70 ideas
| 9786 | Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R] |
| 21634 | Metaphysics is (supposedly) first the ontology, then in general what things are like [Hofweber] |
| 16415 | Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber] |
| 16413 | Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics? [Hofweber] |
| 21666 | 'Fundamentality' is either a superficial idea, or much too obscure [Hofweber] |
| 9784 | A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R] |
| 13941 | Are the truth-bearers sentences, utterances, ideas, beliefs, judgements, propositions or statements? [Cartwright,R] |
| 13942 | Logicians take sentences to be truth-bearers for rigour, rather than for philosophical reasons [Cartwright,R] |
| 21640 | 'It's true that Fido is a dog' conjures up a contrast class, of 'it's false' or 'it's unlikely' [Hofweber] |
| 17990 | Instances of minimal truth miss out propositions inexpressible in current English [Hofweber] |
| 21657 | Since properties can have properties, some theorists rank them in 'types' [Hofweber] |
| 21653 | Maybe not even names are referential, but are just by used by speakers to refer [Hofweber] |
| 10001 | An adjective contributes semantically to a noun phrase [Hofweber] |
| 21636 | 'Singular terms' are not found in modern linguistics, and are not the same as noun phrases [Hofweber] |
| 21637 | If two processes are said to be identical, that doesn't make their terms refer to entities [Hofweber] |
| 16416 | The quantifier in logic is not like the ordinary English one (which has empty names, non-denoting terms etc) [Hofweber] |
| 21643 | The inferential quantifier focuses on truth; the domain quantifier focuses on reality [Hofweber] |
| 10007 | Quantifiers for domains and for inference come apart if there are no entities [Hofweber] |
| 17988 | Quantification can't all be substitutional; some reference is obviously to objects [Hofweber] |
| 10002 | '2 + 2 = 4' can be read as either singular or plural [Hofweber] |
| 21644 | Numbers are used as singular terms, as adjectives, and as symbols [Hofweber] |
| 21646 | The Amazonian Piraha language is said to have no number words [Hofweber] |
| 9998 | What is the relation of number words as singular-terms, adjectives/determiners, and symbols? [Hofweber] |
| 21665 | The fundamental theorem of arithmetic is that all numbers are composed uniquely of primes [Hofweber] |
| 21649 | How can words be used for counting if they are objects? [Hofweber] |
| 10003 | Why is arithmetic hard to learn, but then becomes easy? [Hofweber] |
| 10008 | Arithmetic is not about a domain of entities, as the quantifiers are purely inferential [Hofweber] |
| 10005 | Arithmetic doesn’t simply depend on objects, since it is true of fictional objects [Hofweber] |
| 10000 | We might eliminate adjectival numbers by analysing them into blocks of quantifiers [Hofweber] |
| 21647 | Logicism makes sense of our ability to know arithmetic just by thought [Hofweber] |
| 21648 | Neo-Fregeans are dazzled by a technical result, and ignore practicalities [Hofweber] |
| 10006 | First-order logic captures the inferential relations of numbers, but not the semantics [Hofweber] |
| 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] |
| 21664 | Supervenience offers little explanation for things which necessarily go together [Hofweber] |
| 21660 | Reality can be seen as the totality of facts, or as the totality of things [Hofweber] |
| 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] |
| 21661 | There are probably ineffable facts, systematically hidden from us [Hofweber] |
| 17989 | Since properties have properties, there can be a typed or a type-free theory of them [Hofweber] |
| 9783 | While no two classes coincide in membership, there are distinct but coextensive attributes [Cartwright,R] |
| 21652 | Our perceptual beliefs are about ordinary objects, not about simples arranged chair-wise [Hofweber] |
| 14961 | Clearly a pipe can survive being taken apart [Cartwright,R] |
| 14962 | Bodies don't becomes scattered by losing small or minor parts [Cartwright,R] |
| 13952 | Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R] |
| 13954 | The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R] |
| 13955 | Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R] |
| 13953 | An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R] |
| 13945 | A token isn't a unique occurrence, as the case of a word or a number shows [Cartwright,R] |
| 21663 | Counterfactuals are essential for planning, and learning from mistakes [Hofweber] |
| 10004 | Our minds are at their best when reasoning about objects [Hofweber] |
| 13948 | For any statement, there is no one meaning which any sentence asserting it must have [Cartwright,R] |
| 21654 | The "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning says every expression in a language has a referent [Hofweber] |
| 13950 | People don't assert the meaning of the words they utter [Cartwright,R] |
| 21641 | Inferential role semantics is an alternative to semantics that connects to the world [Hofweber] |
| 21638 | Syntactic form concerns the focus of the sentence, as well as the truth-conditions [Hofweber] |
| 21658 | Properties can be expressed in a language despite the absence of a single word for them [Hofweber] |
| 21659 | 'Being taller than this' is a predicate which can express many different properties [Hofweber] |
| 21655 | Compositonality is a way to build up the truth-conditions of a sentence [Hofweber] |
| 21656 | Proposition have no content, because they are content [Hofweber] |
| 13944 | We can pull apart assertion from utterance, and the action, the event and the subject-matter for each [Cartwright,R] |
| 13947 | 'It's raining' makes a different assertion on different occasions, but its meaning remains the same [Cartwright,R] |
| 21635 | Without propositions there can be no beliefs or desires [Hofweber] |
| 21662 | Do there exist thoughts which we are incapable of thinking? [Hofweber] |
| 13943 | We can attribute 'true' and 'false' to whatever it was that was said [Cartwright,R] |
| 13946 | To assert that p, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to utter some particular words [Cartwright,R] |
| 13951 | Assertions, unlike sentence meanings, can be accurate, probable, exaggerated, false.... [Cartwright,R] |
| 21645 | 'Semantic type coercion' is selecting the reading of a word to make the best sense [Hofweber] |
| 21639 | 'Background deletion' is appropriately omitting background from an answer [Hofweber] |
| 17991 | Holism says language can't be translated; the expressibility hypothesis says everything can [Hofweber] |