112 ideas
| 14912 | There is no test for metaphysics, except devising alternative theories [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14904 | Metaphysics builds consilience networks across science [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14907 | Progress in metaphysics must be tied to progress in science [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14908 | Metaphysics must involve at least two scientific hypotheses, one fundamental, and add to explanation [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14910 | Some science is so general that it is metaphysical [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14940 | Cutting-edge physics has little to offer metaphysics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14945 | The aim of metaphysics is to unite the special sciences with physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14898 | Modern metaphysics pursues aesthetic criteria like story-writing, and abandons scientific truth [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14899 | Why think that conceptual analysis reveals reality, rather than just how people think? [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14897 | We should abandon intuitions, especially that the world is made of little things, and made of something [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14936 | A metaphysics based on quantum gravity could result in almost anything [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14905 | The supremacy of science rests on its iterated error filters [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 18019 | People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 17998 | Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor] |
| 18012 | Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor] |
| 18013 | Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor] |
| 18011 | Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor] |
| 18016 | Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor] |
| 18015 | The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18017 | If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18021 | Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 18030 | A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18031 | If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18032 | Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18034 | Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18037 | Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor] |
| 18039 | If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor] |
| 18041 | Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor] |
| 18055 | In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor] |
| 18056 | Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor] |
| 18057 | 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor] |
| 18058 | Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor] |
| 18059 | The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor] |
| 18040 | Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor] |
| 14943 | Maybe mathematical logic rests on information-processing [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 17997 | Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 14942 | Only admit into ontology what is explanatory and predictive [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14948 | To be is to be a real pattern [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14947 | Any process can be described as transfer of measurable information [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14941 | We say there is no fundamental level to ontology, and reality is just patterns [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 10493 | If concrete is spatio-temporal and causal, and abstract isn't, the distinction doesn't suit physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14934 | Concrete and abstract are too crude for modern physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14909 | Physicalism is 'part-whole' (all parts are physical), or 'supervenience/levels' (dependence on physical) [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14926 | Relations without relata must be treated as universals, with their own formal properties [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14929 | A belief in relations must be a belief in things that are related [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14925 | The normal assumption is that relations depend on properties of the relata [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14931 | That there are existent structures not made of entities is no stranger than the theory of universals [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14932 | Causal essentialism says properties are nothing but causal relations [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14920 | If science captures the modal structure of things, that explains why its predictions work [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14952 | Things are constructs for tracking patterns (and not linguistic, because animals do it) [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14950 | Maybe individuation can be explained by thermodynamic depth [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14946 | There are no cats in quantum theory, and no mountains in astrophysics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14927 | Physics seems to imply that we must give up self-subsistent individuals [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14944 | There is no single view of individuals, because different sciences operate on different scales [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14928 | Things are abstractions from structures [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 18060 | We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor] |
| 14892 | The idea of composition, that parts of the world are 'made of' something, is no longer helpful [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14949 | A sum of things is not a whole if the whole does not support some new generalisation [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14951 | We treat the core of a pattern as an essence, in order to keep track of it [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14958 | A continuous object might be a type, with instances at each time [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14903 | Quantum mechanics seems to imply single-case probabilities [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14923 | In quantum statistics, two separate classical states of affairs are treated as one [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14955 | Rats find some obvious associations easier to learn than less obvious ones [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14918 | The doctrine of empiricism does not itself seem to be empirically justified [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14891 | There is no reason to think our intuitions are good for science or metaphysics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14916 | What matters is whether a theory can predict - not whether it actually does so [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14915 | The theory of evolution was accepted because it explained, not because of its predictions [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14921 | The Ramsey-sentence approach preserves observations, but eliminates unobservables [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14922 | The Ramsey sentence describes theoretical entities; it skips reference, but doesn't eliminate it [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14953 | Induction is reasoning from the observed to the unobserved [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14914 | Inductive defences of induction may be rule-circular, but not viciously premise-circular [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14913 | We explain by deriving the properties of a phenomenon by embedding it in a large abstract theory [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14930 | Maybe the only way we can think about a domain is by dividing it up into objects [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14939 | Two versions of quantum theory say that the world is deterministic [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14911 | Science is opposed to downward causation [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 18020 | Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor] |
| 18035 | Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor] |
| 18018 | To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor] |
| 18008 | Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor] |
| 18010 | 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor] |
| 18053 | The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor] |
| 17999 | Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18000 | Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor] |
| 18014 | Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor] |
| 18001 | Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor] |
| 18036 | A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor] |
| 18051 | In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor] |
| 18043 | The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor] |
| 18042 | The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor] |
| 18047 | A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor] |
| 18048 | A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor] |
| 18049 | The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor] |
| 18050 | If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor] |
| 18054 | Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor] |
| 18028 | Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18029 | Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor] |
| 18022 | Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor] |
| 18024 | One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor] |
| 18023 | Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18025 | The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor] |
| 18026 | Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor] |
| 18027 | Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor] |
| 20930 | The existence of law is one thing, its merits and demerits another [Austin,J] |
| 14956 | Explanation by kinds and by clusters of properties just express the stability of reality [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14957 | There is nothing more to a natural kind than a real pattern in nature [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14954 | Causation is found in the special sciences, but may have no role in fundamental physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14902 | Science may have uninstantiated laws, inferred from approaching some unrealised limit [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14937 | That the universe must be 'made of' something is just obsolete physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14900 | In physics, matter is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental ontology [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14901 | Spacetime may well be emergent, rather than basic [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14924 | If spacetime is substantial, what is the substance? [Ladyman/Ross] |
| 14938 | A fixed foliation theory of quantum gravity could make presentism possible [Ladyman/Ross] |