48 ideas
| 15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
| 15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
| 17518 | Counting 'coin in this box' may have coin as the unit, with 'in this box' merely as the scope [Ayers] |
| 17516 | If counting needs a sortal, what of things which fall under two sortals? [Ayers] |
| 17520 | Events do not have natural boundaries, and we have to set them [Ayers] |
| 15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
| 17519 | To express borderline cases of objects, you need the concept of an 'object' [Ayers] |
| 17510 | Speakers need the very general category of a thing, if they are to think about it [Ayers] |
| 17522 | We use sortals to classify physical objects by the nature and origin of their unity [Ayers] |
| 17515 | Seeing caterpillar and moth as the same needs continuity, not identity of sortal concepts [Ayers] |
| 17511 | Recognising continuity is separate from sortals, and must precede their use [Ayers] |
| 17517 | Could the same matter have more than one form or principle of unity? [Ayers] |
| 17513 | If there are two objects, then 'that marble, man-shaped object' is ambiguous [Ayers] |
| 15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
| 17523 | Sortals basically apply to individuals [Ayers] |
| 15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
| 15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
| 15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
| 17521 | You can't have the concept of a 'stage' if you lack the concept of an object [Ayers] |
| 17514 | Temporal 'parts' cannot be separated or rearranged [Ayers] |
| 17509 | Some say a 'covering concept' completes identity; others place the concept in the reference [Ayers] |
| 17512 | If diachronic identities need covering concepts, why not synchronic identities too? [Ayers] |
| 15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
| 15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
| 15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
| 15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
| 15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
| 15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
| 15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
| 15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
| 15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
| 15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
| 15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
| 15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
| 15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
| 15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
| 8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
| 8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| 8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
| 8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
| 8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |
| 8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
| 8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
| 8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
| 8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
| 8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |
| 15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |