40 ideas
8092 | Logic was merely a branch of rhetoric until the scientific 17th century [Devlin] |
9376 | A sentence may simultaneously define a term, and also assert a fact [Boghossian] |
6345 | Minimalism is incoherent, as it implies that truth both is and is not a property [Boghossian, by Horwich] |
8081 | 'No councillors are bankers' and 'All bankers are athletes' implies 'Some athletes are not councillors' [Devlin] |
8085 | Modern propositional inference replaces Aristotle's 19 syllogisms with modus ponens [Devlin] |
8086 | Predicate logic retains the axioms of propositional logic [Devlin] |
8091 | Situation theory is logic that takes account of context [Devlin] |
8087 | Golden ages: 1900-1960 for pure logic, and 1950-1985 for applied logic [Devlin] |
8089 | Montague's intensional logic incorporated the notion of meaning [Devlin] |
8082 | Where a conditional is purely formal, an implication implies a link between premise and conclusion [Devlin] |
8072 | Sentences of apparent identical form can have different contextual meanings [Devlin] |
9375 | Conventionalism agrees with realists that logic has truth values, but not over the source [Boghossian] |
8075 | Space and time are atomic in the arrow, and divisible in the tortoise [Devlin] |
16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
9369 | 'Snow is white or it isn't' is just true, not made true by stipulation [Boghossian] |
9367 | The a priori is explained as analytic to avoid a dubious faculty of intuition [Boghossian] |
9373 | That logic is a priori because it is analytic resulted from explaining the meaning of logical constants [Boghossian] |
9380 | We can't hold a sentence true without evidence if we can't agree which sentence is definitive of it [Boghossian] |
9384 | We may have strong a priori beliefs which we pragmatically drop from our best theory [Boghossian] |
9374 | If we learn geometry by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long? [Boghossian] |
8088 | People still say the Hopi have no time concepts, despite Whorf's later denial [Devlin] |
16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
9378 | If meaning depends on conceptual role, what properties are needed to do the job? [Boghossian] |
9377 | 'Conceptual role semantics' says terms have meaning from sentences and/or inferences [Boghossian] |
9372 | Could expressions have meaning, without two expressions possibly meaning the same? [Boghossian] |
8073 | How do we parse 'time flies like an arrow' and 'fruit flies like an apple'? [Devlin] |
8076 | The distinction between sentences and abstract propositions is crucial in logic [Devlin] |
17721 | There are no truths in virtue of meaning, but there is knowability in virtue of understanding [Boghossian, by Jenkins] |
9368 | Epistemological analyticity: grasp of meaning is justification; metaphysical: truth depends on meaning [Boghossian] |
16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |