47 ideas
| 19090 | If we can't check our language against experience, philosophy is just comparing beliefs and words [Rorty] |
| 2557 | Analytical philosophy seems to have little interest in how to tell a good analysis from a bad one [Rorty] |
| 2556 | Rational certainty may be victory in argument rather than knowledge of facts [Rorty] |
| 4726 | Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers [Rorty, by O'Grady] |
| 2549 | For James truth is "what it is better for us to believe" rather than a correct picture of reality [Rorty] |
| 15879 | The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair [Harré] |
| 15891 | Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions [Harré] |
| 15878 | Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range [Harré] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 15874 | Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them [Harré] |
| 15884 | Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged [Harré] |
| 2548 | If knowledge is merely justified belief, justification is social [Rorty] |
| 6599 | Knowing has no definable essence, but is a social right, found in the context of conversations [Rorty] |
| 2566 | You can't debate about whether to have higher standards for the application of words [Rorty] |
| 15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered [Harré] |
| 15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature [Harré] |
| 15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions [Harré] |
| 15882 | Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them [Harré] |
| 15888 | The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science [Harré] |
| 15887 | 'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour [Harré] |
| 15889 | It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected [Harré] |
| 15890 | Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black' [Harré] |
| 15885 | The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism [Harré] |
| 2553 | The mind is a property, or it is baffling [Rorty] |
| 2550 | Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia [Rorty] |
| 2554 | Is intentionality a special sort of function? [Rorty] |
| 15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out [Harré] |
| 2565 | Nature has no preferred way of being represented [Rorty] |
| 2560 | Can meanings remain the same when beliefs change? [Rorty] |
| 2562 | A theory of reference seems needed to pick out objects without ghostly inner states [Rorty] |
| 2559 | Davidson's theory of meaning focuses not on terms, but on relations between sentences [Rorty] |
| 2558 | Since Hegel we have tended to see a human as merely animal if it is outside a society [Rorty] |
| 15886 | Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds [Harré] |
| 15864 | Classification is just as important as laws in natural science [Harré] |
| 15865 | Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces [Harré] |
| 15862 | Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures [Harré] |
| 15870 | Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three? [Harré] |
| 15871 | Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities? [Harré] |
| 15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? [Harré] |
| 15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
| 15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
| 15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
| 15892 | Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms [Harré] |
| 15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré] |