39 ideas
| 13939 | No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap] |
| 16252 | Metaphysics uses empty words, or just produces pseudo-statements [Carnap] |
| 1403 | A rational donkey would starve to death between two totally identical piles of hay [Buridan, by PG] |
| 13342 | Carnap defined consequence by contradiction, but this is unintuitive and changes with substitution [Tarski on Carnap] |
| 13251 | Each person is free to build their own logic, just by specifying a syntax [Carnap] |
| 13936 | Questions about numbers are answered by analysis, and are analytic, and hence logically true [Carnap] |
| 8748 | Logical positivists incorporated geometry into logicism, saying axioms are just definitions [Carnap, by Shapiro] |
| 8960 | Internal questions about abstractions are trivial, and external ones deeply problematic [Carnap, by Szabó] |
| 13933 | Existence questions are 'internal' (within a framework) or 'external' (concerning the whole framework) [Carnap] |
| 13934 | To be 'real' is to be an element of a system, so we cannot ask reality questions about the system itself [Carnap] |
| 13938 | A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question [Carnap] |
| 14329 | Some dispositional properties (such as mental ones) may have no categorical base [Price,HH] |
| 13935 | We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules [Carnap] |
| 16678 | Without magnitude a thing would retain its parts, but they would have no location [Buridan] |
| 16793 | A thing is (less properly) the same over time if each part is succeeded by another [Buridan] |
| 14305 | In the truth-functional account a burnt-up match was soluble because it never entered water [Carnap] |
| 16726 | Why can't we deduce secondary qualities from primary ones, if they cause them? [Buridan] |
| 13932 | Empiricists tend to reject abstract entities, and to feel sympathy with nominalism [Carnap] |
| 13937 | New linguistic claims about entities are not true or false, but just expedient, fruitful or successful [Carnap] |
| 16577 | Induction is not demonstration, because not all of the instances can be observed [Buridan] |
| 18699 | Carnap tried to define all scientific predicates in terms of primitive relations, using type theory [Carnap, by Button] |
| 13940 | All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap] |
| 16576 | Science is based on induction, for general truths about fire, rhubarb and magnets [Buridan] |
| 13048 | Good explications are exact, fruitful, simple and similar to the explicandum [Carnap, by Salmon] |
| 9032 | Before we can abstract from an instance of violet, we must first recognise it [Price,HH] |
| 9034 | There may be degrees of abstraction which allow recognition by signs, without full concepts [Price,HH] |
| 9035 | If judgement of a characteristic is possible, that part of abstraction must be complete [Price,HH] |
| 9036 | There is pre-verbal sign-based abstraction, as when ice actually looks cold [Price,HH] |
| 9037 | Intelligent behaviour, even in animals, has something abstract about it [Price,HH] |
| 9033 | Recognition must precede the acquisition of basic concepts, so it is the fundamental intellectual process [Price,HH] |
| 10645 | We reach concepts by clarification, or by definition, or by habitual experience [Price,HH] |
| 12131 | All concepts can be derived from a few basics, making possible one science of everything [Carnap, by Brody] |
| 9030 | Abstractions can be interpreted dispositionally, as the ability to recognise or imagine an item [Price,HH] |
| 9029 | If ideas have to be images, then abstract ideas become a paradoxical problem [Price,HH] |
| 10646 | Our understanding of 'dog' or 'house' arises from a repeated experience of concomitances [Price,HH] |
| 9031 | The basic concepts of conceptual cognition are acquired by direct abstraction from instances [Price,HH] |
| 10644 | A 'felt familiarity' with universals is more primitive than abstraction [Price,HH] |
| 11968 | The intension of a sentence is the set of all possible worlds in which it is true [Carnap, by Kaplan] |
| 18285 | All translation loses some content (but language does not create reality) [Carnap] |