30 ideas
6601 | Science rules the globe because of colonising power, not inherent rationality [Feyerabend] |
1403 | A rational donkey would starve to death between two totally identical piles of hay [Buridan, by PG] |
10794 | The nominalist is tied by standard semantics to first-order, denying higher-order abstracta [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10786 | Anything which refers tends to be called a 'name', even if it isn't a noun [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10788 | Nominalists see proper names as a main vehicle of reference [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10799 | Nominalists should quantify existentially at first-order, and substitutionally when higher [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10790 | Quantifiers are needed to refer to infinitely many objects [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10791 | Substitutional semantics has no domain of objects, but place-markers for substitutions [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10785 | Maybe a substitutional semantics for quantification lends itself to nominalism [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10795 | Substitutional language has no ontology, and is just a way of speaking [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10798 | A true universal sentence might be substitutionally refuted, by an unnamed denumerable object [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10787 | Is being just referent of the verb 'to be'? [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10789 | Nominalists say predication is relations between individuals, or deny that it refers [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10796 | If objects are thoughts, aren't we back to psychologism? [Marcus (Barcan)] |
11181 | Aristotelian essentialism involves a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of modal operators [Marcus (Barcan)] |
11184 | Aristotelian essentialism is about shared properties, individuating essentialism about distinctive properties [Marcus (Barcan)] |
16678 | Without magnitude a thing would retain its parts, but they would have no location [Buridan] |
11180 | Essentialist sentences are not theorems of modal logic, and can even be false [Marcus (Barcan)] |
11186 | 'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical [Marcus (Barcan)] |
11185 | 'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted [Marcus (Barcan)] |
11182 | If essences are objects with only essential properties, they are elusive in possible worlds [Marcus (Barcan)] |
16793 | A thing is (less properly) the same over time if each part is succeeded by another [Buridan] |
10797 | Substitutivity won't fix identity, because expressions may be substitutable, but not refer at all [Marcus (Barcan)] |
11183 | The use of possible worlds is to sort properties (not to individuate objects) [Marcus (Barcan)] |
11187 | In possible worlds, names are just neutral unvarying pegs for truths and predicates [Marcus (Barcan)] |
16726 | Why can't we deduce secondary qualities from primary ones, if they cause them? [Buridan] |
16577 | Induction is not demonstration, because not all of the instances can be observed [Buridan] |
2561 | For Feyerabend the meaning of a term depends on a whole theory [Feyerabend, by Rorty] |
16576 | Science is based on induction, for general truths about fire, rhubarb and magnets [Buridan] |
11189 | Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist [Marcus (Barcan)] |