it also seems to need Infinity [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14240 | The empty set is something, not nothing! [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14241 | We don't need the empty set to express non-existence, as there are other ways to do that [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14242 | Maybe we can treat the empty set symbol as just meaning an empty term [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14243 | The unit set may be needed to express intersections that leave a single member [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 18851 | Pairing (with Extensionality) guarantees an infinity of sets, just from a single element [Rosen] |
| 14234 | If you only refer to objects one at a time, you need sets in order to refer to a plurality [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14237 | We can use plural language to refer to the set theory domain, to avoid calling it a 'set' [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14245 | Logical truths are true no matter what exists - but predicate calculus insists that something exists [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| 14246 | If mathematics purely concerned mathematical objects, there would be no applied mathematics [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 14247 | Sets might either represent the numbers, or be the numbers, or replace the numbers [Oliver/Smiley] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 18853 | A proposition is 'correctly' conceivable if an ominiscient being could conceive it [Rosen] |
| 17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
| 17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
| 17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
| 17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
| 17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
| 17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
| 17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
| 17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| 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] |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| 22405 | Negative utilitarianism implies that the world should be destroyed, to avoid future misery [Smart] |
| 22404 | Any group interested in ethics must surely have a sentiment of generalised benevolence [Smart] |
| 18854 | The MRL view says laws are the theorems of the simplest and strongest account of the world [Rosen] |
| 14613 | Special relativity won't determine a preferred frame, but we can pick one externally [Smart] |
| 17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
| 14615 | If time flows, then 'how fast does it flow?' is a tricky question [Smart] |
| 14614 | The past, present, future and tenses of A-theory are too weird, and should be analysed indexically [Smart] |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |