51 ideas
| 2956 | There is nothing so obvious that a philosopher cannot be found to deny it [Lockwood] |
| 3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
| 2963 | There may only be necessary and sufficient conditions (and counterfactuals) because we intervene in the world [Lockwood] |
| 3312 | There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier) [Benardete,JA] |
| 2958 | No one has ever succeeded in producing an acceptable non-trivial analysis of anything [Lockwood] |
| 3352 | Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA] |
| 3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
| 2959 | If something is described in two different ways, is that two facts, or one fact presented in two ways? [Lockwood] |
| 3326 | Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics [Benardete,JA] |
| 3327 | The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it [Benardete,JA] |
| 3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
| 3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 3330 | Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations [Benardete,JA] |
| 3337 | Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory) [Benardete,JA] |
| 3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
| 12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
| 2969 | How does a direct realist distinguish a building from Buckingham Palace? [Lockwood] |
| 3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3350 | Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3309 | If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3351 | One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water [Benardete,JA] |
| 3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
| 2970 | Dogs seem to have beliefs, and beliefs require concepts [Lockwood] |
| 3306 | The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction [Benardete,JA] |
| 3349 | If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects [Benardete,JA] |
| 3341 | Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori' [Benardete,JA] |
| 3344 | Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 3345 | Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge [Benardete,JA] |
| 2961 | Empiricism is a theory of meaning as well as of knowledge [Lockwood] |
| 2960 | Commonsense realism must account for the similarity of genuine perceptions and known illusions [Lockwood] |
| 2952 | A 1988 estimate gave the brain 3 x 10-to-the-14 synaptic junctions [Lockwood] |
| 2964 | How come unconscious states also cause behaviour? [Lockwood] |
| 2951 | Could there be unconscious beliefs and desires? [Lockwood] |
| 2953 | Fish may operate by blindsight [Lockwood] |
| 2967 | We might even learn some fundamental physics from introspection [Lockwood] |
| 22352 | Out of more than a hundred planets, Earth is the only one with the idea of free will [Vonnegut] |
| 2966 | Can phenomenal qualities exist unsensed? [Lockwood] |
| 2955 | If mental events occur in time, then relativity says they are in space [Lockwood] |
| 2950 | Only logical positivists ever believed behaviourism [Lockwood] |
| 2954 | Identity theory likes the identity of lightning and electrical discharges [Lockwood] |
| 16362 | An identity statement aims at getting the hearer to merge two mental files [Lockwood] |
| 2971 | Perhaps logical positivism showed that there is no dividing line between science and metaphysics [Lockwood] |
| 4054 | I may exist before I become a person, just as I exist before I become an adult [Lockwood] |
| 4056 | If the soul is held to leave the body at brain-death, it should arrive at the time of brain-creation [Lockwood] |
| 4055 | It isn't obviously wicked to destroy a potential human being (e.g. an ununited egg and sperm) [Lockwood] |
| 2962 | Maybe causation is a form of rational explanation, not an observation or a state of mind [Lockwood] |
| 3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
| 2949 | We have the confused idea that time is a process of change [Lockwood] |
| 3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |