32 ideas
15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
14193 | 'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA] |
14195 | If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA] |
14196 | Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA] |
14198 | Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA] |
15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
14190 | Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA] |
14191 | Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA] |
15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
14192 | Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA] |
14197 | An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA] |
15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
7006 | Observing irrelevant items supports both 'all x are y' and 'all x are non-y', revealing its absurdity [Schofield,J] |
15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |