32 ideas
13966 | Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames] |
13974 | If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames] |
15163 | The interest of quantified modal logic is its metaphysical necessity and essentialism [Soames] |
15158 | Indefinite descriptions are quantificational in subject position, but not in predicate position [Soames] |
15157 | Recognising the definite description 'the man' as a quantifier phrase, not a singular term, is a real insight [Soames] |
15156 | The universal and existential quantifiers were chosen to suit mathematics [Soames] |
13969 | Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames] |
13267 | Temporal parts is a crazy doctrine, because it entails constantly creating stuff ex nihilo [Thomson, by Koslicki] |
16209 | How can point-duration slices of people have beliefs or desires? [Thomson] |
15161 | There are more metaphysically than logically necessary truths [Soames] |
15162 | We understand metaphysical necessity intuitively, from ordinary life [Soames] |
13973 | A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames] |
13968 | Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames] |
15152 | To study meaning, study truth conditions, on the basis of syntax, and representation by the parts [Soames] |
15153 | Tarski's account of truth-conditions is too weak to determine meanings [Soames] |
13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
13972 | Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames] |
15154 | We should use cognitive states to explain representational propositions, not vice versa [Soames] |
4059 | It can't be murder for a mother to perform an abortion on herself to save her own life [Thomson] |
4057 | A newly fertilized ovum is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree [Thomson] |
4695 | Maybe abortion can be justified despite the foetus having full human rights [Thomson, by Foot] |
4696 | The foetus is safe in the womb, so abortion initiates its death, with the mother as the agent. [Foot on Thomson] |
4060 | The right to life does not bestow the right to use someone else's body to support that life [Thomson] |
4061 | The right to life is not a right not to be killed, but not to be killed unjustly [Thomson] |
4058 | Is someone's right to life diminished if they were conceived by a rape? [Thomson] |
4062 | No one is morally required to make huge sacrifices to keep someone else alive for nine months [Thomson] |
21278 | All the signs of design found in a watch are also found in nature [Paley] |
21277 | Even an imperfect machine can exhibit obvious design [Paley] |
21275 | Unlike a stone, the parts of a watch are obviously assembled in order to show the time [Paley] |
21276 | From the obvious purpose and structure of a watch we must infer that it was designed [Paley] |
21357 | No organ shows purpose more obviously than the eyelid [Paley] |