56 ideas
2956 | There is nothing so obvious that a philosopher cannot be found to deny it [Lockwood] |
2963 | There may only be necessary and sufficient conditions (and counterfactuals) because we intervene in the world [Lockwood] |
2958 | No one has ever succeeded in producing an acceptable non-trivial analysis of anything [Lockwood] |
2959 | If something is described in two different ways, is that two facts, or one fact presented in two ways? [Lockwood] |
14273 | Conditional Proof is only valid if we accept the truth-functional reading of 'if' [Edgington] |
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
2969 | How does a direct realist distinguish a building from Buckingham Palace? [Lockwood] |
16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
12205 | There are two families of modal notions, metaphysical and epistemic, of equal strength [Edgington] |
12207 | Metaphysical possibility is discovered empirically, and is contrained by nature [Edgington] |
12206 | Broadly logical necessity (i.e. not necessarily formal logical necessity) is an epistemic notion [Edgington] |
12185 | Logical necessity is epistemic necessity, which is the old notion of a priori [Edgington, by McFetridge] |
12208 | An argument is only valid if it is epistemically (a priori) necessary [Edgington] |
13857 | Truth-functional possibilities include the irrelevant, which is a mistake [Edgington] |
14281 | A thing works like formal probability if all the options sum to 100% [Edgington] |
14284 | Conclusion improbability can't exceed summed premise improbability in valid arguments [Edgington] |
13768 | Validity can preserve certainty in mathematics, but conditionals about contingents are another matter [Edgington] |
13853 | It is a mistake to think that conditionals are statements about how the world is [Edgington] |
14270 | Simple indicatives about past, present or future do seem to form a single semantic kind [Edgington] |
14269 | Maybe forward-looking indicatives are best classed with the subjunctives [Edgington] |
13770 | There are many different conditional mental states, and different conditional speech acts [Edgington] |
14275 | Truth-function problems don't show up in mathematics [Edgington] |
13764 | Are conditionals truth-functional - do the truth values of A and B determine the truth value of 'If A, B'? [Edgington] |
13765 | 'If A,B' must entail ¬(A & ¬B); otherwise we could have A true, B false, and If A,B true, invalidating modus ponens [Edgington] |
14274 | Inferring conditionals from disjunctions or negated conjunctions gives support to truth-functionalism [Edgington] |
14276 | The truth-functional view makes conditionals with unlikely antecedents likely to be true [Edgington] |
14290 | Doctor:'If patient still alive, change dressing'; Nurse:'Either dead patient, or change dressing'; kills patient! [Edgington] |
13855 | A conditional does not have truth conditions [Edgington] |
13859 | X believes 'if A, B' to the extent that A & B is more likely than A & ¬B [Edgington] |
14271 | Non-truth-functionalist say 'If A,B' is false if A is T and B is F, but deny that is always true for TT,FT and FF [Edgington] |
14272 | I say "If you touch that wire you'll get a shock"; you don't touch it. How can that make the conditional true? [Edgington] |
13854 | Conditionals express what would be the outcome, given some supposition [Edgington] |
14282 | On the supposition view, believe if A,B to the extent that A&B is nearly as likely as A [Edgington] |
14278 | Truth-functionalists support some conditionals which we assert, but should not actually believe [Edgington] |
14287 | Does 'If A,B' say something different in each context, because of the possibiites there? [Edgington] |
2970 | Dogs seem to have beliefs, and beliefs require concepts [Lockwood] |
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] |
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] |
2949 | We have the confused idea that time is a process of change [Lockwood] |